Miss Dee's New Mouth

Wow. That about sums up my ride today. Wow.
Dee got her teeth done yesterday. When the dentist opened her mouth, the first thing she said was "Oh dear". The left side had big, sharp hooks that had caused some cuts on her cheeks, her fronts were wearing at a diagonal angle and most of the molars on the right side weren't even touching. Poor miss mare!
The dentist got right down to work after giving dee some relaxation juice and within about 40 minutes, my horse had a new, improved mouth.
Another perk of getting her teeth done? I got to pull her whole mane and give her a bridle path before the sedative wore off!

Today, I was figuring that I would only do a little bit with her, since she had a lot of work done, but it didn't quite work out that way. The first thing I noticed was that when I put the bridle on, she didn't fuss with the bit at ALL. When I got on, she seemed pretty happy, but it wasn't until we started trotting that I really saw the difference. Now, she's been good lately, but she's still pretty unsteady in the bride, going up and down constantly, tilting her head, that sort of thing... no real consistency. Well, today's magic word seemed to be 'steady', because she hardly fussed at all. Sure, the transitions are still a little fussy, and the canter has a ways to go before it's round, but the trot work was BRILLIANT. She was SO steady, and really just seemed SO much happier and capable. I feel like now we've really turned a corner and are ready to start accomplishing lots of great things.

And The Winner Is...

William Fox-Pitt and Cool Mountain!
They had a pretty awesome weekend, finishing on their dressage score. The wonderful Phillip Dutton came in 2nd with Woodburn and Becky Holder was 3rd with Courageous Comet. I'm pretty excited to see the footage when it airs. It just wasn't quite the same just sitting and READING about it all weekend!
So, suddenly it seems that winter has returned! I heard tell that there were FLURRIES in Litchfield County this morning... no good! But on the bright side, it's supposed to be downright balmy come saturday.
I've been pretty busy with finals coming up, but it's almost finished. The week of the 10th, the dentist is FINALLY coming (yeah, it took her a month to get back to me. I won't get into it, but I wasn't very pleased with her, and she's lucky she's such a good dentist, because otherwise she most definitely would have lost our business) and I'm going to haul miss Dee up to Steph's for an overnight! I'm pretty excited about that... it will be our first big adventure together. I'm hoping Steph likes her!
Not much else to report... mare's been being a good girl (despite being in raging heat), and is finally almost all shedded out. I'm presenting my senior paper this friday, too. A little nervous about it, but I'm confident that all will go well.

Gone Gray?

So, the dentist was supposed to come on Friday at 1:30, but for some reason, she never showed. At 2, I called and left a message. At 3 I called again. I called and left another message yesterday. I don't know what's going on but I'm none to happy right now. I mean, I'm pretty sure now that the weight issue was her worms, but she still needs her teeth done because its that time of year. I won't harp on it anymore than that, but I'm thinking I may need to find a new dentist, because that sort of behavior is incredibly unprofessional.
With the warm weather, Dee's really begun to shed out. That's all well and good, she's looking sleeker and fancier and less like a ragamuffin, but what did I find underneath her fuzzy winter coat? GRAY. Lots and lots of GRAY. That was a bit of a surprise. Her butt and her back have tons of little gray hairs all over... not so much on her neck. Seriously, though, what's up with all that gray? Look:




Weird, right?

I'm thinking that today is going to be bath day, because it's really warm out. The other day, I hosed her legs down because they were just disgusting with wet, goopy mud. Well, as I was toweling them off, Dee expressed some interest in seeing the towel. I let her see it, expecting that she just wanted to take a sniff. She proceeded to grab the towel and start swinging it around like a dog would. I took a few pictures, but I didn't get any really great action shots, just Dee standing with the towel hanging out of her mouth.
Look at that cutie pie:

The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return...

I think that Dee is beginning to love me, and I'm very happy about this. The last few days, she has been very snuggly. I mean, she still protests about the curry comb, but she's not as nasty about it anymore. Yesterday, she even let me give her a great big bear hug... HUGE progress!
That said, I'm anxiously awaiting a return call from the dentist, because I think she is in dire need of some mouth attention. She's a slow eater. Painfully slow. She takes about a million years to finish her grain and every other bite is followed by a huge gulp of water. Pellets fall out while she eats. Add all that to the fact that despite a good quality grain, rice bran, APF and now Mushroom Matrix, she STILL appears to be LOSING weight, and I think we've got a tooth issue. I can't think of another explanation. She's getting enough calories and nutrients in her grain and hay to feed a horse twice her size, but she looks terrible. She's been wormed and is on a daily wormer. She shows no signs of being ill... coat looks great, she's bright and chipper, no obvious signs of distress and seemingly no abnormalities. I just can't think of any explanation beyond her teeth. Unless it's ulcers. I mean, she had been INCREDIBLY sensitive when I curry her belly lately (more so than usual). I actually thought she might have some sort of cut or scrape under there today because she was SO reactive. However, running my hands all over her belly and putting pressure on it didn't reveal any cuts and didn't provoke ANY reaction... she could care less that I was poking and prodding her, but the curry comb? HATED IT. Now, she'll usually make snarky faces at me while I curry her belly, but today she was kicking at me and backing away from me like I was hurting her. I actually stopped grooming her because she seemed so uncomfortable. However, other than that, she really doesn't strike me as being ulcery. She's not a nervous type... in fact, she generally seems to be incredibly laid back 90% of the time. Then again, she WAS a racehorse, and it's very common for track horses to be ulcery. However, she came off the track in August last year... I would think the ulcers would have presented themselves by now. Plus, from what I saw, it looked like she was living the life at the farm I bought her from. Turn out all night, easy work 3 days a week... i'm not sure what could be stressful about that. And now? She's basically just been hanging out in a field with her best buds for the past few months and eating boat loads of grain and all the hay she could stuff into her face.
I'm just feeling a little lost and very upset. I'm hoping an appointment to the dentist will fix this issue, because I feel AWFUL right now. I cant stand being able to see her ribs as much as I can, and I'm doing everything in my power food-wise to fix it with NO results. None. It's incredibly frustrating. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this problem will be fixed soon... whether it will be fixed with a dentist visit, gastroguard or some yet-unknown remedy to a yet-unknown ailment is beyond me, but I WILL sort her out. I want my baby fat and happy.