Talking bits and pieces: a case study

Believe it or not when I first had Indigo I rode her in a bit. This picture is of the first time I rode her and the only one of her in a bit. I rode her english, then western where her old owner put her in a curb bit explaining she had only been ridden in a curb for about 6 hours total but trusted my hands enough to let me take her down the road and to a trail by myself. I was 17 and not really looking for a horse like her but everything fit in nicely. I think this is the real start of my bitless journey because it involved bits and riding the horse with the softest mouth.

Today I was at a barn I take care of and it was particularly rainy, crappy day so these horses were inside. When it rains I like to listen to the rain bouncing off the indoor arena. It sounds so much worse than it actually is. Today I was overhearing a conversation between two boarders who are traditionally, well traditionalists.
They were discussing an issue with the one ladies horse that has escalated to becoming dangerous. When the horse has a normal (english) bridle on he gapes his mouth open and sticks his tongue out the side. When he has a bridle with a flash or crank noseband he tosses his head and even once gave his rider a bloody nose when he threw his head up and back. She gets the horses teeth done regularly and has even had a few trainers ride the horse. There are no physical problems that have been identified by a vet. What each one of these trainers said to the owner was not out of the ordinary; bigger bit.

They had a whole arsenal of bits on a counter in the tack room. They were going through them all, measuring them, hanging them back up and then discussing which one should go in the horses mouth next.
After about 15 minutes of going through every bit in the tack room they came out to ask my opinion. I was quietly filling buckets, listening to the rain. They pulled the horse out of his stall and started to assemble bridles in preparation for a ride. The owner looked at me and says "I have tried so many bits, I don't know what to do!" I raised a brow and asked her if she had ever considered fitting the bit to the horse, not the horse to the bit. She gave me a kind of confused look.
Even though I completely endorse bitless riding, for any horse, any discipline, I know sometimes due to rules and regulations (this lady shows quite regularly on another aging horse that she wants to retire) they prohibit the use of anything but a bit. That is something we hope to have changed soon.

I picked up the bunch of bits the lady had. I studied them. I had seen all of them before and knew them all by name. After all to ride bitless and know what your talking about you must know bits (keep your friends close and your enemies closer right?). I took away the ones she had been using; mostly bits with curb chains and textured mouthpieces. These were all bits the trainers has suggested.

What she said next was not out of the ordinary. I told her what I meant was getting a bit to fit the horses mouth, not just the width of the bit. She asked me to explain.

See a horses mouth should be taken in the same regards when choosing a bit as you would when chosing a saddle to fit a back. There is no magic "one size fits all" for bits. A single jointed snaffle may seem like the universal "horse has a good mouth" bit but it truely isn't, as the lady's horse was trying to tell her by gaping his mouth and tossing his head.

See just like a horses back can be wide, narrow, mutton withered or have the mt.everest of withers a horses mouth is the same. His hard palate can be low and flat or high and concave. Horses have thick tongues, thin tongues, fat lips and thin lips. Their jaw can be wide or narrow. Every single horse is different in some minute way.

Firstly I stuck a piece of rope in the horses mouth and marked it off at it's cheeks. As they had correctly predicted a 5 inch bit was in order. His regular bit, 5 and 1/4 inches. I placed it in his mouth and pulled on one side. A good 1/4 of an inch of bit stuck out before the cheek piece hit on the other side. This is what was contrubuting to the tongue lolling out of his mouth. Since the joint in the bit was pinching his tongue between the bars of his mouth and the thinner part of the bit closer to the joint the horses evasion of sticking his tongue out of his mouth was his method of avoiding pain.

Secondly as I investigated I had to point out to the owner that indeed this horse had a very low, flat hard palate. A single jointed bit was very painful when pressure was applied in conjunction to the bit being too long. A single jointed bit when pulled on with both reins creates an upside down V in a horses mouth. For a horse with a low hard palate you can imagine how easily it would be to create a bruise there.

Thirdly the horses tongue was very thin. The bit's mouthpiece was also thin, creating an awkward pressure and when all are put together created our tongue lolling, mouth gaping horse.

So to combat this? I pulled a bit out of their collection that was 5 inches long, had a double joint (french link that was rounded) the mouthpiece was also thicker. It looked like a perfect fit now only to try it out. The rider hopped up and warmed up. By the time I was done filling buckets she was hollering for me to come watch. We first tried with the flash since that is what she was normally using. The head tossing continued but not to the same violent extent as before.

