When the 'celery approach' doesn't work

Isn't it nice that the world didn't end last week? Now I can get back to discussing the hooves from my last post. Many of you caught on to my bit of sarcasm about the truly awful state those hooves have fallen into, this is what happens when the 'celery approach' goes bad.

So much wrong here...

For those of you who may not know, the celery approach is advocated by Nic Barker of Rockley Farm, the author of "Feet First: Barefoot Performance and Hoof Rehabilitation." Barker believes that people shouldn't touch horse hooves with anything sharper than a stick of celery; that all modification of the hoof should be done by self-trimming alone.

Let me just be clear on one point: I have a lot of respect for Nic Barker and what they do at Rockley Farm. I am inspired and impressed by what they achieve and many of the things Nic writes about leave me thinking. But I think their blog should come with a disclaimer: Do not try this at home without doing your research.

The celery approach works for the folks at Rockley because they've put a lot of time, effort and resources into creating an environment and lifestyle where the horses can self-trim their way to soundness. From what I've seen and read, they have three key pieces in place for this to happen.

1. A day-to-day living environment on very abrasive footing. 
2. A very specific and controlled diet.
3. An extensive daily exercise regimen that is, again, done on very abrasive footing.

If you want to embrace the celery approach to hoofcare, more power to you, just be prepared to spend a lot of time and money making sure your horse is living a lifestyle that will enable that. There is a reason that people have been using hand tools to trim hooves for hundreds of years, most domesticated horses don't get enough exercise on a variety of surfaces to wear down their own hooves, and overgrown hooves create a mess of problems.

I mean, seriously, how does she even function?

*I did contact the owner of the horse from my last post and sent her an eight page document detailing what I saw going on with those hooves and a plan for bringing them back to health. Fortunately she agreed with what I said and I'm going to work with her over email to see if we can't get her horse sound again (he currently most definitely is NOT). Fingers crossed.*

Hooves for the end of the world

I snagged these photos from an online barefoot trimming group. It was recommended to the owner a few months ago to stop trimming the horse (he had been sore after a trim) and just to let the hooves grow. Here they are a few months later. What do you think? Chalk this up as another win for the "celery" approach?

(You'll see some pictures where the hooves have been touched with a rasp- we'll just ignore that for now.)

BTW- happy winter solstice!

More on pregnancy: A few details I missed

In my last post I wrote about some of the lovely symptoms a woman may encounter during the first trimester of pregnancy. I realized a bit later that I missed a few things, mostly the side effects that are just annoying in the beginning but don't go away after the first trimester. Nope- they just get more obnoxious.

The breathing
You may not be aware of this, but pregnancy hormones also affect your lungs, increasing their capacity. What this means is that you might start breathing a bit heavier when you become pregnant. Or you may be like me and end up breathing A LOT heavier really early on. Seriously, I'd climb one flight of stairs and I'd be breathing like I'd just run a mile. I wasn't tired, I wasn't out of breath, but boy did I sound like I was. I was walking across campus with a coworker one day when she asked me if I wanted to slow down, "what, why?" I asked.

"Because it sounds like you're dying," she said. Oh.

Of course later on you start having issues breathing because you've got a baby kick-boxing your lungs. But that's for later.

The gas
When you get pregnant your hormones will also affect your digestive system, slowing the whole business down. When this happens you start to accumulate gas, which then needs to come out. Pregnant women start to sound a bit like one-person bands. One day, after burping for the umpteenth time after drinking orange juice I turned to my husband and said, "I burp after drinking orange juice, who does that?"

"My grandfather," he said. Excellent.

Fortunately for everyone around me, my gas tends to come out of my mouth, some aren't so lucky. When we got married, the best man's wife was pregnant and she stayed in our spare bedroom for the night before the ceremony. When we came back from our honeymoon a week later, the stench in that room was still bad enough to make your eyes sting. True story.

The peeing 
Even if you've never been pregnant, you've probably heard about how preggos frequently need to urinate. You might think that starts later in the pregnancy when the baby gets big enough to start pressing on your bladder, but no, it starts immediately. Sure, in your first trimester you'll probably only need to pee once every two hours instead of the once every half hour/10 minutes/5 minutes that you'll experience later in the pregnancy, but even peeing every two hours gets a little annoying. Given this you might be tempted to drink less, but that is not a good idea. First of all, you'll feel terrible if you don't drink, your body wants that fluid for a reason. In the first trimester you're building the placenta- which is filled with amniotic fluid, and you do not want your amniotic fluid levels to be low. Also, your blood volume doubles and water is pretty necessary to that process too. So drink up ladies, and stock up on toilet paper!

Fortunately you probably won't pee yourself in the first trimester. Nope, that bit of fun is saved for the second and third trimesters. Joy!

Laugh it up now, dude, the mood swings are coming for you...

Because I need a laugh this week...

The joy (?) of pregnancy

FYI- this post has pretty much nothing to do with horses. I'm putting it up because I remember being newly pregnant and scouring the internet for other women's accounts of their pregnancy. I wanted to know if what I was feeling was normal. So this post is for those among you who may become pregnant and wonder if what you are feeling is normal- just remember that every pregnancy is different, even for the same woman.

I'm currently in the middle of the second trimester, and I think I can say so far that I've had a pretty easy pregnancy, but still...

