1021cnn的部落格

Starting off the first job I did at the barn was clean their stables, it might not sound appealing, but it's very important.

At our barn, we had horses of three different sizes: regular horses, ponies, and miniature horses. For regular horses, there are two main breeds, it is easy to tell from their appearance, one is skinnier and more muscular, they're race horses. The other looks more stumpy and less muscular, as they were used to pull carriages.

This is a miniature horse :)

Environment

Each horse has their own stable, and they're cleaned every morning. Cleaning their stables can prevent the horses from stepping on their manure, which could harm the horses with the chemicals in them.

Walking

When you're walking a horse, make sure to stand on the left side of the horse, because that's where the horse's mother usually walks.

Never walk behind a horse, you never know if they feel like kicking someone. Horses' legs are very strong, and you wouldn't want any fractured bones. Also, make sure you're walking a safe distance in front of the horse, to prevent them from stepping on you.

Emotions

You can tell a horse's emotion from their ears. Usually, their ears face the front, as they have to be alert of what's in front, but when their ears start to fall back, be alert, cause that means they're mad. So being around horses, always check their ears for your own safety.

Sleep

Horses have an average of 2 hours of sleep each day, and it's not consecutive. Each nap time is around 5 to 10 minutes, adding up to a total of 2 hours by the end of the day. Some horses stand while sleeping and some lay down. Horses sleep with their eyes open because they're not predators in the animal chain, they have to be alert to their surroundings, and that's their natural instinct.

Food

Horses mainly eat grass, and for snacks, they often have apples or carrots.

When a horse is hungry, they tend to rub their front leg on the ground, which I've learned is a bad habit.

Health

Maintaining a horse's health is very expensive, just a needle could round up to 3000NTD.

Horses have high pain tolerance. You could be rubbing alcohol on their wound and they would be fine.

Hygiene

Horses need their hooves cut every 14 weeks to keep them in shape, only wild horses don't need their hooves cut because their hooves are worn down by all the running.

Horses are showered once every two days, we use a high-pressure water hose to clean them. While showering them you can see the water bringing along white substances, that's their sweat, so when there are no more white substances that's how you know they're clean.

Customers

The coach at the barn often takes his horse out to the street, he also goes to McDonald's drive-thru on his horse. You can call it multitasking, as he always brings back customers. “Your horse looks so cool!”"Do you know what would be cooler? You riding on the horse." Many customers come, they either tour the barn or ride on the horses. The best part of it all is definitely getting to see a bunch of cute kids.