As the days get longer the horses and ponies begin to lose their winter coats. It is the light that triggers this rather than, as you would assume, the warming weather. Mabel is usually the first to begin to moult in earnest, whilst Diva very sensibly waits a little longer, but by the end of February both are doing their best to cover me from head to toe in their cast-off hair.
As both Diva and Mabel have been roughed off over winter, they both have extremely long, thick coats to shed. This understandably can get quite itchy and so the pair spend quite a lot of time “mutual grooming” each other. Unfortunately for Mabel, Diva can only reach so far up her body, so the top half is all down to me. Diva has her back and neck groomed by Mabel and the lower parts fall to me as otherwise poor Mabel would have to kneel down!
There are lots of products on the market to help get out winter coats, but you don’t have to spend a fortune. A stiff piece of rubber scraped along on its edge will do just as good a job as some of the items costing pounds!
This cast-off hair is often picked up by the birds for their nests and I have seen on several occasions’ crows standing on Mabel’s back and helping themselves by plucking at the hair. She doesn’t seem to mind and it helps with my job.
I always love to see the transformation of the hairy beast that is Diva in the winter to the sleek and shiny Melland Queen of Scots she is in the summer. It takes quite a lot of work but it is always worth it.
Once again I threw Arlo in at the deep end, affiliating him purely for the Arena UK second round show, and once again he pulled it out the bag. How lucky am I to have such a wonderful little horse? We haven’t really competed this year. I don’t really compete over the winter, and also my horsebox was away for repairs up until the beginning of June, so I had no transport even if I’d wanted to.
With the dry ground we don’t seem to be having much luck with shoes, as little madam managed to pull both her front shoes off within 12 hours the other day! We entered the arena with two shoes on for a schooling session and left it with one missing (took about an hour to find it). Then that afternoon, as I went to put some hoof ointment on, I looked down and had to double take, thinking I was looking at the wrong hoof. But, no, the other shoe was missing too.
After having a long wait and some lunch at the onsite café, it was time to get ready for the Joan Wolfe Overall Supreme Shetland Pony Championship. I got changed out of my usual showing outfit into black trousers and a maroon top with white spots, as you are expected to be a bit more “bling” in the evening.
We were all set to go for our next outing, and were super excited. That was until I heard the dreaded clunk of a loose shoe! I checked it over, praying it wasn’t too loose, but, nope, it was going to need a refit.