Don't Call My Mare Fat!

Don’t call Millie fat -- she is a mare with a fuller figure. And don’t think I am not aware of just how much she resembles a puffer fish or one of those balloons you buy at the zoo. I know it. The question is what to do about it, as the restricted grazing is not (apparently) restricted enough and the exercise program is not (apparently) vigorous enough. Click here for a video that explains why this may be the case.

Pat Parelli went on the HCG diet. HCG is the hormone that pregnancy tests measure and I can’t quite figure out why this diet is all the rave, but he lost a lot of weight on it by taking small amounts of the hormone and some other stuff I don’t understand, then eating almost nothing all day.

While I don’t really like the sound of the diet, I bet Pat’s horses are happy he took the plunge. I always wondered how a little 14.2 quarter horse deals with a large cowboy aboard, and whether this has something to do with that breed’s impressive slide stop.

But I don’t think the HCG diet will work for Millie. First, all those injections. Second, all those injections. Now that spring is here, I’ve had to get out the fat clothes -- a 6' flysheet even though she's only 14.1 hands (I tell her she looks like an opera diva in it and she believes me)

Black is actually a slimming colour, so at least she has that working for her.

Apparently, a daily exercise program for horses requires a couple of miles of trotting and galloping. This is what I read. I couple of miles of GALLOPING? Are they mad? Where do we do this couple of miles? How do we get the fat horse into gallop?

Millie says she doesn’t want to gallop. She wants to sing. She thinks she can be as good as the soprano, Luisa Tetrazzini, who famously said, “Some singers gotta the figure. But Tetrazzini gotta the voice.”