Arabian Horses Attacked in Pinon Hills, California

Some time during the night of January 21st someone scaled our five foot fence and went after at least two of my horses with scissors or a similar cutting instrument. Our property is completely fenced and secured with a locked gate at all times. This happened between the hours of 7:30 pm 1/21 and 7:30 am 1/22 during a Winter storm.

My 25 year old grey gelding had his tail hacked off at the tailbone, a beautiful tail that dragged on the ground taking years to grow, and his mane was chopped off to a couple of inches when it was originally 8-10 inches long.

These vandals also tried to hack off my 12 year old black gelding's tail, which was done up in a tail wrap and now just hangs by a few strands of hair. They also chopped off the black horse's forelock and tried to get his mane. There are two places missing in the mane, but he apparently broke away from them and could not be caught again.

Fortunately, they could not catch my bay mare or my bay gelding to mutilate them.

All of the hair hacked off these horses was left behind strewn on the ground, except the grey horse's tail. That was taken as a "souvenir".

Both horses are Regionally titled and National Championship quality show horses who are now rendered unable to be presented in the show ring until their appearance can be restored through months of hair growth. This is resulting in a tremendous monetary loss in addition to the obvious loss of security in our own home and coming with that an intense feeling of helplessness in keeping our horses safe and secure.

As a result of this crime, the Sheriff's Department was called, a report was taken and an investigation has begun. All leads will be aggressively pursued.

We believe this to have been a deliberate act of violence and not a random act of mischief. Nothing was stolen or missing, nothing else was disturbed.

Photographs will be posted as soon as we are able.

Keep your horses safe.

~SFTS

Just Checking In!!

Thought I would drop in and post a quick hello ~ things are hectic around here, not to mention swamped (literally!) as we get ready for the show season to begin. We are all really excited about 2010 and the promise this year holds.

Thank you to all who have been so supportive, there are so many of you and I am so thankful. What a wonderful thing to know my words have a profound effect on such a broad spectrum and the numbers who read here daily...well, when there is a daily post. :)

I promise to be back every day with a new post, or as close as I can manage during our always busy show season, soon. There is just so much preparation, not to mention so much clipping, to do it takes up an incredible amount of my time. Inclement weather? No problem! Clean show tack and show clothes! The list goes on...

Have a great weekend!! :) :)

~SFTS

On To Bigger And Better Things...

...well, for now at least. And I had been doing SO well!

As you may or may not have noticed, I missed putting up a blog post for yesterday. And a couple of days before that, I only put up a quickie post to keep up with having a post for every day. Now, I do have a ton of post topics I want to cover and many are already written, just waiting there to bring to you all.

However, things are just getting so hectic around here with the impending start of the show season coupled with all of my club and committee commitments that I just do not have the time right now to devote to making sure I get this blog updated every day. So, I have decided to go on a little bit of a hiatus, without having to be concerned about the blog and therefore making things easier on myself.

Make no mistake and mark my words, I will be back. :) I just need to concentrate on making sure we have horses and riders/handlers ready to set foot in the show ring by the end of this month along with everything else on my plate with the local Equestrian Subcommittee on Parks, the ETI Corral and the Arabian Horse Association affiliate club along with the other two organizations I am involved with.

Until then, may your lives prosper and may all your rides be National Championship quality!!

~SFTS

Planning Your Dream Ranch

We all pretty much have in our minds the horse facility of our dreams. When we imagine our ideal ranch, we know what we want, we know what it looks like. But how best to develop your imagined fairy tale farm?

Okay, let's assume you already have the deed to that property (after meticulously ensuring that you've bought a piece of land well suited for your purposes). Your search complete, papers signed, a loan secured and now you are ready to begin building. You thought the acquisition was the hard part!

For me, safety and convenience are of paramount importance and I take into consideration how best to utilize the entire property, too. If there is an existing home or other structure(s), the challenges increase. Deciding where your barn, arena, turnout paddocks and other amenities should be all relate back to those two factors mentioned above.

First, safety. I want decent latches on stall doors, I prefer v-mesh or welded wire panels on my pipe paddocks for mares with foals, I do not like chain link fencing used as an enclosure for horses and the footing must be decent (excavation may be necessary before bringing in soil or sand for your arena). Another thing to think about is drainage... including for your wash rack.

When it rains it sometimes pours and you want to be prepared for potential flooding. This means taking a good look at how your property sits and determining the route water takes across the landscape. I've seen barn aisles with tiny rivers running through them and pipe corrals with several inches of standing water during and after a rain storm where it was necessary to wade out in rubber boots to dig trenches so the puddles can be drained. Not fun, especially during the storm itself.

Another point to keep in mind will be convenience. For instance, the proximity of your arena to where your horses reside, and more important how close your feed room is to your horses.

Also, my preference is sliding stall doors as opposed to those of the Dutch variety, which can present a hazard when they're left standing open into the barn aisle (so that one can be classified under safety and convenience both). Having at least one set of cross ties, preferably two, is another major convenient point and should be in lose proximity of the tack room.

