I’ve started a handful of other posts and haven’t finished any of them. That’s my life right now. A series of unfinished blog posts.
For those of you who follow me on social media, you will know my current drama is fly spray. Or, more specifically, Nay Nay’s allergy to permethrin and/or pyrethrins. Subi too, but his is nowhere near as severe as Nay Nay’s.
It started last year. I was using Ultrashield Black and I noticed their skin was slothing off. I stopped using it and went back to Repel-X. Things were fine except that it didn’t work well. I had a quart of Pyranha, same thing. I quickly donated the left overs of both fly sprays to the barn and stuck with the Repel-X and some Mosquito-Halt (which we were OK with as well) and tried EcoVet. No one liked that one (but skin didn’t fall off).
This season, I started with Mosquito-Halt (I have a quart sitting around so Jiminy will be well covered). Then Nay Nay started getting funky crud, I switched to watered down Repel-X and we were OK. Then some more crud, but nothing too terrible until suddenly…
One day we were fine and then, chemical burn. He’s actually pretty OK about it, but it hurts me looking at it. He also has some spots on his left hind leg of all place. Subi also has the start of minor slothing, but nothing like this (just looks like a snake shedding skin).
Anyway, no more chemicals for the boys. They’re going natural fly spray only. This morning I hit the feed store when they opened at 7 and picked up a selection. I have a couple others on order so we’ll see what works.
In riding news, Nay has been fabulous up until the last couple of rides where he’s just been a bit full of tension. That said, the last 2 rides have had fuller rings and kids on ponies in every which direction. He was miserable last ride so I ended up taking him inside, tossing him on the lunge line where he was… quiet. Then I got back on and he was tense-r. I rode through it and questioned my life choices. In the end, I guess I just need to ride it?
Sharing video of the canter. Despite the tension (that was actually quiet), the canter was actually very quiet. Better than the trot. Turns out, if I just stay still and keep my hands still, Nay relaxes, especially at the canter.
Three Chestnuts 
Poor Nay with his allergies! I have fly sheets but never end up using them bc Mae tears them to pieces with her rolling habits. With D, I let him out in an arena to get some bucks and kicks out of the way before tacking him up and riding – it seems to release some of that pent up baby energy
Nay hasn’t needed to run around the arena lately, but he’s been just standing around when turned out (he spends 15 minutes wandering before parking himself in the shed) so I wonder if between being a touch sore from the start of the spray burns, kids in a million directions, and just generally needing to stretch his legs, he was grumpy. If he wasn’t tacked up, I’d have let him run around, but he rolls…
In his lunge, he chose to jump the hay bales that were set up as a jump. Normally he hates to jump on the line but this time he walked over them as I was setting him up and then picked up the trot and trotted over them (then cantered). I just let him to his thing. He could have easily chosen to go around, but he wanted to jump. Lol. OK Nay. You do you.
I feel him on his opinions re spray burns, kids, etc