Upgraded

The vet stopped in last Friday to give Opie his final dose of 'roids in his hocks, and I was very excited to tell her how much his soundness improved. She was like, "Yay, let's see it!" So I confidently put him on the longe after already having a lesson that morning where he felt sound the entire time...

...and he looked awful LOL.

Fortunately I had lots of video, and after we'd looked through that she decided, you know what? Let's just not longe him then. He's fine. We talked LF more, and she still felt it was compensatory from the RH which I don't necessarily agree with. But if it rears its stupid mystery head again I'll bring a different vet in. We also discussed possibly needing to do his hocks every six months instead of annually, and she was on board with that as long as we tried something besides the steroids since--if he does need to get them done already again by the fall--they're losing their efficacy.  Fine by me, I think that's a super valid point. 

tall bro, round bro, midget bad bro

He's definitely feeling locked and loaded and ready to return to the world of the working. He's been upgraded from a general nuisance to a certified menace, and all I hear from my barn mates is how much running and rearing he's doing at all times.

After four days off, I finally got back on him this morning. It was like riding a stick of dynamite. He was in one of his "look how many different ways my body bends" moods, with his back locked and his nose to his chest and his little legs like sewing machines. 

Me: Opie, please just go in a straight line down the rail.

Opie: Best I can do is:

MB always makes us slow down and be very deliberate about our aids, we did a lot of big looping serpentines with our changes of bend coming through the halt. Track left with left bend, halt on the CL, get right flexion, walk on into right bend, etc. 

This was a disaster. Two things make Opie super duper angry. Changing the bend from R to L, and me not allowing him to knock me off his right side.

I thought, let's take a break from the first thing that makes him angry and play with the second thing instead. We actually had a nice little breakthrough in our lesson Friday where he knew I wanted him to canter right, but I wasn't letting him pick it up because he was flinging himself around trying to bait me into either picking a fight with him or giving up on deleting my right seat bone. Sadly for him, I was in zen ninja mode and just waited his dramatic ass out until his whole body softened, and then ope now we're cantering so lovely good boy you're so smart. 

With that lesson still fresh, I continued to keep my right seat plugged in until eventually he got over that and went back to our first insult of being a straight boy that can change directions. 

melted his tiny brain so hard

Eventually he settled the fuck down enough that we could end on a couple of figure eights with lovely changes of bend and all four feet on the ground.

mostly done in walk work, but you can still work 
yourself into a lather if you try hard enough!

Honestly he was annoying as fuck, but in retrospect it was nice to have old Opie back. I mean, sure his soundness comes hand in hand with his insanity, but that means the real work can finally begin again!

And speaking of that, we have (probably going to jinx us in a big way) officially set some goals for the year!

trying to help us sync my headphones with MB's
ceecoach. surprisingly not that helpful.

While we rebuild his strength and collection, and try to actually teach him how to do confirmed lead changes each way so that one day we can still show 4-1, we're going to go back and gather scores like Pokémon for our Bronze with Distinction. For those not into silly USDF awards that cost a lot of money, it's like getting your Bronze all over again but with a minimum of 67% for your scores instead of 60%. I feel fine about that at First, MB thinks we can get them at Second, and hopefully by the time we circle back around to Third we'll just be ready for Fourth instead lol. 

With that in mind, we're planning on only doing three weekends of showing this year because those are the only recognized events in our area. The first one is at the end of May so everyone cross your fingers we can at least be sound until then, and that his brain kinda sorta reenters orbit by then.

Taking the Wins

In an incredibly brief but delightful turn of events, Opie came out feeling better quicker in our ride on Friday, and then on Monday he was sound from step one!

good boy!

But then I went out to collect him from his field after doing barn chores this morning and walked by a shoe with a full pad attached. Now Opie is in fact not the only horse in his field with full pads so I had the tiniest ounce of hope it belonged to his bro Boston, but let's be so for real.

"still a good boy?"
no, you are a very bad dog.

As far as not being able to ride, honestly it didn't lower morale much. It more annoyed me that my perfectly laid out plan for Science was derailed. Because he felt so sound with zero help yesterday, I didn't give him any bute with his breakfast this morning for the first time since Thursday to see if it was a contributing factor into why he was going better. 

