Well Child Checks for the Wild Ones

The Wild Ones were way, way, way overdue for their annual vet visit and shots. I intended to get them done last April - of 2024! - and blinked, now it's almost the end of July, 2025. Ugh.

I haven't been spending nearly enough time with the horses and they're basically pasture ornaments at this point. Skeets gets loves and kisses through the fence, as does Copper, but as far as any handling goes? Yeah, nothing of that sort happens unless the farrier is coming. I'm not proud of it. At all.

But ... I finally did get around to calling our fabulous vet for their "well child checks". They needed their shots and their teeth floated. Our two also needed dewormed, but L.E. is great about keeping Pearl on a deworming schedule, so she didn't need that.

I was appalled when I pulled Skeets and brushed out her mane. She's developed a cresty neck. Now, I knew she was getting chonky, but with her split mane I had assumed what I was seeing was her cowlick from her mane splitting. Yeah, no. Very recently, she's developed a cresty neck, which worries me.

With her mane all brushed to one side,
it's easier to see that she's got a big ole
fat deposit on her neck.

Our horses are free fed with a hay chix net, and I knew that she was a bit pudgy. Luckily, I'd already ordered a new "extreme slow feed" net and had plans to replace the old one yesterday. Our vet wasn't overly worried about her cresty neck, as she hasn't developed big fat pads over her withers. He gave her a body condition score of 8/10. A diet and increased exercise should get her back on track. I guess this means Skeets and I are back to taking evening walks. It'll do us both good. The problem with "air ferns" like we have is that once they hit middle age, the easy keepers can become fat keepers.

I'm super proud of how well our pasture ornaments behave for the vet. There's never any drama with injections, or getting their good drugs for floating. They really like the vet and his wife, which makes everyone's lives so much easier.

Skeets did require a second dose of
the good stuff. The vet's wife said she
was just making up for missing
last year's dose.

Skeets was drunk-drunk after her second dose of drugs, so I thought it would be okay to put her back in the pen. I didn't think there was any way she could eat, and therefore choke, while she was in that state. I should have just tied her to the hitch rail during Copper's turn, but I figured she'd just go take a snooze.

This is what I expected - just a snooze while the drugs wore off.

Chonky girl had other plans. She wasn't eating, she was using
the feeder as a pillow. She's sound asleep.

Copper is always everyone's favorite. There's a reason his name is Copper Casanova - he's gorgeous, sweet, and everyone falls in love with him.

I've always thought of him as our "big guy" - he's drafty, sure. But he also runs a bit chonky. Or so I thought. The vet rated him 6/10 for body condition, explaining that his body type just makes him look fat(ish). He's our true pasture ornament, since we can't ride him for more than half an hour, and only on the flat due to a congenital stifle issue. How is it the horse who gets the *least* exercise and handling is the one with the best BCS? 

Overall, I'm very happy with the way our vet visit went, and I'm so pleased that our vet and his wife are happy with the way our horses behave. They might make me crazy sometimes (I'm looking at you, Skeets), but they behave "in public" when other people are around. It reminds me a lot of when my kids were growing up - they had the capacity to be absolute shits at home, but they knew better than to embarrass me in public.

The vet always compliments us on how easy they are to handle, and tells us it's a breath of fresh air compared to a lot of other mustang owners. I know that my mustang friends understand how important it is to have good horse citizens, especially for mustangs. However, a lot of "horse lovers" who have no business owning horses adopt mustangs under the mistaken belief that they're "rescuing" them, and have a romanticized image of what it's going to be like. The reality is, that if they're not equipped to either do the initial gentling themselves, or can't afford to have a professional do it, and then keep up on it, they're doing themselves, their horses, and the mustang image a disservice. They're the reason why it's hard to find vets and farriers who are willing to work with mustangs.