So the rider got off and we exchanged the bit for a loose ring mullen mouth (aka a mouthpiece with no joint that is slightly curved to accomodate the tongue). This seemed like the best fit for the horse and in the end it was. The rider got on first with the flash. No head tossing. We took the flash off and there was no tongue or mouth lolling. The rider is going to continue to ride in this bit and try my bitless bridle this weekend. She was not sold on the idea before but after explaining a bit about the anatomy of a horses mouth she asked me if she could try one of my bridles on this young horse.

So this post is dedicated to all those horses that put up with a bit that does not fit and only complain in very minute ways. I can not begin to imagine the horses that have taught us how to ride and what most of them went through. They are definately worth their weight in gold.

Tuesday troublemakers

After reading pony girls post about how cats find her I was thinking about my own strange cat magnet I have along with a bunch of other strange creatures I find, or rather they find me.

I do not really consider myself a cat person. I guess I always thought about owning certain breeds of dogs, not cats. This probably comes from having seen and having to feed cats in the barn. They can quickly become more nuisance than they are help getting under the horses feet and even under my own. I can't count the times I have stepped on a cat and got clawed.


They seem to be drawn to me. Perhaps it is because I am the one who feeds them. No matter what barn I work at, if they have cats they will find me.

Much to my mothers surprise as she goes to leave one day in the truck and finds this.


I think I snuck up on him.

I totally expected him to run.

Nope. He came over for pets and sauntered off into the next yard.

He is my neighbors cat behind us. He is quite friendly.

I think my dad is a closet case cat lover because he always feeds and pets all the cats in the barn and after I showed him the pictures of as I have dubbed "pusskins"he tells me that cat comes right into the garage with him if the door is open. He then hops up on the bench and demands to be petted by loudly "MMRROOOWWW"-ing at him until he gets what he wants.

A fellow blogger and I Jo went on a "blogventure" on Friday night. We wanted to go to tim hortons and then see where the road lead us.

We decided to go to Jack miners bird sanctuary. Sometimes theres a huge field full of Canadian geese. With our cameras in hand we set out. I wanted a specifically posed night scene and Jo was gonna help me with the aid of a light post.

We started walking along the cages of birds in the darkness. It was probably around 9 pm at this time. All of a sudden I hear this noise.
I guess I could have kind of compared it to a single quack of a duck but hoarser. Kind of like it was trying to cough up a huge hairball. I pointed my camera towards it and looked through the lens. The focus light illuminated what I seen.

It's all quiet. Jo is behind me. All you hear from me is "holy sh*t! THAT ONE IS ON TOP OF THE CAGE!!!!" At this point it's pitch black, I just seen an unidentified large mass sitting on top of the cage and Jo is already running for the car. I turn around and run too having disturbed whatever it was. The birds were supposed to be inside the cages!

This reminds me of the time when Jo, a friend Michelle and I were at a beach at night and Michelle unintentionally cornered a possum. Now Michelle does not scream for any reason. Jo and I hear this "AAHHH!! POSSSSUUMMM!!!" and Michelle starts to haul butt back to the car. Well I had no clue what she was hollering about but I knew it was for a good reason. I turn around and had to make it to the other side of the car. Jo happened to be in my way. I practically vaulted over the hood of Jo's car, shoving her in the process as she ran for her door. Jo is thinking this whole time "Syd pushed me!? She actually pushed me!" wile I was already in the car and shutting the door. Here goes the saying "I don't have to outrun the bear(angry possum that is drooling and running towards you with intent to cause bodily harm in this case), I just have to outrun you". That story always makes me laugh.

Anyway. I wander on back. I want a picture of our mystery hairball quacking thing. I had to use manual focus but I think I got it. The flash goes off, the verdict is in.
It's a turkey vulture. They are very common around here. A really upset vulture that is. It starts making that noise even more.

Now this is when I remember my moms best friend, Souix telling me how vultures defence mechanism is to vomit at you... very accurarely from several feet away. It stands up and starts making a fuss. At this point Jo and I run back to the car again. Ewgh, what an ugly bird. Eventually after attempting to get some other pictures we left the disgruntled wild vulture that was trying to become domestcated, alone and found an ammusing park where we ran around like little kids on the equipment for an hour or so.
You know parks are so different from when I was a kid. You seriously can't hurt yourself on these ones. I think when I was younger we lived by the motto that it just wasn't fun unless someone got hurt(quite literally I have the scars to show it). The ground was this suprisingly springy rubber cement around all the equipment. The swings had safety bars on them and everything. The slides were two feet off the ground. None the less they had this ammusing teeter totter thing that had three parts to it. We used to have to climb and use up energy to play on the park as a kid. I guess now you just walk up a step and slide the one foot drop back down.

