#like idc it’s just annoying. i stopped putting my self worth in her hands a long time ago | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

silversnaffles · 7 years

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Okay so whilst I wanted to vent about this, I didn’t want to just in case but my mum’s been telling people irl so I’m gonna do it. (this is super, super long so idc if no one reads, I just wanna get it off my chest).

I’m annoyed at Star’s (and Amber’s) loaners. The family who loan them are a mother and her two young daughters (a 9 year old and 13 year old). They’ve been having a hard time, and mum wanted the old girls to have some attention so she offered them on loan with the only ‘payment’ being mucking out the girls’ paddock. Initially this worked out well, Star had a little girl gushing over her and they were both being lightly ridden (I had still been hacking Star out so she was fine). But then the mucking out started to slip, as well as the actual care itself.

We stupidly took it for granted. They were always gushing over how much they love the mares and mum had known the mother for years, so we assumed the mares were being properly cared for. We’d check on them in the paddock and do their water and stuff, but that was it.

Alarm bells should’ve rung when I brought Amber in a couple of months ago to change her rugs when I found her hair falling out of her belly, and loads of scabs and dried puss underneath. I assumed it was a simple mistake, I sometimes forget to check the bellies too. I cleaned up and applied some silver spray and told them and my mum to keep an eye on it.

Now, since then we’d been concerned with how the mother had started to leave the girls to do their own things with the mares, despite wanting to loan them to teach the girls to ride. The 13 year old is fine left to her own devices as she just likes to groom Amber (and with Amber being 32, this is fine). However, the 9 year old has started trotting Star constantly. Just up and down in straight lines. Even under Star’s thick cushings coat, you can see her condition isn’t great from the winter and her back legs are stiff from the arthritis (the mother told me she’d look into joint supplements but never did), but the kid just keeps trotting.

Also Star has started to be aggressive towards the kid. Star has never bit anyone. She is essentially a little quiet push button pony, a total angel. But she’s started biting. I found this to be bizarre as she’s great with kids (even when she was a nervous wreck she was great with kids on the ground). So I checked the saddle they had for her (which we gave them in the summer when Star was overweight). It was huge on her, because she dropped weight I had to find out her narrow saddle. If they had checked the saddle and told me, I’d have sorted this out much earlier. Anyway Star kept biting, she just started to move a bit better from the saddle change. So, something else was bugging her, and it seems it’s the kid as she runs Star around constantly and is always screeching.

There is also the issue of the stiff legs and bad fitting saddle, I suggested to the loaner to get the physio out for at least one session as it’ll really help Star. Now it’s like £40 a session and she told me she didn’t have the money for that which I thought was fair enough and decided I was going to do it when I was next paid. But then she went and got a license to own a zebra?? That’s right, she wanted to buy a zebra. And then started to ask my mum and our friend if either of them would loan a share horse with her, OR if she could bring onto the land a 11.2hh loan pony for the kids? Like no? You can only come up at weekends, and even then it’s always late in the afternoon/evenings and you barely muck out so we’d end up caring for it, and you can’t afford one physio session what makes you think you could afford another pony?

There’s also the issue of Star’s coat. Normally Star is clipped all the time since she was a show pony, and it also helped manage her cushings. But last autumn, our clippers broke so we weren’t able to clip her. This didn’t bother us too much since the temperature was dropping anyway, and when the wet came we threw waterproof rugs on to keep her dry. However, as we’ve been approaching Spring, I’ve been essentially nagging the loaners to get her clipped as she’s going to start to overheat in that coat. It took like two months for her to actually reach out to someone to get her clipped and that was two weeks ago, and she still hasn’t worked out a date. Luckily, we made an emergency buy and bought some clippers due to what I found the other day.

When I was mucking out the field with Star and Amber in (and Amera now as Tara has recently started being stabled), I noticed Star’s eye was extremely gunky. So I dropped everything and took her (or dragged her since she’s now lost all enthusiasm since the loaners started) to the yard to clean up her eye and give her eye drops, and I also decided to take off her rug as it was clear it was too warm for her and the rug was pulling on her withers. Whilst she was with me I decided to give her a groom, and the one side was alright, but then I got to the next side and all of her belly was covered in matted fur. So, I ended up sitting on the floor cutting away at all of it. Then I found multiple bald patches. HUGE ones. like the size of my hands. And she was so so quiet. It’s clear that these patches and matted fur have developed over a few weeks, and they’ve still been tacking her up so I have no idea how they never noticed. My mum reckons that the kid only grooms the one side if that.

