CRANKY!!!!!!

Terrible ride tonight. Sam has way too much energy! I can't be cranky with him, it is my fault but I am starting to pull my hair out with what I can feed. I like to feed a lot of roughage as he doesn't have any grass to feed on. As you found out in the previous post I can't feed him the pasture hay I found and put him back on oaten hay. Well the oaten hay is certainly in his system now and boy has it been giving him some energy! I have been feeding a total of 7kg of oaten hay per day and I am going to cut it back to 3kg a day. I am going to get some speedibeet and see of that helps. He really doesn't get a lot in hardfeed, 1kg of mixed chaff, 400grams of pellets twice a day.

Has anyone fed Speedibeet? They say you can use it as some of the roughage in the diet does it work? I like Sam eating for hours at a time, will he do this with Speedibeet?

I think it takes a good 7 days for feed to work its way out of system doesn't it?

Back to our ride. He just wanted to burst out of his skin and did try to when I asked him for the first trot but he contained himself. After a lot of trot and circles and changes of the rein and canter work on large and small circles he finally asked to slow down. At that point I knew I could commence 'training'. We did 15min in the arena and I really asked for things to be right on, moving off my leg, transitions up and down. He finally picked this up and I think we ended on a good note.

I tried not to take it out on Sam as really it isn't his fault but he was so hot when we finished and it is starting to really cool down at night here so I gave him a quick hose, popped his polar fleece on and he had to walk with me while I cleaned his paddock to help cool him down. He was not impressed with this but didn't argue too badly!

Tomorrow is another day and we will try again!