20th April 2021 - News

Last week, Sarina had her blood taken again and a PCR test done through the nostrils. The reason was to check if she is really EHV-4 positive. Today we received the notification that she is negative. Nick asked the vet what he thinks is the reason for this... He said, "I don't know..." Possibly, the last test was not evaluated correctly... In any case, the quarantine has been lifted. No moving, disinfecting, showering, etc. We can now go to our horses during the break and also work with our equipment here at the stud farm. We are very happy about that. For example, we wanted to buy new ropes and such, which proved to be difficult with our quality expectations.

Here at the stud farm, there is a huge bullfight arena. When we finished work today, we went riding in it. Using the infrastructure was not possible for our horses until today.

Nick's nephews wanted to know how the stallion with the injured nose is doing. Unfortunately, we didn't take a photo. The vet was here again today and removed the drainage/tube. It looks good so far. The clips will remain in for a while longer. We will keep you updated.

We are making progress with the young horses. They are not all at the same level. Some are already very confident, others are still suspicious and need a lot of trust and security. In the past few days, we have been practicing halter training, lunging, preparatory exercises for loading, hoof handling, tying up, and so on. They are doing well. We still need to be careful with some of them... Sometimes they get scared of new things: they run away (they need to learn not to run over us), they kick out in the front and back, they pin their ears back and come at us with their teeth... But they are still young and learn very quickly.

Then we received lessons in "work in hand" with the trained horses here at the stud farm. This is still a coordination challenge for us. But it becomes routine - we still need to develop the feeling for it.

After we finished with the horses, we went on an evening walk with the cats. Accompanied by a loud concert from the frogs. The cats had fun and were brave in our presence.