The first trimester SUUUUUUUCKS!

Seriously, it does.

It didn't help that I wasn't trying to get pregnant and that when I found out I was I had to get over being annoyed about all my plans for the year getting tossed. Riding in another dressage show? Nixed. Getting Coriander to reliably pick up that left lead canter? Nixed. Getting Gwen solid under saddle and attempt canter by the fall? Nixed. I was a little cranky for a couple weeks.

Anyway, physically the first symptom I had was cramping that started, literally, an hour after conception. At that point I ran over to the calendar and did a little mental arithmetic after which a few profanities fell out of my mouth. My midwives still don't believe that I know the day of conception but I do, down to the hour.

The cramping continued for the next six weeks, it was accompanied by dizziness, thirst, and the need to eat ALL THE FOOD. Heaven help you if you annoyed me when I was hungry. It wasn't pretty.

Hyperbole and a Half, I miss you

Eventually the cramping went away, at which time is was replaced by round ligament pain and SOUL CRUSHING FATIGUE. It was a daily struggle to stay awake at work, I would daydream about curling up under my desk for a nap.

I never looked nearly this nice

By the time I got out to my horses after a full day at work it was all I could do to feed and groom them, then I'd just let them loose to graze and lay down until I could gather enough energy to stand up again. If you're in the first trimester and you have the energy to ride just know that I am really, really jealous.

Sometime around 9 weeks the morning sickness hit. This was all-day, constant, never-ending nausea. It's much worse when your stomach is empty, which it tends to be when you wake up in the morning- thus the name. Here is an interesting discovery:

Pregnancy is the one time in a woman's life where she'll feel sick for months on end and it's considered a good thing.

Somehow I got lucky and never tossed my cookies, but that doesn't mean I didn't have a few close calls. Unlike me, there are a bunch of women out there who have hyperemesis gravidarum, and vomit so badly while pregnant that they have to be hospitalized for dehydration. That really sucks.

Really all cats are

Fortunately, the worst symptoms went away with the beginning of the second trimester, but I'll write about that later.

It's time to get a pony!

Because...

We're having a boy!

Being prepared

Hurricane Sandy may have come and gone, but millions are still feeling the effects of the "Frankenstorm." Fortunately the storm didn't have much of an impact where I live, we got some heavy wind and rain, but no lasting damage. But we were *supposed* to be on the main track of the storm so I made sure to prepare for it.

Unfortunately, looking at the news lately, it seems like a lot of people who were directly hit didn't prepare, and they are suffering now. So, with that in mind, I figured I'd pass along some tips for when something like this happens again.

Keep in mind what you really need to survive: food, water, and shelter.

You should keep a minimum of one week's worth of non-perishable food in your house, one month is even better. That means canned and dried foods, if you lose electricity the food in your fridge and freezer isn't going to last for very long. Also make sure that you have a manual can opener in your kitchen, nothing would be worse than having a bunch of cans and no way to open them. Start collecting your food BEFORE the crisis appears imminent. You don't want to try to stock up when everyone else is out there clearing the shelves. Another thing to keep in mind: most grocery stores only keep enough stock for three days at a time.

Make sure you have a way to cook your food. If you have a gas range you can probably use that, otherwise you'll need another option. I have a propane camp stove, it's probably older than I am but it still works just fine. Barbecue grills will work in a pinch. If you're going to rely on either of those, make sure to keep some fuel on hand. Matches are also helpful to keep around.

 Make sure you save enough water. You'll need it to drink, wash, and cook with. Depending on the size of your household that could be a lot of water. Consider options for storing water outside (like a rain barrel), and remember that you can purify water by boiling it or treating it with a tiny bit of bleach. Water purifiers and purification tablets are nice to have, but they aren't necessary.

Shelter, hopefully you'll already have this in the home you live in, but consider the time of year when you might experience a crisis. Temps in the Northeast this week are supposed to hover just above freezing, that is not good news for those still without power. Since the vast majority of modern homes are heated with electricity, you need to keep a plan in mind for how to heat your home if you lose the grid. Gas and propane powered heaters are an option, but if you use them you MUST ventilate your home to let the gas out. There have already been stories coming out of the coast about people that have died breathing their generator fumes. Don't burn your house down! If you have no other option, you can gather the household together in one room and huddle under blankets to stay warm.

Of course none of this is helpful if your house gets flattened. If you are under a mandatory evacuation order, GET OUT. Your lives are not worth the stuff in your home and you won't help anything by staying. Standing in front of your house and yelling at the storm to "go around" isn't going to work. If you do have to get out, it's not a bad idea to take food, water, blankets and a camp stove with you just in case.

Don't forget about your animals! If you have house pets, you should keep spare food on hand for them too. Have crates available if you need to grab them and go. Our horses are trickier, can you still get water for your horses if the power goes out? Do you have enough hay on hand if you can't get any for a week? (This is especially tough this year with the drought) What if you have to evacuate your horses? Will they load onto a trailer easily? Do you have a place to take them?

It's difficult to think about this stuff, literally it is. There's something called a normalcy bias that nearly all people have that makes us think bad things won't happen to us. Unfortunately they do, but if you plan ahead you can make the aftermath a lot easier for yourself and your loved ones.

 Stay safe out there.