It’s springtime, which means my little mini horse buddy, Rex, is suffering from spring allergies again. Until I started volunteering at the horse rescue I had no idea that horses could have allergies, but they can! Here’s how we found out that Rex suffered from them:
“One day in spring, a high-pressure front was moving through, and all of the horses were crabby. I tried taking Rex on the trail and he fought with me the whole way, trying to bump into me, suddenly charging ahead, and stopping suddenly to eat grass out of the cracks in the pavement. I decided the trail wasn’t the best idea and took him back to the round pen, thinking maybe he needed to burn off some energy, but that wasn’t it either. I sat to do some deep breathing and meditation in the round pen to see what came up. The quieter I got, the closer Rex grazed, and I asked him if he just wanted to go back to his paddock. He said yes by coming right over to the gate and standing patiently while I clipped his lead back on.
When we returned to his paddock, he started rubbing his sides and back against the fence like he was incredibly itchy! I gave him a nice long scritches session, which he enjoyed, but once I was done, he still went back to the fence to rub some more. I had figured out why he was so irritable. He had developed hives. I told my barn mentor what had happened and she gave him a dose of antihistamine to help him out. I was glad he could tell me what was wrong and that I was attentive enough to notice something wasn’t right in his behavior. Sometimes horses misbehave because they are just antsy or in a bad mood, but sometimes it’s because they’re uncomfortable, in pain, or in this case, miserably itchy.”
Learn more about my adventures with Rex and the lessons I learned in Standing in a Field With Horses, available on Amazon and Smashwords.
Maeve Birch Home 