That would have given me today's ride without bute, tomorrow he was going to have off, Thursday was another lesson, and then the vet is coming Friday for his final injection. I could have had all this lovely data laid out for her.

But no.

his normal horse posture while at rest is returning!

I do have some video from last Friday to share after Pivo finally decided to get on my side.

This was at the end of our twenty minute ride. He did come out NQR LF, but clearly improved by the end. The ride before his right lead canter was awful; this ride his left lead felt quite sticky--and looking at the video I wished I'd taken the chance to send him forward out of it, but instead I just quit--but his right lead felt suuuuper.

I struggled a lot in this ride with finding the balance between letting him travel forward and wanting to keep him creeping because I was afraid he was going to rush past his balance point and feel lame again. My next ride on him ended up being in the indoor because of a storm, and I think the smaller space helped back him off with less input from me, and the rhythm was much better.

We did a lot of walking in that ride, working on changing the bend from right to left without tension or trying to rip my right rein away. We finished with a canter both ways that felt amazinggggg. So strong, so uphill, so forward. He was like, "Trust me, I got this." But he actually did for once!

He gets his shoe back on Thursday afternoon. If he's sound, we'll squeeze in a lesson Friday morning before the vet comes. He's back on bute until then, but he's getting turned out with a naked foot in the meantime. The footing is perfect at the moment, and everyone keeps telling me to just chuck him out barefoot and ignore him for a year anyway.

Ugh. Still salty about everyone and everything. Trust my crazy, I'm not done bringing this horse back from the dead yet. 

A Wee Update

I was waiting to write an update until I had some under saddle media to share, but.

Pivo.

tracked me great, too.
we'll just never see the footage.

Oh, Pivo. Still a debate on which will come first: me punting it into the garbage can, or it finally working in all the ways it's supposed to. 

So you'll just have to take my word on things, and hopefully I'll be able to drag Hubby out on Sunday for another attempt.

First some good news! The hock injections helped so much. As I suspected they would. He felt delightfully sound last weekend--about a week out from them. 

not good at posing

Unfortunately, he then came back out lame LF. The mother fucking LF where this whole shit show began a year ago.

I had a little cry about it (actually several little cries) because I feel like I deserved it, and then I came up with a new plan. Again.

We're going to do a bute trial for a week (again), the vet comes back out next Friday to inject the final spot in his right hock she wasn't able to do last time, we're going to let that cycle through, and if he's not 100% sound after that I'm going to bring a different vet practice in for a fresh set of eyes.

his injured chestnut ended up falling off on its
own and has healed uneventfully.
small wins!

I rode with MB yesterday and she agreed he was definitely off LF and not hind end any longer, and I was able to ride him to looking sound-er. Still lame, but less lame. We decided to go ahead with our lesson this morning because she thought based off of seeing that she could help me get him looking even better.

And she did! In fact, at the end of the lesson we were trotting left focusing on getting his neck pushed out without him getting too low and zooming off, and MB suddenly exclaimed, "Wait! I forgot he even came out looking weird because he looks normal now."

The focus was on getting him packaged up right off the bat because there was no point in warming up in a Training level frame if he was uneven in it. Put him together where he's more comfortable and do the warmup there, and then he can get let out at the end of the ride if he's feeling better.

He felt completely normal to the right at the trot, he needed the help to the left to get there--but we did get there! We did one lap of canter each way just to see what it looked like, and it was terrible to the right (RH), but fine to the left. 

MB still thought it looked like high up RH based on the canter, but obviously LF tracking left in the trot. We did inject the right stifle in 2023 when we first did his hocks, but it didn't make a noticeable difference so we never tried it again. I don't think that explains the LF though.

