Nov 19th - dentist, jumping and alpacas

Well the dentist visit went well. Ray always sedates them to do their
teeth, so that he can really get in there and work on them. He got the
needle in pretty quick but Jimmy still bounced backwards, but then he
held still while Ray took the blood sample for Selenium test and he
used the same needle to give him the sedative.

He had very sharp edges on the outside of his upper molars and inside
of his lower molars, a couple of ulcers on the inside of his mouth and
a partly broken and slightly loose wolf tooth. He gave him a local
anaesthetic and pulled the wolf tooth, filed the rest down. Jimmy was
very good about it, admittedly he was pretty sedate :P but Ray was
impressed with his behaviour. He confirmed that he is definitely 6
(not that I thought he wasn't, but last time I had Ray check a pony's
teeth he told us that the unbroken "rising 5 year old" we'd bought was
seven. Oops.) Ray said Jimmy was a really nice looking horse :) I put
him in a yard for the afternoon as he was still quite dopey, he
started eating grass right away (typical).

That was around 11am, I went back to work then afterwards down to the
paddock to go for a ride with Heather. Because of his tooth being
pulled I rode him in a rope halter instead of bridle. We went out into
the park and there were some showjumps set up so we went over some
ground poles then set up a few low crossbars and jumped a wee course
following Roly :) The jumps were all about 40cm high but he popped
over them all. He weaves a little in front of the jumps, like Do I
have to do it? but he's very relaxed about just popping over. So that
was good :)

Then we went for a hack down to the river and to my parents' place. We
had to go through the paddock with an alpaca in it, I swear JJ grew
about five hands! He put his head up so he could see over the deer
fences, which are over 2m tall...I was on foot as I'd had to get off
for the gates. Usually whenever anything is "scary" we look to Roly to
be a good example. However despite having grazed at our paddocks for a
couple weeks about 2 years ago Roly had decided that alpacas were
terrifying so with much snorting we led the horses through the
paddock. I hopped back on him and went up to the house so my parents
could meet him, they said he was "huge" (haha that's what comes from
only ever seeing me on ponies) and they think he's gorgeous too. Seems
everyone does :) His head will swell soon!!

Anyway on the way home he was good as gold. Might ride in the halter
again tomorrow just in case his gum is still sore. Ray offered to let
me keep the tooth but I passed on that.