The Right Things

The weather got worse before it got better.

that's not windchill. that was the actual
outside temp.

Although even now, with things warming up into the tropical low forties, we get to deal with The Thaw.

melting ice shelf taking my gutter down with it

Instead of feet of snow, we get mud and flooding and ice patches. But at least we don't get frostbite!

LOL winter sucks no matter how you spin it.

attempting to keep this feral thing's hair contained

Opie's still been riding our never-ending soundness rollercoaster. His worst days definitely correlate to how stupid he's been in the field before I get on him. If he's spent his morning galloping back and forth and/or doing a hundred rearing squats, when I get on he feels sore and lame. Lame from being sore. Whatever. He feels like shit. 

Some days he feels otherwise alright aside from the LF unevenness. 

But then we do have days where he feels 100%. Like today and yesterday, when the arena doors were open so he was lit AF, he felt amazinggg. 

hot mess express.
me, not opie.
well, actually also opie lol

I love rides where he's a sound sound horse. I get to focus on me more instead of managing every single step of his. It's made me a better rider--a quicker rider--trying to stay one step ahead of anything that might lead him to take that wonky looking stride, or cause him any discomfort, or mess up the perfect balance he has to stay in to make sure I'm rehabbing his body the correct way so we at least can't blame whatever the fuck is going on with him on muscling. 

We did a ton of work on our transitions yesterday, keeping the shoulders up and the head steady in the connection. Renvers is his bestie with getting his shoulders under control so he always does his best transitions out of that, but he's getting better about doing them out of any sort of bend. And today he was absolutely on his game with them. It helped that he was steering really well, which even at Third Level he still finds a struggle sometimes.

Today he was also a complete grown up and didn't hold a grudge that yesterday he thought I had asked him for a flying change which made him lose his shit. I'd tried to straighten him with my outside leg instead of my inside, and the outside leg is the changes leg so he just started flinging his body everywhere and experiencing All The Feelings. It took a minute to come down from that, but he eventually got over it. 

Which leads me to my next ramble!

kitten supervision

Despite the fact that I can't say we've solved the lameness issue(s?) (yet), I have improved this horse in a lot of ways. His topline looks the best it ever has, and we're not even done building it. More exciting than that, to me, is his overall demeanor. He's always been such an intense horse since the day I got him. He weaved nonstop, he stall walked, he felt everything on a 10, I had to treat him for ulcers multiple times a year, etc. 

A lot of his anxiousness went away when we moved barns and got him around better vibes, but he's been so downright pleasant lately. Zero reaction to girthing which has always been pinned ears and a tossed head, he doesn't make horrible faces at people when they pass him in the aisle, he loves mugging for candy over the fence any time he sees anyone, he comes to the gate as soon as my car pulls in the driveway.

Overall a happier horse even if we can't figure out why his LF (LH? RH?) still wants to cause us problems. The vet comes the first week of March for his dental and to discuss if she has any ideas she wants the farrier to try the following week. And then at the end of March is his hock injections. I'm willing to try Adequan as well, but beyond that we're not going to be exploring any other medical intervention shit for him. Quite frankly I don't know what else is even on the list to try. 

But I think so far I'm doing the right things and the best I can for him. Hopefully it all eventually pays off with four working legs and a working SI.

Keep Being You, Opie

I am just kidding.

Actually, Opie, if you could be literally anything but what you're being right now, that would be a fucking delight. 

You fucking walking dumpster fire.

relates to these discard tires on a spiritual level

Like most horses in the NE, last week we didn't do much of anything due to the cold. And the snow. And the wind. And the way all of the above sucked the will to live out of you. MB set up a trail course for everyone to play with just to keep brains occupied, so we cruised through that a couple of times. Opie  also got longed a couple of times, although everyone found the multiple feet of snow that accumulated the Most Fun to play in so there was very little standing around going on outside. 

"you guys want to go do bad things?"
"YES."

On Monday Opie had a farrier appointment, I planned to ride him after that for the first time in 10 days, and then he was getting PEMF.

One of his big physical hangups is that he's not comfortable standing for the farrier. She's super accommodating of him, but doing his hind end takes some patience. When she got done with his RH, he was like, "I cannot put weight on this." Which is extreme even for him. Thinking she might have gotten him with a nail, we stuck him on the longe when she was done and....he was totally sound. Behind. He was lame in the LF. We just ignored that.

so broken

He felt completely fine under saddle for the most part as well. No worries in the walk, zero off steps in the trot (not even in the LF), and we had the best left lead canter we've had in probably six months. We were going to finish up with the right lead canter, except that's where he decided he was in fact broken. Total peg legging, cannot cope, abort now. So we walked it out to finish--which, again, was fine.

can move like this while looking like garbage
just standing around.
make it make sense.

He hung out on the balance pads after our ride while we waited for our PEMF lady to arrive. He loves those, and we've been doing a lot of postural work lately to try to continue building the hind end up with as little high impact work as possible.

didn't feel the need to do weird splits if he had the pads

With the PEMF, he was really only reactive when she looped it around the RH foot. Is he working on an abscess? He's never had one since I've owned him so I don't know what that looks like for him. It seems like he should be lame moving if that was the case.

But that's been Opie in a nutshell with the whole never-ending "lameness" odyssey. Why is he lame in the LF when nothing blocks or shows up on imaging? Why does he have completely clean imaging everywhere yet clearly isn't RIGHT? But also, why does he ride around completely sound when there are things that should make him look lame? 

WHY IS EVERY DAY OPPOSITE DAY IN OPIE LAND?! 

We had a really good lesson yesterday, doing a bunch of collected work and swapping between HP and SI. 10/10 he was super, and when we were done he looked super pleased with himself. MB pointed out that Opie is not one to hide his feelings, so if we were pushing him too much, he would let us know. We had a lovely w/t stretchy ride this morning that he was all about--zero lame steps--and then he went out and played rearing bitey face with his dumb friends.

isn't being a riding horse fun, opie?
we should try it all the time!

In conclusion, I'm still going absolutely insane over here. Nothing new to see.