This message is from: Karen McCarthy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Hi Emily, those race ponies don't typically roll in shavings, but thick, straw bedded stalls. Most of the west coast tracks I am familiar with have contracts with the mushroom growers to supply them with soiled straw bedding for growing mushrooms in. The trainer I worked for in college had me bed the stalls deeply, I mean 14"-16" packed down, w/ the sides banked up the walls. Changed out daily, picked 4 times a day. He even had me make a neat little half round 'doormat' of straw in the front of each stall. Made for a very tidy looking shedrow with 6 shiney young racehorses standing looking out over their color co-ordinated webbed stall fronts with a freshly packed 1/2 moon of straw in front. Oh, did I mention 2x a week their hoof soles were packed with sea mud ...not just any mud, but some super special top secret mud from some tidal bay in California. We never, ever put our horses on hotwalkers, but bathed & walked them out by hand after every work and race. To complete the picture I had to rake the dirt in front of the shedrow by first sprinkling it down lightly, then raking it up in a herringbone pattern. OMG! Just thinking about a simple thing like bedding stalls brings back such detailed memories ;~) Contrary to some negative experiences folks are having with racing today, I am happy to say I was lucky and worked for an old styled & conscientious trainer who specialised in starting out young stock. I find a nice thing to wash horses with is plain Castile soap, kinda hard to find (janatorial supplies used to carry it in bulk) and you can add some tea tree oil into it to make it more theraputic if your horse has skin issues. As for using chlorine bleach on live skin - forget it. Just Google chlorine and see how nice it is to any living organism. There are many more appropriate homemade concoctions avail. for scratches; many horse lists have a plethora of postings on this subject one can look up. Cheers!Kmac
Karen McCarthy Great Basin Fjords :: Madras, Oregon http://www.picturetrail.com/weegees> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Pinesol> Date: Sat, 31 May 2008 07:04:31 -0700> To: [email protected]> > This message is from: Emily Wigley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>> > Pinesol is used because it's cheaper than liniment and/or shampoo, > and as mentioned it kills skin "ickies." I would not ever put it on > a horse, but that's just my opinion. :-) Any shampoo for people or > horses is going to do the job of washing a horse. What I hope people > will consider when choosing soaps and shampoos of all sorts are if it > is tested on animals and if it is a plant based soap. Even a plant > based laundry soap is a good, gentle, ecologically sound choice for > horse shampoo. Pinesol is much too industrial and chemical to me. > If a horse lives in a stall 24/7, is washed down after every exercise > session, and as mentioned eats like a race horse in training, it > would be clean and shiny too! (And it wouldn't roll in dirt, but > rather in shavings or other bedding, unlike our outdoor living horses.)> Emily> > Emily Wigley> Fish Bowl Farm> Vashon Island, Washington> > The FjordHorse List archives can be found at:> http://tinyurl.com/rcepw> > The FjordHorse List archives can be found at: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw
