Q. I’ve got a horse whose back leg stiffens up when he’s outside in a cold rain. I’ve been keeping him in his stall on rainy days, but he seems to love water. In the spring, there’s a pond that forms in the field from the run-off snow and rain. He swims in it. I’ll come down to see him on a nice day when I know it hasn’t rained, and he’ll be completely soaked. I kind of wish he wouldn’t do that since I don’t know how good that is for him. The water’s pretty clean for rainwater, though. The ponds nare ormally almost totally gone by late May – early June, but I was thinking of putting him in a smaller paddock behind the barn for a few weeks, anyway, when the grass starts to grow again so he won’t gorge himself on it. The water doesn’t bother his leg at all when the weather’s warm.
A. I’m assuming this is a fairly shallow depression that holds spring runoff until it eventually leaches into the ground or evaporates completely by mid-summer. This stagnant water may look clean, but I would be very surprised if it is clean. You don’t want your horse drinking or bathing in stale, stagnant water. Contact with such water can introduce unwelcome organisms into your horse’s system or may help promote the development of grease heels, scratches, or other skin afflictions. Your horse would be safer in a pasture without standing water or in which the standing water is fenced out of his reach.