So I've looked through the last month or so of my posts and I've noticed that it's been quite some time since I have written anything about my horses. My guy and I have been riding our horses just about every weekend, and I have to say that for someone who doesn't know anything about horses, he's learning very quickly. Last weekend we went camping at Oleno with the horses, and he handled Reiny like he'd worked with horses his whole life.

We've been doing a lot of work around my place and I'm at the point now where I feel good about having people come out to visit me and see my place. We purchased a lawn tractor at Lowels a couple of weekends ago, so the weed population is finally under control. This weekend we are planning on putting up some more electric fence so that the horses can come up in part of the front yard without trashing the rest of the front yard. We are also looking into hydroseeding the front yard with Bahai grass. This will cause the grass to grow and establish quickly. The only problem with this is that we would have to keep the horses off of it for 2 months. We will also have to introduce the horses slowly to the grass, since the area that we have them on right now is nothing but sand and weeds. There is some grass out there, but it's a very small amount that they have grazed down to nothing.

I guess it's sorta funny to hear that we would have to introduce them to grass slowly when they haven't been on it. The reason why we have to do this is that when you put them on the grass when they haven't had that much in their diet, the amount of protien in their diet increases because of the protien in the grass. If there is a sudden increase of protien in a horse's diet, then the horse can suffer from laminitis and possibly founder. Both of these conditions are severly painful for horses and if the laminitis progresses to founder, the horse may be put down. My mare, Glori, appears to have had a mild case of laminitis prior to my purchase of her, so I have to be very careful with her since she has a tendency to have it. Both of our horses are very easy keepers, which means that it doesn't take much to keep them fed. This is another reason why we have to be careful when we put them on the grass, since they could very quickly get overweight.

I'm still thinking about doing endurance riding with Glori. I'd at least like to ride in one race with my mom, I think it would definetly be a lot of fun. I know my mom really enjoys it. Now that we have had the time change, I'll be able to ride in the evenings and work with Glori, so I'm going to see if I can get her into shape enough for me to take her into a ride this fall. She's in pretty good shape right now, but she's not ready for a 25 mile race. I think my guy would like to take Reiny and race with him as well, but it may turn out that endurance racing may not be a good thing for Reiny. It's hard to say at this point. I think once we get the property in really good shape, we will probably look for another horse that he can compete with. It would definetly be a lot of fun if all three of us could go to these races. :)