Recovery

I’ve now reached the recovery phase of tax season thankfully. The most important piece of recovery besides catching up on sleep, other life responsibilities, and remembering what my husband looks like is hanging out with my ponies. So basically that’s what I’ve done mostly so far!

As you could see in my Wordless Wednesday post a couple of weeks ago, Mr. P was getting his left hind leg cold hosed and poultice wrapped. Since Mr. P was having trouble holding his back leads and working from behind I decided he needed some maintenance. I now instead feel guilty and have a horse who is uncomfortable after some kind of weird reaction on his left hind hock. A few days after injection he got some swelling on the outside and we got him on bute, antibiotics, and cold hosing and things appeared to be resolved. A few days after that however a fluid bulge appeared on the inside front of his hock which is still there.

So much hosing

So my trainer spoke to the vet who did the injections and it was decided that I would work P lightly walk and trot since he appeared sound in hand and bored out of his mind. I started that on Thursday as part of the celebration of my new-found freedom.

After his first bath of the year on Friday

Thursday he was a bit amped to be out and about and it was really hard for me to tell much of anything since he was very up and down. I rode him again Friday and he was pretty good. Pretty soft to the left but tighter to the right with a few good moments.

Always the best view

Saturday I hopped on bareback just planning to see where we were. The answer is that he is not right. Mr. P is certainly not the type to act up and he wanted nothing to do with going slow or getting off his forehand. It was basically a fight to trot around and I gave up fairly quickly and decided that I’m done waiting and the vet is going to have to come back out.

Even his shadow is cute

Today P made it even more clear that his hock is just not right as the fluid filled swelling had increased in size overnight. I upped his bute, cold hosed his leg, then wrapped it with an ice pack while we went out for grass. The vet will be getting a call tomorrow morning.

Master grass eater

On the Stampede front things are equally not exciting. He has been having issues with his right hind since I’ve been trying to bring him back from his time off with the left front hoof issue. The leg is just not as willing to move around unless he’s really going. I had been doing a mix of walk only rides and walk and trot lunging with him for the last few weeks but he was feeling pretty blah about the whole thing. So on Wednesday I hopped on him and we had our first outside ride of the year. He was a bit excited and unfocused at first but I kept moving him around and bending him and I was pretty impressed with him overall for the first ride outside and still only one of his first few rides at all this year.

Stampede after his first bath of the year

We did a similar ride on Friday, but with the added distraction of people and horses moving about to come for a C show at the barn this weekend. He was equally good which was great. Just being outside has helped a lot, but he will still need to be seen by a vet before I progress past my current stage of walk and a bit of trot under saddle. I’m not sure if the leg issue is back related or something else all together, so there may be several steps involved to continue our journey to decide if he will be able to handle being ridden with his back issues.

Stampede keeping an eye on the trailers coming and going for the show.

So basically my mood is better because I’m not working constantly but I’m still disappointed that I have two horses and they both are having issues and some were caused by my choices. Someone send me a horse to ride please?!