There are literally millions of ways in which to build your dream ranch. Taking the time to lay out what you want, where you want it in the beginning saved an awful lot of headaches later.

Once you get that far, congratulations!

~SFTS

Tonight, Tonight, Tonight

No, I am not channeling Phil Collins or Genesis, it simply sounded catchy. :) Long day today and I have been working on several new topics but have not had the chance to get around to finishing them. So, in the spirit of still trying to get a post up every day ~ silly, I know ~ here you go. A post!! For today!! ;)

Upcoming in the works are discussions on planning your "dream facility"; tips on barn building/design and tack room sheds; more on equipment and it's usage; additional tips on both horse shows and breeding...plus much more. As always, feel free to email me at SunlitLady@aol.com your questions and comments you don't want posted on the blog itself.

Until tomorrow...

~SFTS

The Geriatric Ward: What To Do With Your Old Timers And Thinking About End Of Life Options

This is a topic we all have to face sooner or later when we have horses and it's twofold: What to do with those who need to be retired for whatever reason, and when to make the horribly painful decision to lay our beloved equine companions to rest.

All horses age, and most of us find ourselves faced with the reality sooner or later that we've got to make a determination when to retire our faithful mounts. With some, it's fairly obvious as health or soundness issues begin to plague them. When lamenesses become chronic you know you have been delinquent in giving that hard working steed a much deserved rest.

This is something I fear I will be facing within the next few years, though my own aged gelding is still sound, healthy and looks far younger than his birthyear suggests. A few years back I even sought out the folks at Guardian Aftercare (pet cremation service) during Equine Affair and spoke with the local animal cemetery about costs and logistics as well.

My fondest wish is to be able to retire my favorite old man to a beautiful, lush pasture when he chooses his time someday. Looking out my front window to see that lovely, spry old grey horse does, however, lend me hope that such a time is a long ways off. With a good diet and the very best of care, he looks like a horse far younger. On his 20th birthday we showed him at a local open competition and, upon placing him first in the Hunter Hack class, I told our judge it was a fitting tribute for that milestone. Her jaw dropped! I know for sure it is not a decision I will take lightly or enjoy making.

What are your equine retirement options? Ideally, most would choose the perfect pasture solution, without a doubt. But those choices can be limited both by where you live or your budget. If you are located (or know someone who lives) in a well irrigated region with the optimum climate for seeding and growing pasture land, you have it made - as long as you can afford the water bill. When you reside in an arid desert with little rainfall, such costs are astronomical. That leaves the stalling or dry lot option, which certainly can be suitable, if not optimum. As long as your horse is happy and remains healthy, with enough exercise, excellent feed and all other needs met, there is nothing wrong with such an arrangement.

Now that brings us to when we need to say goodbye. Doubtless there are instances where the time is near and others where the quality of life deteriorates suddenly, leaving us shell shocked. Far too often I have had to either make that decision myself or counsel a client on what is best for our four legged friends, but it never gets any easier... and over the course of nearly forty years I have only personally had to be in those shoes four times for horses of my own, and it was still too frequently.

Probably the best thing we can do is be prepared. However, no matter how much preparation we do, nothing will make some things easier.

Go hug your horses today. They deserve it.

~SFTS

People Who Cry "Auction" Or "Kill" When Trying To Dump Horses

This is a MAJOR pet peeve of mine. Play on my emotions just because I love horses and you're going to get two things you surely do not want ~ an earful from me, and quite the verbal (or virtual) beating from a mob of angry equine enthusiasts.

We all know how bad the economy is (I've written about this before) and it's predicted to only get worse. I have been personally offered several dozen free horses, but have only brought home one because I know my limits, even though there have been some really tempting offers recently that I'm still on the fence about.

All of the above, along with the fact that the vast majority of rescues are full up and lacking in donor resources, still in my mind does not give people the right to perpetrate this nefarious ploy upon the public.

I have to wonder, what is it people think when they acquire a horse. They're large. They take up a lot of space. They eat a lot. Didn't it occur to you that upkeep would be expensive?? I mean seriously. Yet every day I am deluged with emails, messages and folks I encounter out and about during my day that seemingly had no idea of the commitment a horse was when they bought it. Hello?! they don't follow you home like a stray dog! You had to see to it someone with a truck and trailer brought the horse to you.

Let me recount a tale from several years ago. One morning, a young gentleman showed up and asked if he could bring a couple of two year old Thoroughbreds over for me to do an evaluation of and give him an honest idea of the cost he'd be looking at to have them trained under saddle. I said sure, knock yourself out. He struck me as a relative novice even though he professed to have grown up on a horse ranch out West here somewhere.

