A few of my favourite things

Eating & sleeping, two things I am an expert at. Today I could have posted a photo of farrier Richard taken from the top of a ladder, a unique and highly dangerous perspective for me, but I somehow liked the photo I went for.

Angie had just returned from a drive in the sulky cart with Sultan and the dogs and as I walked over to help her remove the harness, heard very loud horse groaning from the other side of the hedge which is a good 6 meters high so couldn't see what was going on. However it could only be OAP Asyr (Sultan was still in harness and Rosie can't groan & moan like that) and mean one of two things - he had laid down and couldn't get back up (we have had to help him a few times) or he was having the roll of his life enjoying a wonderful back rub.

Luckily turned out to be the latter and it must have been so good that he had fallen asleep. I watched him for a while, Rosie chomping and the chickens picking around him, he didn't twitch a hair and on looking carefully I couldn't even see him breathing. Being somehat worried I coughed and to my relief he reacted but sadly he also got up. A good lie down would no doubt do his legs some good.

Horses can lie down for a couple of hours but any longer can cause problems mainly due to the weight cutting off blood supply to parts, making standing up problematic. In Asyr's case his front leg joints and tendons are in poor shape and when he lies flat out as in the Blip, it can be that he can't get the front legs bent around enough to get them under/close to his body.

We do sometimes wonder if Asyr is in pain but so far have not seen any direct signs. Sure he has the aches and pains we all do with increased age but when you see him cantering over the fields and see how easily he gave Richard his hooves this evening to be cut out, then you have to say he seems to be in good shape for his age and is quite happy being able to spend time munching the grass and not yet ready to bite it.