Wednesday, August 23, 2006

150 days... We made it!




Gaining more than a pound every 10 days, the
fetus now is about the size of a rabbit. Hair
graces its chin, muzzle, and eyelids. If you
look closely, you'll see that eyelashes have
emerged.

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I cannot believe Hannah is now 150 days in foal! In one way it feels as though she has been in foal for ages, but it also feels to have flown by without me noticing.

The picture and text above is from a really useful website someone directed me to. It’s amazing how much they change in such a short period of time. Unlike human babies, foals have to come out quite advanced. They have to be able to walk around almost immediately so all their joints have to be in an advanced form to that of a baby.

Hannah is doing really well, although she has started being very lazy in the school so I am going to reduce her work now and will keep her schooling sessions to just a walk and trot and hack out more often. She has lost a little bit of weight since she was brought back into work, but this just accentuates the dropping of her stomach. I will try to get a photo of her this weekend and I am sure you will notice a huge difference from the previous pictures of her.

We had the dentist, I mean equine dental technician, out last night. He said she had some ulceration caused by sharp teeth down her left side near the bit and up at the top on her right side. After an hour and fifteen minutes of rasping they were lovely and smooth. I wish I had called him out earlier really as he was extremely informative and tried to show me exactly what he was talking about (with the aid of a torch) and a lot of what he said made sense compared to the way she has been going when ridden.

The dental technician also said he thought she was slightly younger than I thought. I believed she was six rising seven when I bought her which would make her 11 rising 12 now. However, he thought she was either eight rising nine or nine rising ten. The latter being the more likely. So that would mean I bought Hannah as a five year old. It would explain a lot about her behaviour traits and how green she was when I bought her!

He also mentioned that he did not think she was half Irish Draught and half Thoroughbred as I thought. He has a horse at home who is quite like Hannah and she is three quarters Thoroughbred and just one quarter Irish Draught. So Hannah might not be the carthorse we have also thought her to be!

Tuesday, August 08, 2006

Meet Hannah's friends...



I mentioned that Hannah hacked out with her new friend Fiddler, so I thought I should include a picture of him (chestnut) and Sue’s other horse Bruce (dark bay). I am looking after the two of them next week while Sue jets off to South Africa for her 40th birthday!

Hannah is doing really well and is back in work now there is no trace of lameness and her haematoma has dispersed. I have been taking her in the school every other night for around 30 minutes but she has been very forward going and silly – at least I know she enjoys her work!

There is also some news on me too – I have taken the plunge and booked a lesson with Debbie Jones. She is a BD trainer who I found on the website. She has two school masters who are both Grand Prix level (I think that’s right, I was quite overwhelmed when she was telling me what they do) so I have to go for an assessment on 30th August. I’m going to take Sue with me to take some photos and a video of me riding, although I will probably look like a sack of potatoes!

There is only 6 months, 3 weeks and 1 day until Hannah’s foal is due, the time seems to be flying by!