Rodneys page.
Unfortunately 8 years after surviving colic surgery, Rodney Suffered a serious bout of colic on Friday 22nd January 2016 and we had no choice but to put him to sleep.
Thank you for 11 wonderful years big fella.
The 1st 10 years together!
The human came into my life when I was 4 years old, just arrived in the South West of England from Ireland, the beautiful land of my birth. We have now been together for almost 10 years and I am proud to say she is pretty well trained.
We started our life together in a private yard where she looked after me as well as a couple of other horses and several small things, ponies I think she calls them, I found them quite fun to run around with when I was young, but as I grew up I much prefered hanging out with my mate Ted.
While we were there I grew up, finally stopping just under 17.2 hands high when I was 7 years old, and learned how to train the human, and keep her happy by trotting and cantering around in circles, dressage she calls it. We went to parties, which was fun and always involved mints, which I am rather partial to.
Unfortunately my Human was diagnosed with some thing she calls MS, I'm told this stands for Multiple Sclerosis, not something a horse understands, but apparently it explains why her leg aids are sometimes unclear (well that's her excuse, and I'm not going to argue, I would never ignore her legs...... well not often). Not long after this she made an unplanned landing on a tarmac road (nothing to do with me!) and fractured a vertebrae. Apparently this is quite serious and meant she couldn't look after me, or any of the others, for some time. I got a little worried during this time and started to suffer with tummy ache.
One day the tummy ache got so bad I had to have an operation, apparently a bit of my large intestine had got twisted, all I knew was it hurt A LOT. After the operation I felt very poorly, and she thought she was going to lose me, but I pulled myself together and started eating again, after all my life isn't so bad.
I do make a habit of lying down and groaning every now and again just to keep her on her toes.
The MS started to deteriorate and she had to stop looking after my mate Ted and the little things, so we had to move to a public yard. I missed Ted, but the new place has mares, and lots of them, so I didn't miss him for long.
The picture on the left shows the beautiful Syra who arrived 18 months ago and lives in the stable opposite me in the barn, easy on the eye while we're waiting for breakfast in the morning.
On the right is my barn neighbour Tigs, who has been next to me since I arrived in the Barn several years ago, she's pretty fit too so as you can imagine I am a pretty happy man!
It's great to have mares around, but a man does need other men around him, I'm glad to say I found a suitable replacement for Ted, Buddy is my new wingman.
As you can see from the picture below right, Buddy looks a lot like me, though he has white feet, which I do not. We are the ginger ninjas of the yard, specialising in synchronised spooking when we take our humans out and about together. Unfortunately the human doesn't have a picture of the two of us together, we're both so handsome we'd probably break the camera if she tried.
Though the human and I have both had some medical issues through our life together we have continued with the circles (dressage), in fact we have moved on and included going sideways (on purpose, not because a fire breathing pigeon just flew out of the hedge) and taking bigger and shorter steps in our training. I have to admit I rather enjoy showing off and trying to flick my toes.
I also enjoy hopping over the odd jump, the problem for a lot of humans is they think 90cm jumps are quite high, for me they are the height where I have to start jumping rather than just stepping over. I do enjoy giving new humans flying lessons Rodney style, as shown below
Now I've got my own page, I'll keep you all updated on the excitment in my life, whenever it happens.
See You Soon.
Rodney