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.