Nox is doing fine and other than the icicles that form on his whiskers, he shows no signs of being bothered at all by the cold. He has a blanket on and is tucked into his stall, and he has a constant supply of hay to munch on. A horse's stomach acts as a very efficient furnace. As long as there is hay in their guts, the digestion process creates enough heat to keep them warm. Penny does a wonderful job of making sure all the horses are never without hay, and she and her family brave the snow and ice several times a day to clean stalls, break ice from water buckets, and feed everyone grain and supplements. It wonderful to have Nox in such a safe and well-managed barn, owned by people who care for each horse as if it were their own.
I canceled the vet appointment I scheduled for January. There is so much snow (and no indoor ring) that there isn't a place for Dr. Meg to evaluate Nox, and it is far too cold to sedate him for an ultrasound. Sedated horses loose their ability to regulate their body temperature. So, I've decided to wait until late spring to have him evaluated again. He's content with hanging out and playing with his neighbors over the stall door. He's not doing any of the terrible behaviors he was doing this time last year - kicking, rearing, and jumping around in his stall. His new stall is much bigger than the stall he was in last year, and I know that being able to hang his head out and interact with horses, cats, and people is making him much more relaxed. I bought a stall toy for him that we will install on the next warmish day (anything about 32 degrees would be fabulous!) that has a bunch of textured rollers on a bar. He loves to play with his mouth, and I think an apple scented roller toy will keep him happily occupied. As long as he's calm, stall rest is the best thing for him, and a few more months of rest will hopefully get us closer to a fully healed ligament.
Back in November, I hacked off a good 6 inches of Nox's tail. In general, Thoroughbreds have very thin manes and tails, but Nox is an exception. His mane is thick and grows very quickly, and his tail was thick but very straggley at the ends. As a race horse, a lush tail is not very important, so the grooms didn't spend much time or attention on it. Now, I want Nox to have a gorgeous tail worthy of the show ring. Weirdly, the trend in the show ring these days is to put fake tail extensions on show horses. No, really. People do this. Google "horse tail extensions". Unless your horse has absolutely no tail left because it was chewed off and you're giving you horse a fake tail so he can swat flies away, I think the tail extensions are very odd. First, it's difficult to match the horses tail color exactly, and second, the fake tail moves differently than the rest of the tail, so the extension looks terribly obvious. Lastly, tail extensions can cost more than $500! I just can't accept that the horse's natural tail, no matter what length or thickness, isn't better looking than a fake. However, show judges these days won't score a horse well if he has a thin tail, so what is a horse owner to do if their darling horse has a sad tail, but is otherwise very talented in the ring? I think this is a very good example of what makes horse people so crazy.
Ok, coming back from the tangent. So, in pursuit of a naturally thick and beautiful tail, I cut off all the straggled ends of Nox's tail, rubbed a glob of conditioner into it, braided it, and put it into a tail bag. Once every two weeks or so, I unbraid his tail, carefully comb it out, put conditioner in it if its warm enough to do so, and then braid and bag it back up. Well! After 3 1/2 months, his tail is thick and beautiful! I cut it off just under his hock, and you can see in the picture below, it has grown quite a bit! It's already near his fetlocks. By summer, it should be close to touching the ground!
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| Bad lighting, but look at that tail! No extensions needed, thank you. |
I'll try to think of something more interesting for the next one!