I think we might really be big kids.

Sunday stills: Horses

This challenge kind of came naturally to me as you all know horses are often included in my Sunday stills. I have thousands of photographs of horses on my external hard drive that I have taken. Click the images for full view.

Horses, Equus ferus caballus. This is our domesticated horse.

As you can imagine my days are filled with all things horsey.

I'll take a different spin on my pictures this week. With every photo I post I will also present a fact about horses for you.
I know a few aren't around horses much. Might as well use that knowledge I gained in university for something, right?

Horses have the largest eyes out of any land mammal. They can see nearly 360 degrees around their body standing still and with a turn of their necks they can see right around them completely. This picture was an accident as I was adjusting the white balance. I quite like it.

A horses funnel like ears can rotate an amazing 180 degrees around using ten muscles. They can pinpoint a noise within 25 degrees where us humans and even dogs are accurate within a degree. Horses can protect their ear drums against loud noises by laying them flat. Where in most photographs the focal point is on the subject's eyes. A horse displays his most noticeable emotion through his ears. If a horses ears are forward he is attentive to something closeby. If you notice a trend here my photos all have the horses ears facing forward. This is my goal most of the time when taking horse pictures. Ears forward. I do this by using crinkly plastic, whistling, tapping a whip on the ground, feeding them treats. Get those ears forward for they are your subjects eyes now.

There are over 300 breeds of horses in the world today.
Lets not forget ponies too. This is Keebler, my little man. He is a pink papered hackney, welsh pony cross. He is a trotting machine and the smartest equid I have ever worked with.

A horse carres 60% of his weight on his front legs. This is evident by the large neck and head they have to hold up. A horse can comfortably carry 20% of his weight (rider and all tack included) and pull THREE TIMES it's weight! Now that is horse power.

Their adapted anatomy allows them to achieve speed, a well developed sense of balance and a flight over fight instinct. This means they will run if they can, rather than fight. They are extreme prey animals. By using body language and brains rather than braun we can harness a horses power (sometimes literally) and have them do jobs for us that we would not be able to do on our own.


Horses evolved from having many toes, to only one hoof. The remains of their other two toes are evident in the growths on their legs called chestnuts (inside of all four legs) and ergots (on the back of the fetlock, kind of the equivalent of your wrist bone). Horses hooves are the same thing, but tougher, that your fingernails are made out of. When a horse shoe is put on a horses hoof it does not hurt because it is being nailed into the insensitive laminae. This is kind of like cutting your fingernails. If you cut your nails/a hoof too short, a horse/your finger will be sore. Trimming a horses feet properly takes skill. No two horses travel alike, therefore they should not be trimmed alike. A good farrier will never make a horse lame after a trim.

As an average, a horse allowed to graze on grass will eat about four pounds an hour.
If you haven't read my blog before this is Indigo, my girl. She is my getaway from the real world, my best bud and just a kind, gentle soul(when shes not wigging out over the neighbors ATV's speeding down the lane and trying to eject me off her back) I rely on when I need it most. She never has to worry about finding another home. She has earned her oats in many ways than one with her time on the farm. She is the horse that inspired me to train horses in a bitless bridle. Her mouth will never see a bit again.
As Indigo is doing here, a horse naturally eats for 16-18 hours a day, constantly nibbling to keep their bellies full and "fermentation vat" (large intestines/cecum) working properly. Do the math, that is a lot. This is why horses when put onto our two or three times a day eating schedule have problems such as colic (gas/impacted feed, because horses cannot throw up due to their sphincter on their stomach being incredibly strong), gastic ulcers, stereotypies (AKA stable "vices" by horse people but a vice is only something that is inconvenient. It may be inconvenient for us but for a horse it is what he does to make up for lack of natural environment) out of boredom and lack of locomotion from traveling as they eat grass or play with their herd mates.

Being around horses and doing what I do, a lot of this accumulates.

An average 1000 pound horse will produce 50 pounds of these road apples a day. This can accumulate to make an average of the horses weight in a few weeks. Now thats talking a lot of sh*t!

Horse babies are known as foals until they are a year old. A baby girl horse is a filly, a baby boy horse is a colt. When they turn a year they are considered yearlings.

