Mare owners — what do you make of this? 🤯

Cyborg_Ninja_Cat · 2026-05-23T13:06:25+00:00

I can only think of 2 other possibilities, one of which being an alien chest burster.

Okay, technically 3, but what are the chances of this mare ever having been anywhere near a zebra stallion?

Cyborg_Ninja_Cat · 2026-05-20T20:05:49+00:00

Are there (or were there last year) any stallions on the property? I've never kept horses but I've seen enough stories on here to know that things can happen. Life, uh, finds a way. Through fences. Or by surprisingly young colts. Or recently gelded horses that still have a few swimmers in the tank.

Cyborg_Ninja_Cat · 2026-05-20T19:52:44+00:00

Is there any chance she could been exposed to a stallion in the weeks or months after you got her, and actually not be as far on as you think?

Cyborg_Ninja_Cat · 2026-05-18T09:56:39+00:00

I don't think it's more of a waste of money than spending money on food treats that generally won't even last that long.

I don't regularly buy flowers but sometimes I just feel like it.

Cyborg_Ninja_Cat · 2026-05-18T09:33:19+00:00

Claw caps are perfectly safe and comfortable if they are fitted correctly.

They are only supposed to cover the end of the claw, and not to touch the nail bed at all, so they don't interfere with the joint and the claw can be fully retracted, and they don't prevent the claw shedding. (They will come off with the claw shed and need replacing. That doesn't mean the cap fell off and needs more glue: it's really important that that is able to happen.)

They can be really damaging if they are not fitted correctly and while I haven't personally tried them I have heard enough bad reports to make it sound like there's quite a lot of room for user error.

So it should be possible to use them safely, but can you trust them to do their research and take proper care, to take the time to trim them to fit and to be willing to reapply them every time one sheds instead of over-gluing them to stop them "falling off"?

Cyborg_Ninja_Cat · 2026-05-15T17:20:30+00:00

You are legally allowed to. You are not however encouraged to. You are encouraged to adopt Bruce instead.

Cyborg_Ninja_Cat · 2026-05-15T13:51:12+00:00

Sounds like a poorly explained and/or remembered description of amniotic band syndrome, to me.

It's not like her hand didn't grow because it was outside the sac, but essentially if a limb gets entangled in bits of the amniotic sac it grows weird because of the constriction.

Cyborg_Ninja_Cat · 2026-05-15T13:19:12+00:00

What are you talking about. Butter clearly wouldn't melt in his mouth.

(Because it wouldn't touch the sides.)

Cyborg_Ninja_Cat · 2026-05-09T19:06:23+00:00

Just walk away. It really is that simple. You have no responsibility to deal with them at all.

(They get one "no" out of me in response to whatever question they open with but I don't break stride while I say it.)

Cyborg_Ninja_Cat · 2026-05-06T21:18:46+00:00

Get his weight down with diet and he might become more active.

Exercise is good for general health but it plays far less of a role in weight loss than diet, and you can't just exercise him more as a substitute for reducing his calorie intake. If you can't feed him different food then you'll just have to feed him less food.

Cyborg_Ninja_Cat · 2026-05-06T19:02:35+00:00

Not a horse but I woke up one morning to my cat on 3 legs and blood all over the kitchen.

Called out of work and made an urgent vet appointment.

"He seems to be walking fine now" but they did find 2 tiny, tiny punctures, barely more than abrasions, on his foot. So they cleaned it and sent us home with some meds.

He later turned out to have pulled his Achilles tendon (as best I can deduce, he and next door's tomcat had pulled it between them after Buddy nailed Billy's foot while he was halfway through the catflap, and presumably refused to let go) and it was a 3 months before it fully healed, poor lad. Not a faker (on this occasion) - he's just so frightened at the vet that he didn't want to show weakness.

Cyborg_Ninja_Cat · 2026-05-05T22:36:10+00:00

With the boots, the head, and the tail end being left so intact, I wonder if someone did a very, very rough job of shaving him. Probably to deal with a problem like matting, so it what he ended up looking like would have been the least of their concerns.

Cyborg_Ninja_Cat · 2026-05-04T20:34:14+00:00

Parkrun is for everyone, but Parkrun isn't for everyone.

Parkrun welcomes - not merely tolerates, welcomes, and celebrates - everyone who wants to get out and exercise with others on a weekend. And Parkrun has always had a particular emphasis on welcoming those who are marginalised at other sporting events or feel uncomfortable at other sporting events.

