The Adventure Continues.........Tulsa Day One continued...

The Adventure Begins

The Arabian horses rested most of that first day. There was very little movement or conversation on their part....... not even that usual nicker when food is on the way. It was easy to see the horses were just as tired as we were.

Even with the horses all tuckered out, I kept seeing asphalt circles in the middles of their stalls. Despite the extra bedding I'd now added any kind of movement seemed to push the shavings up towards the edges of the stalls leaving the hard surface underneath exposed. The horses were still wearing their leg wraps from the trip........ well at least the leg wraps they'd managed to keep on, but I was going to need to take those off soon. I wanted to find some way to remedy this situation.

I've noticed over the years that horses who've had spills in their stalls seem to have less problems with this bare spot in the middle. I decided to do a little test. I poured a bunch of water onto the bare spot in the middle of the stall. Then covered it with shavings.

I was hoping the shavings absorbing the water would form a clump. Hopefully that clump would form a base the rest of the shavings would stick to........protecting the horses from the bare asphalt floor. I'm sure I must have looked a little crazy deliberately pouring water on the stall floor. It would be worth it, if my test worked. Otherwise, I'd be spending more money on shavings than what I normally spend for my whole herd in an entire month.

I noticed sometime about mid day that Rhet was coughing. I'm not sure when he'd started the coughing just that once I noticed it, he seemed to be doing a lot of it. In addition he was dispensing some snot right along with it.

The colt had a cough at home about two months before we'd left home. It had taken most of six weeks before he'd gotten over it. He had not had a temperature during any of this time and the discharge from his nose, though cloudy was not green in color.

Now it was looking like Rhet's same cough had returned. The colt didn't have a temperature. Although he had some snot, it only seemed to show if propelled by a cough. It was hard to tell if he was really sick because he was so exhausted from the trip. His behavior pretty much mirrored that of the other two horses. I had my fingers crossed it was nothing more than what I'd dealt with already at home.

Then there was the issue of hay. I had located the feed office early that morning. Once they found my order, they delivered my shavings and my feed. The only problem was that grass hay didn't look like anything I wanted to feed my horses.

It didn't smell bad but it didn't look good either. It was mostly gray in color with some brown thrown in. If there was any green, it was but a hint.........not enough to make me feel comfortable. I found myself wondering was it just me, or was there a difference between feed in this part of the country and what I am used to here at home.

I hadn't had problems with feed when I'd shown at Albuquerque BUT I had sure had a problem with bedding. That's when Dandy swelled up like a balloon and I'd spent over $2000 in vet bills all because of his allergic reaction to different bedding. The last thing I needed was problems with feed. I could only imagine where that would lead.

To be continued.............

The First Ride

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