A intact (he has all his...ahem, manly parts) male horse is a stallion. Stallions can be dangerous and unpredictable. Even the most quiet stallion can very easily hurt a human when he is angry or scared. I am not a stallion person. I don't need 1000 or more pounds of raging testosterone around.
So the saying goes, a good stallion will make an even better gelding. Geldings are castrated male horses. They do not have the hormones stallions do and even some mares do so a lot of riders prefer them.
Not me, I am a mare person. A mare is a mature female horse. Indigo is my mare.


It is truely amazing that two creatures so extreme and different, the human, ultimate predator and the horse, ultimate prey animal, can coexist and achieve great things together.

Horses are great. (photo by my best friend Lisa of Indigo and I. I thinks she successfully captured the essence of the silent conversation between a woman and her horse)They listen to your worries, complaints, hopes and wishes and never talk back. They are great teachers. They humble you when you get your head in the clouds by planting you firmly on your butt, they are there when you have a bad day and need someone unbaiased to talk to. Best of all they love you for who you are, always nicker at feeding time and never refuse a carrot or two (or three or four or five OK INDIGO STOP BEGGING!!)

Last but not least, my dad (AKA: Big Al) on his Iron horse, a custom Kawasaki vulcan 1500. You know he washes those rims with a toothbrush. He never taught me how to brush my teeth! Harumph.

So feel free to sling any horse related questions my way. I have been carriage driving since 12 noon Saturday and got in the door and started writing this at 11 pm. I'll start all over again tomorrow at 3 pm and don't have a completely free weekend until Christmas. I think I need a shower now that I have been horsing around all day. I couldn't imagine my life without a horse.

Wordless wednesday

Lost and found

So I found my sunglasses today. They are mangled, scratched, bent but still somehow sit kind of strait on my face. This just reinforces the fact that my nose is better broken than it was strait because normal glasses didn't sit strait on them before and now they do.
I can't see through the mud on them and attempted to buff the scratches out. They will buff out!!! I found them as I suspected in a paddock being trampled by three big Thoroughbred geldings. How the lenses are not cracked is beyond me.

Today I lost a very important member of my family.
This is going to be hard.
This is someone who I have known for a very long time.
Someone who has always been there to lend a hand, especially with farm work, heck any work.
Someone I could always rely on.
He helped me fixing tractors, repairing harness, cutting fencing, fixing the &^%$#@%! float in the waterer in the winter, baling hay, opening those tough pickle jars. You name it, that man was there.
I will grieve and eventually move on.

I was bending over the creek in front of the one barn I work at. Somehow the big garbage pail took flight in the wind and flew into into the water. I was attempting to fish it out with a stick. I guess I didn't have as good a hold on for he tumbled into the depths of the murky water. Before I could even jump forward to catch him he was gone. I sloshed into the deep water as far as my rubber boots would take me (which was about one step before it went above my boots top)

RIP Leatherman multi tool. I am not sure how I will get my barn work done tomorrow without you. I have a replacement but it's just not the same quality on the job unless it's a leatherman. I guess I'll be saving to get myself another one of these bad boy's. They are expensive, but worth the money.

Macro Monday

These eyes stair right into my soul. The reflection of light, the colour, the emotion. I can only imagine the mice that have been stalked, birds killed, kittens raised and kind pets from people that have been witnessed through those big, green, orb eyes.
R.I.P fluffers, you gorgeous old girl. You served the barn well and I cannot say I will miss a cat as much as you.

Sunday stills: feathers fins and fur

A few hours early but better early than late or not at all.
I surprisingly got all three.
A friend James Zedd and Jessica and I went down to the beach near my house. We got some pretty good pictures. Afterwards James and I went to get pizza and disrupt the general peace a town over. My friend Michelle showed up and we went back to my place then to her place. I love having a weekend that I have nothing planned and good friends show up. Theres nothing better than good company and a camera. Well maybe a good horse :P

Feathers. A seagull I was chasing around to try and get a flying action shot.

Fins. A catfish at the dock right near my house.

Last but not least, fur. My furry winterized pony, Indigo. (though a bit overexposed)

Check out everyone else at Sunday stills

General on goings

Happy Friday the 13th. I hope no ones superstitious.

Busy. I am terribly sorry I have not blogged more this week. This is going to be one of those boring long update posts without a lot of new pictures as I am sure a lot of you come to see. I know I love visiting blogs to see peoples gorgeous photography.

I guess having a busy week makes up for it on this weekend. This is the last weekend I have totally free from now until Christmas. I mean I have seriously nothing planned tomorrow or Sunday other than to help out William Wallace...I mean James Zedd take some photos at the lake. James is a great photographer and an entertaining person to be around. He usually lets me paint his skull (being the only bald guy to offer his skull to my artistic talents) for Halloween. I wanted to paint a treasure map on it this year but it was a no go so I painted his face blue like William Wallace from the movie braveheart instead.

