Dawn Sees the Chiropractor, and a Change in the Worming Program

Dawn had a visit from the chiropractor today.  I had been noticing that she was having some difficulty softening her poll and neck, and every day recently when I was done riding she would shake and shake her head and upper neck from side to side - this was not normal behavior for her so something was bothering her.  Also, although felt sound at the trot under saddle, on the lunge when tracking right it was possible to see just the slightest shortness of stride in the left hind - she had been kicked squarely in the left stifle in the early days of her herd turnout.

In fact, her pelvis was just slightly off, the right hind needed some work (the chiropractor said this wasn't unusual with an impact on the left side) and she had some cramps in her poll and upper neck.  Everything else was pretty good, including her ribcage and back.  Dawn seemed pretty happy about the whole thing.  She's going to get two days off because of my trip to visit the boys tomorrow and some other things that are happening on Saturday. When I'm visiting the boys, I'll check to see if they need any work done as our chiropractor will be in their area at the end of next week.

Dawn's up to 2 pounds a day of Ultium, and with that and the extra hay she's getting, she's already looking a bit better - we may have turned the corner on her weight.  I'll keep a close eye on her as we increase her Ultium to make sure she doesn't gain too much weight - most of the horses in the barn are if anything too fat - but she's got a ways to go before that's a problem.

And we're going to change our deworming program.  The old barn was a closed barn - no horses coming or going or showing, so fecal counts and limited deworming worked fine.  The new barn is large - over 60 horses, and who knows what worming programs, if any, the various owners are using.  So we're going back to daily Strongid 2x added to feed and twice yearly deworming with Equimax paste.  I've used this program with my horses in the past and it's worked just fine.

I can't wait to see those two chestnut faces . . .