RC: Littter box horses

[MBlanchrd@aol.com]

Hi, campers,

  Golly, I'm stuck for a subject line, hopefully it will hit me before I send 
this.  
Jordan, my 22+ gelding, is very good about not pooping in his stall, but he's 
always urinated in it. I never could understand the why of that until someone 
just mentioned the fact that horses don't like having it splash on their 
legs. This made everything become clear to me. Jordan has five acres and a 
shed to run into at will. The acres are grass, the paddock is pretty  much a 
gymnasium, with nothing but hardpacked dirt. With our weather being as nasty 
as it's been, he's been pretty much hanging around just outside his shed, 
able to go in with just a step or two.

Several weeks ago, I tore open several bales of shavings that had leaked (I 
buy my shavings in plastic wrapped bales. It solves the storage problem, but 
the neighbor's cats decided to claw them up, hence the leakage.). Since it's 
the rainy season here in W. Washington, I broke the bales open and used the 
shavings as a dike to keep the rainwater from forming a pool in Jordan's 
paddock. The 'dike" is composed solely of shavings and does a good job of 
diverting the water into the runoff ditch I dug for it. 

Anyway, not long after, I found that Jordan was no longer urinating in his 
stall. I was worried...is this horse not peeing much anymore? Where's the 
urine? Until I saw him today...he walked out of the stall in a total 
downpour, walked out to the dike of shavings, stretch out and urinated in the 
shavings! The shavings in his stall are nice and clean and dry! 
Ah....gooooood Jordan. Gooood boy. Your darned right I'm boasting. It's so 
nice to have a housebroken horse.....this is almost as good as having him 
litter box trained! Maybe that's the next step, but I betcha he won't cover 
it, just like my lazy Siamese won't cover her messes in the litter box
I have no idea if this will work for the rest of you, I just thought I'd pass 
it on.

Michelle (lady, you want HOW many bags of kitty litter????)
Jordan (what's this box for ,mom?)
Wren the vociferous Siamese..(no way am I sharing my litter box with THAT!!)