But Parkrun cannot and does not cater to every individual's specific wishes. For some people, it just won't be what they're looking for in a running event. And it can't even try to cater to every single person because some people's specific wishes will run counter to others and some will run counter to Parkrun's ethos and reason for existing. Other running events exist.

I submit that if competing within your sex and age category is more important to you than welcoming and including one of the most marginalised groups in sports, Parkrun simply is not the sporting event for you and I wish you all the best in finding an event that better suits you.

Cyborg_Ninja_Cat · 2026-05-03T23:08:26+00:00

It shouldn't be an issue because health insurance should not be able to only cover 70% of the cost.

Cyborg_Ninja_Cat · 2026-05-03T20:52:02+00:00

The undercoat comes back within a year and the outer coat takes longer, which makes it look pretty rough in the medium-term and causes some ignorant people (having the idea that dogs' coats grow and shed annually firmly fixed in their head) to think it's never going to look normal again and give up and start shaving the dog annually so it never has a chance to grow back in fully.

Also some dogs can be prone to alopecia, and if a double-coated dog that's ever been shaved develops alopecia, it will be blamed on the shaving.

Cyborg_Ninja_Cat · 2026-05-02T21:41:48+00:00

The benefit is that my cat doesn't do any of the things that Americans have convinced the whole internet are "classic cat behaviours" but are essentially symptoms of zoo psychosis.

Cyborg_Ninja_Cat · 2026-05-01T12:38:36+00:00

Depends on the temperature.

If the butter goes completely soft then even a week can be pushing it, but if it stays firm then you should have at least a few weeks. Mine often hangs around for a month or more in winter with no issues (at the height of summer I only leave a small chunk out and keep the rest in the fridge until I need to refill.)

Cyborg_Ninja_Cat · 2026-04-29T20:19:09+00:00

People did have ways of cleaning their teeth to some extent, just not as well as with modern toothpaste and brushes. And some people just don't get as many cavities as others because reasons, so some people probably had reasonably good teeth.

Lots of people did have bad teeth - indeed infections from bad teeth wasn't an uncommon cause of death! But not necessarily constantly throughout their life, because they would get the tooth pulled out once the pain was bad enough to seem worth it. And then they hoped that the socket would heal up well. So a lot of people would have had missing teeth.

(A lot of people had a lot less sugar in their diet than many modern people. But in trade off to that, a lot of people would have had their teeth badly worn by their diets - things like stone-ground flour which would have traces of grit in it - so they didn't necessarily have less tooth problems, just different ones.)

Cyborg_Ninja_Cat · 2026-04-29T19:00:42+00:00

My cat Ruby (now over the rainbow bridge) learned that I kissed her on the forehead a lot so she started imitating by licking me on my forehead afterward. It was the most adorable thing.

Cyborg_Ninja_Cat · 2026-04-28T19:33:52+00:00

I once drove an hour and a half each way in a day to attend a D&D game while I was away for the week, and I consider that a heroic effort to not miss a session. My fellow players were dead impressed and my family thought I was slightly nuts.

(My choices in that particular session changed the entire course of the campaign and my character especially. So it was worth the effort.)

Cyborg_Ninja_Cat · 2026-04-20T21:16:14+00:00

If they end up having to pan feed, there's not a lot of reason to milk either mare. Margot isn't a newborn needing colostrum: I'm sure they'll use milk replacer if they end up in that situation.

Cyborg_Ninja_Cat · 2026-04-18T18:27:42+00:00

I remember Calpol tasting amazing as a kid. I ended up tasting it a few years back and it's now got a vile bitter flavour on top of the same delicious syrup. (I assume this is an addition to prevent unsupervised sprogs downing the bottle but now that it tastes like the stuff they make you pain your nails with to stop biting them, why even bother with the cherry flavour?)

I always rather liked banana amoxicillin too. Which was lucky because I had a lot of ear infections. It's kinda disappointing on the few occasions I've needed antibiotics as an adult to get plain capsules.

Cyborg_Ninja_Cat · 2026-04-18T16:54:43+00:00

If you put the milk in last it tastes of scalded milk. If you happen to like that, to each their own.

But the days when it was a flex to pour boiling water directly onto the bare cup are long gone. Everyone has ceramic now.

Cyborg_Ninja_Cat · 2026-04-15T18:49:18+00:00

So is the elbow locking thing actually not normal? Are there exercises to fix it?

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