Not Copper, but...

Well, we thought Copper would be coming for a visit, but unfortunately he is having back trouble & needs a course of chiropractic before he can go anywhere. But his pasture mate, Max, may actually end up here sometime soon.

Max is a rescue horse that Kathie (Copper's owner) got to bring back to full health and possibly ride. But now that Copper, too, has health issues, Kathie is thinking that maybe the right horse for our farm is Max. However, we can't just take on another horse unless we can ride him/her.

Enter Elizabeth. Elizabeth is our housekeeper and doer-of-many-things from babysitting to helping keep the books. She used to ride and has been out of the horse world for many years. Being around here has started her thinking about maybe getting a horse herself. So I told her about Max.

Max was first diagnosed as being allergic to grass. Yes, grass. This is really bad for a horse, because horses need grass. The only way to manage the allergy is to soak the hay so it makes very little dust, give the horse lots of antihistamines, and hope that the lungs don't scar.

A second opinion said that Max had a lung infection. This is now gone (thanks to antibiotics), but Max's respiration is still somewhat labored & wheezy. He also pulled a tendon. So he needs the summer off, in some happy meadow somewhere, so he can recover and make somebody a good riding horse some day. His training is Western (yes!).

Seems to me that Max and Elizabeth are made for each other. Elizabeth doesn't want to go jumping into the horse world all at once, and having to take the summer just to help Max get better and to bond with him sounds like a great idea to her.

Stay tuned...