I am doing carriage rides/weddings at least one day a weekend until the holidays though. Next Thursday I have to do the Christmas lights a town over. Last year when I did this it was dumping heaps of snow on us. I was freezing, the horses were miserable but I guess it added to the romance of Christmas time, lights and going for a horse drawn carriage ride and snow for the 5 minutes you are a passenger, not the 4 hours the horse and driver have to sit out there. Though I can't say I ever hate it or have ever had a bad event. Sure beats working in some store in the city even if I do freeze my ass off. I wouldn't trade my life for any other.

I personally cannot wait until spring and we haven't even had snow yet. This weekend is supposed to be so nice though like the last two have. I have been riding Indigo every day that I don't go to class (cause when class is done it's too dark to ride) in the neighbors harvested soy bean field. I know he's gonna disc it soon but I don't want him to. It's so flat and level, perfect for doing circles and flying lead changes in. She is still a little stiff on the left side because of her laceration and the build up of scar tissue but shes getting there.

This brings me to my next point. The round pen. As some of you know the farm is getting three wind turbines. Yay!
Not so much for the round pen where I would sometimes ride, turn Indigo out to eat grass etc. It has to get torn down for the turbine laneway. I rarely use a round pen to chase a horse around to tire them out. Just not what my kind of horsemanship is about. Lunging/round penning is to get my horses attention and respect, never to tire them. The round pen is now a bunch of posts and a lot of boards and screws. Loaded it up on the back of a hay wagon today but not without doing injury to myself, as usual. Couldn't get some of the screws out of the boards and I got one right in the hip as I was climbing up on the wagon to stack it. Ouch.

For some reason I cannot keep a pair of sunglasses in tact for long. Remember
my aviators,

well my second pair got lost today. I had them on my shirt I have a sneaking suspicion I dropped them into one of the paddocks at work when I bent over and they are probably now in a million pieces. Oh well off to wal-mart I go for a stinking third pair! I missed them today when I was driving. I am so sick of driving around, but I gotta work and I love work. Too bad the places I work are not within riding distance or I would ride.

Oh yeah and a few of you asked about the rabies thing. Yes I am now vaccinated for rabies. Everyone thinks this is really humorous. At least now when I bite I can't make people rabid right? I had to have the shot for the one course I will be taking.
Speaking of school how I was complaining about the education system, well I got 99/100 on a test the other day. A test worth 20% of my mark. Ecstatic. My mark in that class is 98! Holy crap I just about fell over when I found out. I hope I can keep it there.

Maybe, just maybe since I have nothing planned this weekend I will go to the sherk center and go swimming. I haven't been swimming since my trip to wawa and I looooove swimming. I had a bad itch today to go swimming but by the time I actually got into the door and would have headed out the 45-ish minutes to get there it would have been an hour to closing. Oh well, that is what nothing weekends are for. I can't honestly remember the last time I had a nothing to do weekend. Seems nice but I have a feeling I may be bored. See ya'll on Sunday for Sunday stills

Just like a kid I swear

Always making faces at the camera

Sticking her tongue out

I am still not sure how this one is even possible. What the heck!?

Sunday stills: Currency

I could have done some fancy Canadian "monopoly" bills but thats so boring and cliche. A quarter is nice. It's also shiny. I have I mentioned I like shiny things?
I have a bunch of these quarters floating around my mess of a desk. Right now they are useless because the parking at the college only takes loonies and toonies (google it for you non-canadians I didn't have any in my wallet). Have I mentioned how my filing system of my belongings work? If I can't see something, it does not exist. I can always remember where stuff is in piles but put it in a drawer or on a shelf and I start shooting blanks. Can't find anything. It's an organized clutter, I always find probably 20$ in change when I clean this room out. I guess I gotta get outa my slump and clean sooner or later. I want to do it, just can't find the drive to do it. The barn is clean though.

"Insert currency here!(and cookies)"

Right in that mouth. Right there. My money.

"This green stuff tastes good. Tastes expensive"

Does this mean we are in for a rough winter?

Look at how fat this sucker is! Never in my life have I seen chins on a squirrel.

I kept stalking this fatty all through willistead manor. He would zoom up a tree when I got too close but as soon as I was out of his range he would waddle back down the tree to eat acorns.
Anyone had roast squirrel? I bet he would make a nice juicy one.
Hes gotta have some mean fighting skills to beat off the other squirrels from the tasty morsels he finds. I bet that is it.

