Cody Rebounds!

Since Cody has decided that it's a great idea to blow his entire winter coat right as a blizzard and more subzero temperatures come in, Evie and I spent some time shedding him out today. And while he now looks like a slightly greasy old loaf of bread with hair sticking out in weird places (bottom pic, obviously!), it's the fact he is slightly loaf shaped that has me pretty happy.

Cody, who we are guessing is somewhere well into his 30s (he could be 50 for all we know), had become very bonded to Evie's old mare Ginger during the time she was here. They ate together, slept side by side and were literally were never more than 10 feet apart except when Evie rode Ginger. In the last four or five months, Cody has also started having some age-related vision issues and so he really thrived having a bossy old mare tell him exactly what to do and where to go. And so when Ginger died, Cody was devastated.

Watching Cody's grief and loss was nearly as hard as watching Evie's. For about four days, he barely ate and even after that, he would wander away from his senior feed and seem to forget it was even there and not go back and finish it. He wandered their pen for hours, obviously looking for her. I don't think he slept much because I never saw any evidence of him lying down (and with his bison-esque winter coat, it's always easy to tell). It was heart-wrenching to watch him feel so lost in life.

And because of all that, he had a rapid drop in weight (top photo is about 2.5 weeks after Ginger passed). When a very old horse drops a lot of weight right in the middle of winter, you get worried fast. My last month and a half has been a total focus on not only adjusting his nutrition plan, but looking for ways to bring some sense of peace back to his life. We've gone through several roommate configurations and finally hit on a management plan that worked a few weeks ago. Cody's entire attitude has improved, he is cleaning up his feed and he is showing an interest in life once more.

While grooming him today, which felt so good on his itchy, loose hair that he completely fell asleep while we brushed him, I was so dang happy to find him so filled out that he has that big old groove down his back (currently collecting manky loose hair!). I've never been so happy to see an animal on its way to slight obesity! Literally just 6 weeks ago, he had become slab-sided and his ribs were starting to show because of his lack of interest in feed, so this is HUGE!

I may not have many fancy horsemanship skills, but I do pride myself on making old horses fat again. I consider Cody's weight gain in the dead of winter (and a very, very cold winter at that) my personal masterpiece. ;)