All The Kings' Horses

From Danielle: Gia’s Blog February 24th - March 20th Well, clearly, I got a bit behind in writing Gia’s blog for the past few weeks. To say it has been a bit busy around here is an understatement! Heather was in the hospital for surgery and I was trying to keep things afloat, we got in a new (super cute) horse for training, and we even had a brand-new addition to the Castle Farm family born on St. Patrick’s Day. With Heather being out of commission, I have slowed my goals for Gia. Prior to Heather’s injury, I felt a need to get Gia back and ready to ride. However, since Heather will be out of the saddle for a while and I haven’t been able to clone myself, riding is still a while off. I decided to really focus on letting the grooms work with Gia WITHOUT me supervising. There have been ups and downs, but overall, I think everyone is feeling more confident and comfortable. (Both horse and humans) Soon, I will reintroduce the saddling process with Gia, but thanks to everyone’s hard work, I...

Monday, February 16th-Ashley and I worked together with Gia again. The grooming went well so I asked Ashley to go ahead and pick out Gia’s feet. I am still watching over the process with her feet, but she has been more agreeable to having them touched lately so I figured it was time to move onto something new. Gia was very well behaved for having her feet picked. However, Ashley noted to me that her feet smelled terrible. Horses’ feet never smell great, but we all become accustomed to that “normal” smell. I have no sense of smell any longer, but I still knew immediately what Ashley was talking about: thrush. As I mentioned last week, Dr Jim had noted Gia had thrush in one foot. We had been treating that one, but not her others. It is not surprising that thrush popped up in her other feet and I was able to quickly get on top of treating them. Thrush is one of the smells that is imbedded in my brain and while I can’t physically smell it any longer, I sure can trigger that memory. It’s al...