Endurance.Net Ridecamp Archives

Hello again,

So, I've had my Pasture Puff Pony for about six weeks now.  In that  
time my kids got the flu, I got the flu, and I had to go visit  
relatives for a week.  But now we seem to be over all that.  Pony has  
been ridden lightly (walk with a little trot, totaling an hour or so)  
most days during this time.

She is a 13 year old BLM mustang, who I bought as 14 hands but I just  
tried to measure her yesterday and I'm not sure she's that tall.  I'm  
putting her at a 6.5 or so for body condition score (vet described her  
as "moderately overweight") and she has very little muscle tone.  I  
taped her yesterday at 880 pounds.  She has been in better shape  
during her life, but she's never done endurance.

When I got her she was on a flake of grass hay morning and evening,  
and about a pound of beet pulp (Farmer's Friend ShowSweet) soaked and  
fed sloppy for lunch.  It seems to have a lot of sugar in it (it  
smells so sweet) and seemed sort of excessive once I got her, so I  
transitioned her to having a few pounds of grass hay and 12 ounces of  
LMF Super Supplement for lunch instead of the beet pulp.  She used to  
be on pasture at her old place, and now she is in a small stall/ 
paddock.  The hay she gets for breakfast and dinner is low-quality  
timothy, probably about 10-12 pounds total.  Then for lunch she gets  
2-3 pounds of high-quality orchardgrass and the LMF Super Supplement.   
I don't have a scale at the barn but I practiced holding hay on my  
bathroom scale.  I have a deli scale for the pellets.

This poor pony is so out of shape.  I rode her yesterday for a total  
of 5 miles.  After 4 miles we averaged 3.8 mph but the last mile she  
was SO TIRED she barely moved, and we finished up averaging 3.5  
miles.  I have a GPS but no heart monitor yet (it's on my Christmas  
list) and I have a stethoscope but by the time we walk out the last  
mile and head back to her paddock/stall, she's pulsed down.

So, my question is, is the feeding regime okay for now?  I had figured  
not to feed her any more until the fat was better.  She has a terrific  
hay belly, but I'm looking more at the fat over her tailhead and twist  
and her crest.  She has a nasty crest.  I wonder if she might end up  
cushingoid when she gets older, she just has "that look".  I don't see  
any patchy fat right now, though.  My worry about the hay belly is  
that her feet, while they are round and pretty nice, are on the small  
side.  (As the farrier put it, she's on the small side too so not to  
worry.  But the tummy is horse-sized!)

She has a thick but not cushing-ish coat right now, and we live in  
California.  Many people at our boarding stable clip and then they  
have a blanket service where a Nice Lady takes off the blankets in the  
morning and puts them back on in the evening.  It gets wam here during  
the day but the temperature drops a lot at night.  I'm considering  
going the clip-blanket route but just not quite organized enough yet.

Getting her fit enough to do an LD seems like such a huge undertaking  
right now, but at least if we ever get there I can think about how  
much progress we made.

Betsy

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