And the other end of the spectrum

is ol Grandpa--27 years old and I bet even when he was a yearling he acted like an old man. I am sure he is disgusted by the hot pink halter Madison put on him. Even Marvin asked what he did to deserve that!

When his feet get the tiniest bit long, his tendons swell and he gets stiff. Keeping up on his trims is not as easy as one might think, however, since Grandpa is the captain of his own ship. That is putting it as nicely as I can.

When we bought him at 22, he had never been allowed to roam in a pasture like a horse---he had always been showing, so kept up all the time. At my house, a horse lives like a horse, I don't care how famous you are or how much money you have won, or what kind of prima donna you are. He took to it like a drunk at the brewery---and it will be his decision when he comes in, and no one else's. He makes this clear every time I need him for something.

So he and I have a routine. I tell him to come here. He refuses. I have learned not to bother chasing him--if I can catch him, it is because something is bad wrong. Who needs that kind of damper on his day? Rather than play that game, I just open his gate, and tell him to come on in at his leisure and something good will happen. If he does not come within a half hour, I make him a bucket of his favorites and put it fifteen or twenty feet outside of his pasture in the driveway, then I holler, hop up and down and generally make an ass of myself so that he will deign to notice something is happening.

Then I go on about my business. I keep an eye on the gate in case he comes out, and I can shut the door on him. More times than not, he will come in the barn and start opening deep freezes looking for his stash of Equine Senior. You would think this means the game is over, but it has just started. If he is in a good mood, we will play chase for a while--he runs in and out of the barn in a big circle (remember, it is a three sided barn so he can escape from me, and it is 105 feet long so it is a pretty big loop) and I chase him and hope he has the good sense to go in a stall where I can trap his old butt. He has more sense than that however, and while he will not make it easy on me, eventually he will give up and let me get him.

I realize this is a lot of photos of the same thing, but I am using this as a way to track his weight with the big change to Strategy from Senior. Speaking of which, I think he is shrinking like old people do--he measured at 14'3" and 846 pounds tonight. I do not know how accurate the weight tape can be when I am working with withers like is--seems like it would throw it off some, but since he will have the same withers every time I measure, I guess it does not matter much. You can actually see a bit of rib in real life, even if it does not show a lot in the pics--I would like him to have more weight but have to be careful not to get too much on him (like I could do that), lest I aggravate his left shoulder where his arthritis is worse.

I have to drug him up to get him through a trim or he cannot stand on his left foot long enough to have his right front trimmed without a fight, so he gets 10 cc of Banamine or so before it starts. This does wonders for his personality--he sometimes forgets he is a grumpy old goat and does funny things. Today the funny thing was playing with his own wiener. Rather than let it flap in the breeze like normal, he played games with it. That is all I have to say about that, a man needs some dignity and he has pretty much lost all the rest of it.