Tuesday, January 31, 2012

The Schooling Show We Didn't Get In To - Part 1

Getting There

There was a schooling show this past weekend. I didn't get my entries in on time, so we didn't get a slot in the show. Three other horses from our barn did get in, so I decided to take Phil over and just school. The plan was to go over on Saturday and school, get stalls for them to stay overnight, and show (or in my case, school again) on Sunday.

One of my concerns was getting Phil in the trailer. The last time I put him in a trailer and took him him someplace, he ended up bleeding from six places.








This is also the reason why I insisted that he get used to wearing wraps. It just wouldn't work out if I took him to a show and he was torn up by the time we arrived. Even with the wraps I know he could get hurt during loading, and that's why we did lots of trailer work when the weather was nice. However it had been a while since we did anything with a trailer, so I was concerned that it would be a huge scene and I wanted to avoid stressing Phil out right before the show.

The barn manager (who was going to the show with two of her horses) suggested that I give him a light tranquilizer of 3 cc of Rompun. This would help take the edge off and give him a positive experience with trailering. I had never given Kaswyn anything like that for trailering or anything else, but I decided that it sounded like a good idea.

We gave him the shot in the muscle and gave it about 25 minutes to take effect. Then we prepared to load him on the trailer. It took us about one minute to get him on. He was a little hesitant, but with minimal help from behind and a little coaxing he jumped right on. I was so happy!

I wrapped him in polo wraps for the trip over, but didn't put bell boots on him because he still kicks at those. But he didn't kick at all in the trailer - or if he did he didn't connect with anything. He got out of the trailer completely unscathed, and not bleeding from anywhere. Success!

Now it was time to school. That should be the easy part, right?

Maybe not...

3 comments:

SoraSoul said...

Wow, poor guy ending up with holes from trailering. It sounds like the sedative was a good idea to take some of the scary away. I can't wait to read part two :)

GraceEquestrian said...

Poor guy! Glad you got him in, and out, safely the next time though.

Achieve1dream said...

I'm glad hauling him to the show went well. :) Is rompun not rx only?

 
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