Tee Pee Minister Retired

The last prior post I labled TP's best breeze as the last breeze, double entendre. Instead of the last prior the breeze was the horse's last ever.  For RR Stable major major bummer.  What happened?

Round about first of February as your's truly was--in bad winter weather--adjusting to life as a cripple--weather related problems with bad leg--and training horses riderless in a large round pen with deep sand I started noticing the horse seemed to have trouble getting air in keeping up with companions.  At first this was attributed to possible lack of conditioning.  If you ride you know all horses will choke up at a certain point, and as conditioning improves the horse can go longer and longer without flipping its palate.

In TP's case instead of getting better the problem kept getting worse to the point about first of March the fellow was unable to gallop three times around the round pen without completely choking up. It was painful to watch.  After about two weeks of this I began to understand this would fail to get better.

The one enlightened moment was when I realized the cause.  The horse is tall enough that he puts his head (and neck) over the pipe fencing in his turnout paddock to play with neighboring horses.  I'd seen this a couple of times and realized this pressing the voice box against the metal piping was other than good.  And, indeed, at the end I noticed the horse was missing some patches of skin on both sides of his larynx.  Probable cause and effect. I found a new way to ruin a great horse.

I loaded Tee Pee onto the trailer and he'll spend his life as one of the better looking pasture ornaments.

Duke of Montevideo still at it.  Will give a report on him soon.  Thank Bill Pressey for Run Happy training.  I've been discouraged with these set backs and have yet to read, but will when Duke gets farther into his training.