By the next afternoon I hadn't heard from him and assumed he had held off for whatever reason, perhaps the fact these horses were just babies. But later on, while I was out in the arena giving a riding lesson on that cold, blustery early December day up drove a neighbor in his Jeep mentioning that a dark colored horse, still tacked up, frantic and covered in sweat had shown up to his back fence calling to his gelding. He wondered if we might know the horse or who it belonged to. None of us recognized the horse.

This could only mean one thing: Someone had been out riding, and somehow the horse had gotten away, meaning it was very likely there could be an injured rider out alone on the trail somewhere. We sprang into action after my lesson wrapped up, with one party calling animal control about the mysterious horse, another contacting area hospitals and several of us either on foot, on horseback ourselves or in a vehicle heading out to trace back the horse's hoofprints. Those of us out on the search came up empty, thought we learned that it had been a husband and wife out for a trail ride on two young, very green horses. The wife's horse spooked and she came off, becoming injured. When he dismounted to assist his wife who had hit her head and was critically injured, the husband's horse also spooked and took off in a different direction (which explained why only one horse showed up at our neighbor's house and how come animal control located the second horse several miles away).

It turns out the wife was airlifted to Loma Linda University Medical Center's trauma unit ~ as a very sad aside, we later learned that night the helicopter, Mercy Air 2, crashed on the return flight killing the entire crew on a foggy hillside in the Cajon Pass near Interstate 15.

Fast forward about two and a half weeks later. That same young gentleman who had been interested in training for his Thoroughbreds stopped by again, only this time to drop off a flyer declaring ten or so mostly young, green horses for sale. It had been his wife injured in that above-mentioned accident. Upon recovering, she demanded every horse be sold and they desired to move across country. Now, I cannot blame her for being terrified of getting on a (young, green) horse again after her ordeal, however it was indeed largely their own fault such an accident happened and it seemed to me those horses were likely to suffer in her haste to be rid of them.

Two days after being presented with that sale flyer, I was on my way back from town early in the morning on a donut and coffee run when I noticed a young bay Thoroughbred gelding pacing a neighbor's fence line ~ a neighbor who no longer owned horses. Most notable about the poor horse was a horrific injury to his upper right foreleg, literally torn to the bone with bleeding flesh hanging from his chest nearly to his knee. I raced back to the ranch, told everyone about him and requested assistance in trying to find the owner. I grabbed a halter and my daughter and I quickly headed back over to the horse.

He was frantically pacing and I could not get near him for some time, when another neighbor woman stopped by to find out what was going on. It took some time, but my daughter and I were finally able to catch and halter him to get a better look at his gruesome injury. It turned out that the property owners where the horse was at were away on vacation (just after Christmas, after all) and the horse's owner was still MIA. Someone along the way called animal control about an injured, loose or "stray" horse. What a sweet, sweet boy he was.

Finally after another hour or so, a black Dodge truck drove up amidst the fuss and the young man who owned the horse came forward. You guessed it, same guy.

According to him, there had been a ruckus before dawn with the horses, and they heard a giant crash. He claimed to have gone outside to check and declared everything fine, going back to bed. It wasn't until going back out to feed several hours later in daylight that he noticed the damaged fence and a missing horse.

He didn't have the money for a vet call, so he offered to sign the horse over to me...to this day, I still have that document that "John" hastily wrote up and placed his signature on. However, there were several monkey wrenches in the plan to move the horse and notify my vet ~ first, the neighbor woman who was taking care of the property where the horse was did not want anyone to do anything or even treat the horse in any way until animal control arrived to asses the situation; and second, an animal control officer (with zero equine experience) arrived in the meanwhile, but she had called her supervisor to come take a look, who was nearly two hours away in another part of this vast County. I had contacted a friend who runs a local rescue to come help, I had brought my truck and trailer over and we were prepared to load and transport the horse to the equine hospital. We were barred by AC from administering any medication to alleviate the horse's pain until the supervisor got there, so that poor animal had to endure what must have been terrible pain for hours.

At nearly noon, the AC supervisor finally showed up and just as her subordinate had earlier, she advised me not to take the horse, that it should simply be euthanized and that it was the responsibility of the horse's legal owner to handle and pay for. Because he insisted he had no funds to do so being post Christmas, and they went round and round as my daughter and I tried to soothe the horse as best we could.

That was one of the most frustrating, awful days of my life. In the end, an acquaintance of the owner was called in to shoot this beautiful young gelding, ultimately putting him out of his misery at long last. I still shed tears on occasion when I think of the gallant young bay horse with no name whom my daughter christened Bold Star, who braved hours and hours of dreadful pain because of the stupidity of humans, made worse because those humans spent much of their time bickering as opposed to doing something to actually help the horse.

Later that same day, a local horsetrader showed up to load and haul the rest of the irresponsible couple's horses away, bound for the same low-end auction they came from in the first place with little chance to go to real homes. Nearly all of them went to places we'd rather not imagine. Ignorance, arrogance and the ineptitude of these people caused their horses immeasurable agony.

I hate people sometimes, I really do. RIP, beautiful Bold Star.

End rant.

~SFTS