Fatty Lumpkin

Moe has always lived up to one OTTB stereotype: being a hard keeper. He was always difficult to keep weight on, especially in the winter months. In college, at the ripe old age of 12, Moe was eating senior feed, beet pulp, a weight gainer supplement, corn oil, and a variety of other things in an attempt to keep him fat and happy. He was also being ridden very regularly and somewhat strenuously. (Long trail rides, jump schools, racing through soybean fields with friends.) Moe was always the skinny horse in the barn; I posted my feed chart on the front of his stall and made sure I was always around at dinnertime, because people accused me of starving him. He was never dangerously thin- he just wasn't as fat as the Quarter Horses that made up the majority of the other boarders. My friends and I joked that he was the Anorexic Thoroughbred.

Fast forward six or so years, and Moe has turned into a regular Chubasaurus Rex. The horse that caused me such worry and consternation is subsisting on good quality pasture and a handful of sweet feed twice a day.

Seriously.

He's fatter now. For real.

Moe's gone from Anorexic Thoroughbred to Inexplicably Overweight Thoroughbred. I don't know if it's all the donuts he ate while living at my dad's farm, or a slowing metabolism as he ages, or what. 

My goal is take him to the hunter pace in November, so I climbed aboard last weekend and headed to the arena to do some work. I rode for about 25 minutes. We had a 10 minute walk warm up, then started trot sets. Two minutes of trotting, five minutes of walking. Rinse. Repeat. Moe was sweating and breathing heavily by the end of our ride, but his cheerful attitude was still intact. I cooled him out, rinsed him off, and turned him out. 

Work's picking up again (our riders return next week), but I'm hoping to get out to ride Moe 3-4 times per week to get him back in shape. We'll continue with the trot sets and progress to the canter when we're ready. 

It's nice to be back.