Wednesday 12th, October 2005
Hot and cold 10/12/2005 02:15 PM
Our Swedish farrier always said that he wanted the horses to neigh from
happyness everytime they saw him.
He went through quite a lot of Russian imports that where more wild than
tame to work with, he was great though, a lot of patience and horse sense.
We sorted out even the worst cases, I remember Almaz especially, he was
so scared and panicked the first times and I was thinking, how the heck
are we going to sort this poor horse out! Will we ever? We did eventually
like we have with all horses.
Anyways, now I have really found a trick how to make horses love the farrier,
not only being obedient and polite, but actually not wanting to leave once
they are finished.
We have a large fan in the aisle way where we groom the horses, when the
farrier comes we turn on the fan to keep cool while we work, our farrier
normally shows up around noon and we have had a few hot months so the last
three times the farrier has been here the horses have been sweating in
the sun. When they come into the cool stables and are allowed to stand
in front of the fan they all relax and they love it, so now they almost
neigh when the farrier comes! The farrier on his side is amazed
over how cool the Tekes are standing next to or almost inside the big fan,
he has been asking if these horses ever spook, I have been honest and told
him they do, sometimes.
I have also noticed that the horses
tend to be more relaxed and easy going in a hot climate.
When it gets cold, normally around this
time in Sweden the horses also get more tense and energetic and a little
bit challenging to work with sometimes. In Sweden we had only a few hot
weeks per year so I didn't really observe this change of temperament.
What I did observe and didn't like was
that the Tekes sometimes got more or less locked in the shoulder from cold
weather, they did like we do when it is cold with our shoulders and walking
around like that cannot be good in the long run. I think this is a very
interesting subject and wonder if anyone else have experienced this hot
- cold temperament change. Could it be specific for the Tekes as they are
origin from a hot climate or does it apply for all breeds, I wouldn't think
so, cold bloods for example, they must have a really hard time in this
climate. But what about TBs and warmbloods?
