I have always envied people with those quiet little horses that stand peacefully in their 12 x 12 stalls, munching on hay, delicately sipping from their water buckets, and happily watching the world go by.Pookey Bear has never been one of those horses.
At best, when stalled, he has sniffed, licked, gnawed, paced, banged and whinnied. At his worst, he has made it necessary for me to pound, screw and glue preventive objects around his stall and its openings, a la Wylie Coyote, futilely attempting to minimize the amount of damage his razor-sharp teeth, quick hooves and big ol' body inflicts upon his stall.
Of course his illness has changed all of that. Early in the course of his founder, he did very little but lie quietly in his stall, occasionally standing up to peek out the door at mealtime. Next, he went through a brief 'feel-good' spell, in which he began loudly protesting his confinement. Finally, for the past week or so, he has been back on his stall floor, sighing a lot and looking somewhat bored and sad.
In an effort to keep him interested in life and to eventually encourage a little movement to enhance circulation, we decided to 'super-size' his stall, removing the divider between him and his neighbor. We bedded the resulting 12 x 24 deeply, then opened up the second exterior dutch door so he could hang his head out over the chain and pine over the grass.
I had hoped that this would give him a little mental boost.
Unfortunately, it gave him a huge mental boost, so much so that he has been on his feet for much of the past 24 hours. Since one of our primary goals is to keep him off his feet as much as possible to help minimize further damage to the laminae, this worries me a bit.
On the other hand, it is great to see him up and around!
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