Princess River

River is a princess.  Not a palace-living, tiara-wearing, throne-sitting princess.  A "princess and the pea" princess.  Now, he is apparently very sensitive to bugs.

Um, yeah.  Ew.  Pictures can't really convey how gross he is.  He's all lumpy and yucky.  He looks like an extra in a horror flick about zombie horses.  At least he's putting weight on and regrowing hair... 

I had previously mentioned his Donald Trump guard hairs.  This isn't a great picture, and the effect is somewhat diminished because his regular coat is regrowing, but you can kind of see what I meant:

Also, it's a nice shot of his lumps and bumps.  Imagine those random looooong chestnut hairs scattered on bare black skin.  Picture them blowing in the breeze, like amber waves of grain.

Yeah.  Princess River gets laughed at a lot.

Also, blogger changed the layout for posting and stuff and it's really annoying.

Speshul River

Can we get a close-up of that?


How did he do it? We have no idea. My poor BO goes out every day in fear of what she's going to find. How did he injure himself today? Is it a minor scrape or is he missing a pound of flesh?

On the bright side, he is so stinkin' sweet. He's like a big dog, just sweetly affectionate and loving. I'd like to bubble wrap him so he stops having issues, but oh well. My BO adores him, even if he is going to give her an ulcer from stress!

Also, we've decided that his balding is due to seasonal alopecia. He's regrowing hair, even if it is baby fine. Of course, he's still in the process of losing hair, so we're not quite on the good side of this yet.

Only River...

Also, I'd just like to point out that my cost to buy River was $20 I pitched in for gas money to get him home. He goes through a $22 bag of Ultium every 5 days (or a little faster). Yeah. My horse costs more to feed than he did to buy.

Happy birthday!

Happy Birthday, River! Saturday was Riv's birthday, he is 12 years old.

Alrighty, update time...

He's been on 10 pounds of Ultium a day for a few weeks now and he's slowly gaining. He's also on a round bale, so he gets lots and lots of food. He's out in a herd now, there are a total of 6 horses together. It's great because they all have their friends, but they don't get crazy attached like when it's only 2 or 3 together.

Because he's gaining, I decided to throw him on the longe the other day to see how he is. He was pretty frisky! I saw him canter for the first time! I had him go over an elevated pole a few times, which he did like a champ. Here are a few stills from a video:




Loooooove his trot!

And here's the video:


Here's a fun picture:

LOL! River didn't care at all, and Chicken stayed up there for a few minutes before fluttering down. Chicken comes running when she sees me because she knows I have grain. She's probably getting fat from eating River's food.

River with a couple members of his herd.


Yes, he's still having some hair loss.


Poor guy looks ridiculous.


The hair loss situation is progressing... the places he lost hair first are growing back, but new places are going freshly bald. But he is regrowing hair, so I'm not really worried about it. For now he just looks stupid.

He has a halo!


"Can I have more peppermints?"

You know how nice I am? I found a bag of individually wrapped peppermints and gave him a ton of them for his birthday, instead of candy canes. Because he likes the individually wrapped ones better. Silly boy.

Also, isn't his head really weirdly shaped?