Oh Mr.Obese squirrel how cute you are. Please just be fat and have a nice, warm winter. Pleeaaasseee?

Pretty disgusted in the school system

Some of you know once I got my equine science from Guelph I decided to go back to a local college called St.Clair. I want to upgrade to so something with veterinary medicine. A vet tech or lab technician looks good right about now.
I am very pleased. As with Guelph my marks are in the upper 90's. I work hard. Today my mark in chemistry went from that I explained to probably around a 70 or so. Why? Well I am a little fed up with the teaching system, the head of department and the dean!

No one in my entire chemistry class understands what the teacher is trying to explain. It is his first class he ever taught, fresh out of teachers college. He has some sort of masters in electrical engineering. He is a smart guy, but not a teacher. I can say through my whole school career I have never had a teacher as bad as him. He cannot explain anything. He lectures us, we write everything. If we need something explained better usually we would go to the text book. We can't. Everything he writes on those white board is the EXACT SAME THING out of the text!

Anyway my whole point. A few of us went and complained yesterday to the head of department after talking to the teacher about an upcoming test. Not one person in that class understood what he was trying to teach. This is class 5 we have been on the same topic. No one gets it. I have even taken chemistry before and I dont remember doing this. My friend who is becoming a nuclear physicist doesn't have to know this. One girl in the class told him she didn't want the test beacause she was not prepared and was going to fail. His reply? " So what?". So I went to the dean because the department head's just told us off, telling us we pretty much were stupid.

The dean? Didn't even want to think about our request to submit a complaint. This is bullcrap!

I am so disappointed in this areas education system. I am surprised there are not more homeless or bums in this city because the education system here is really that bad. I didn't think so until my deal today.

I was so mad after my test I went right home and figured I would get the stuff from my friend tomorrow.

I think I have some sort of horrid flu. I have a sudden cough and a headache and chills and aches.

My remedy? I went out, good clothes in all skipping the house to the barn to see my horses. I was freezing. The thing I love about cold nights like this is standing in the dark in the barnyard with my horse (Indigo in particular because of her mane) and putting my hands under her long, thick mane and letting them warm. I love the feeling of scratching her winter coat on her neck. It's so soft almost like someone doused her in show sheen and my fingers warm almost instantly. She seems to enjoy it too as she puts her chin on my shoulder and breathes in my ear for a moment before attempting to lick my good jacket.
So rant over, heres it for today: if you are feeling down hug a horse.

Sunday stills: Halloween =D

As always click on images for full view.

Halloween! My favorite day of the year! I do professional face painting so my day is mostly filled with painting a lot of wiggly kids and sometimes drunk adults. Great fun. Carving pumpkin

Of course it wouldn't be Halloween without pumpkin carving.

The unsuspecting victim. I had a whole plan of carving it in the barn with my leatherman but I couldn't find it and I couldn't be arsed to walk to the house to get a knife so I carved it with a pair of scissors and still have all 8 fingers and two thumbs! That takes skill right there.

Why wouldn't I be carving it at the house you might ask? Well this one is not for decoration. I left the seeds and all inside of it. It's going to be a halloween treat.


Duunn nuunn...Note the Jaws theme on my playlist (sorry Ed, I put the johnny cash one you like second)

WATCH OUT PUMPKIN!! LAND SHARKS TO THE RIGHT!!
dduuunnnn nuuunnn.... dunn nuuunnn

DUNDUNDUNDUNDUNDUNDUNDUNDUN!!

OH NOES!!

Honestly, did you think it really stood a chance?Indigo and Sheba share well and devoured the whole thing

I turned around to see Suzy stareballing me. She wanted a bite too so I obliged.


Overall pumpkins are a wonderful thing to feed horses. Squash too but they are tougher and pumpkins are usually so cheap here. I paid 50 cents for this one. I got a natural wormer the other month for my horses and one of the main ingredients was pumpkin seeds. They all gobbled the wormer up when I gave it to them, no fuss about it they loved it. This year is the first year Indigo has not rubbed her butt on the barn. My vet really reccomended it as it saved a local womans standardbred. He has always been very thin and they found he was infested with worms. They were giving him tripple doses of wormer with no luck. One worming with this natural de-wormer and he was given a clean bill of health. Here is the link if any of you are interested. Most tack stores carry it.

So this year instead of throwing out your jack-o-lanterns the day after halloween give them to your favorite horsy friend.