In a state of panic, we called out the vet. Turns out, after the mini break out of lice we had last year (which me and my mum thought we got on top of), they didn’t treat the mares for lice. So amongst Star’s extremely thick cushings coat she had thousands of lice and they didn’t notice. It also explains how Amera’s suddenly become itchy again, I put it down to shedding.

Anyway, the vet recommended getting her clipped asap and then applying some of this strong lice treatment and to treat all of our other horses again. She also did bloods, as for the past five years we’ve been naturally managing Star’s cushings but it’s clear that she now needs meds.

So since, Friday, I’ve been bringing Star in myself every day to treat her eye, groom her, feed her, and also applied some lice powder to keep her going until the clippers arrive (hopefully tomorrow), and she’s started to perk up a bit. Her eye is now pretty much clear, and yesterday when she finished her dinner she picked up the bucket between her teeth and threw it at me and then proceeded to bite the lead rope and pull at it. The fact she’s doing these small things again, shows she’s slowly getting back to her old self again. She was also a little git earlier and ran away when she realised I wanted to sort her eye out (but then realised she could only be fed if she had her eye done so let me catch her).

I do feel awful complaining like this, they are nice people (except for the 9 year old I honestly cannot stand her. I love the 13 year old, she’s a sweetheart but I’m always super close to strangling the youngest) and I do love the mother, and I do think they love the ponies. BUT I can’t let this slide. That is my pony that isn’t being cared for properly. And even if the bald patches had only suddenly developed in a couple of days, that doesn’t excuse the matted fur. My mum was livid and so was our friend on the yard with us (she owned Star from the ages of 9 months to 3 years old before she gave her to us).

We’ve told them that Star can’t be ridden anymore because of her arthritis, which is pretty true atm. We’re hoping we can get her condition back and she can be shown in-hand again next year (this year is obviously going to be a no-go) as she loves going out. And maybe, if she does get better and the physio helps, I’ll lightly hack her out again to keep her busy. Whilst I’m tall, I’m still quite light (which I don’t look, I know, but I promise I’m under 10 stone, nearly 9 stone - I was 9 stone but I put on a bit of weight over winter), and through only riding her for years I know to move with her so she’s not put off balance. I just need her weight and condition back, but we’ll have to wait till all of that fur is gone so we’ll have a better idea on how to feed her.

We also have a new stable being built so Merlin can move out of her stable into his own, and she can be stabled with Merlin, Tara and Arthur. Then we can feed her as much as we want and have better control of her diet. We would put her own more grass but because of her lami/cushings we can’t risk it.

I’m just hoping they return her tack soon as we told them she can’t be ridden but they still have her saddle, bridle, girth, saddle pads, new market exercise fleece and brushing boots. My mum and friend don’t quite trust them not to ride her, and tbh the way the kid kept taking on and off her bridle the other day and begging to ride, I don’t either.

If they do decide to stop loaning her and Amber, I seriously hope they return all of our tack. Whilst a lot of it is old, all of it together is still worth a fair bit (not so much Star’s narrow saddle, that thing is falling to pieces) and would be difficult to replace (or pointless since the mares are getting on).

We do hope the novelty will wear off soon and they’ll move on, we don’t want to end on bad terms so we won’t do it ourselves (fingers crossed they’ll give me my tack back if they do leave)

Honestly though, I cried on Friday when I found out how Star is. She was right under my nose the whole time and I assumed they looked after her properly and left them to it, but I was wrong, and now I feel like a bad mom. I’m going to make up for it to her. That pony is going to be super pampered from now on (which she was before tbh, it was them that I stopped pampering her for as I thought they'd do that for them)

#honestly #a fucking zebra license #where the fuck would she have kept it #it wasn't coming on our land #we'd become a fucking spectacle #also why another horse when you can't even look after the two ponies you have #rant

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