All things to bring to a new vet (my current vet is aware I'm looking for a second opinion and fully supports an outside consult, she's just as stumped as the rest of us), and hopefully we have everything else squared away enough that I can be like, "LOOK AT THE LF NOT ALL THE OTHER WEIRD ASS SHIT THIS HORSE DOES."

loves a good mud nap

While I'm glad we're able to mechanically force him into soundness, we played this game last year as well. And over the winter. I can help him look better, but clearly he's not actually getting better. We need to wrap this up and get to the root cause of it because I am overrrrr it. I can do rehab til the cows come home, but mentally I need a reason why I'm doing the rehab in the first place, and if this rehab is going to end with a sound, usable horse.

What's Going On With Opie

Spoiler alert if you don't want to read this whole thing: we still have no idea.

lol yay horses are fun!

Which makes this more of a what has been going on with Opie--a wrap up of the past year-ish of lameness(es?). 

my tack was getting very dusty so we went for a
trail walk in the double to justify deep cleaning it

Let's do a quick catch up of where we started with all of this last year.

• Right at this time in 2025, he had a massive knot/sore spot in his right back/rib area. He got a deep tissue massage which helped some, but chiro finally released it for good after adjusting the last two ribs and his pelvis area.
• He then went intermittently lame in the LF. We guessed stone bruise and put leather pads on.
• The pads didn't help at all. 
• We switched to aluminum wedges up front. That did seem to help.
• He would be completely sound some days, would work into soundness some days, and some days he would stay lame in the LF.
• He got another chiro adjustment that focused heavily on his left shoulder. The chiro felt he had hyperextended it.
• We treated for Lyme in the summer, and upon retest his numbers were negative.
• The LF lameness remained, while the hind end lameness developed.
• Sometimes on lame RH, sometimes only LH, sometimes both, usually with the LF as well but not always.
• Did shockwave mid-summer on the SI. This did help for a few months until it didn't.
• Injected his SI mid-October.
• Started "rehab" with tons of walking--in-hand and under saddle, lots and lots of poles included. 
• Progressed to trotting successfully. 
• Did a few rides with minimal canter.
• Had stretches where he was sound the whole ride. Some rides he would be sound by the end. Some rides he felt horrible the entire time.
• Blew a giant coronary band abscess in the RH late February. Was sound leading up to this, and sound for a week after. Has not been sound since.
• Farrier came to check on the foot after the abscess. He didn't grow any length to the hinds between his last two shoeing cycles and he usually grows a ton.
• She thinks the white line is separating from dealing with the trauma of supporting his shitty hind end. 
• There are a couple of shallow vertical cracks on that foot that she thought were probably pockets of gas that could be other abscesses lurking.
• She does not think it's likely that he will be able to return to being anything more than a companion/light trail riding horse.
• We changed his hind shoeing set-up to a rolled toe, full pads, and magic cushion mixed with copper sulfate to help with any infections in the foot.
• Farrier came back two weeks later to do his regular front reset, and while working on the LF, his RH had a severe three second spasm before it stopped and he caught himself.
• A week later, he got a deep tissue massage. 
• While longeing him quickly before he got worked on, after his walk warmup he went into the trot and the RH looked like the stifle was locking.
• While she was working on the right side of his neck, the RF also had a severe muscle spasm. 
• Otherwise though, the bodyworker thought he looked amazing. She gave me a posture exercise to use with the balance pads to fill in a bit of a void spot at the base of his neck.

this little spot here could get fluffed up

(That was possibly not such a quick recap.)

The bodyworker agreed with me that benign neglect is probably not going to help this horse. Pulling the shoes, chucking him in a field, not looking at him for a year, yada yada. If we do that, there's very little chance this horse is going to hold up to be able to bring back to the riding horse life. He needs the muscle, he needs the posture work, he needs the help to keep from not looking like garbage. And frustratingly, he looks SO GOOD right now. His weight and muscling are fantastic. 

He's just not sound.

Finally we get to yesterday's vet appointment!

He was scheduled for his annual hock injections (this is his fourth year getting those), and I wanted to also talk to her about EPM and PSSM.

I put him in the wash stall to clean his legs before the vet got there, and while scrubbing saw a nice thick dried blood trail down the back of his RH leg. Upon closer examination, I saw that he'd somehow managed to split his chestnut in half. And not like, oh let me just pull it off quick. OF COURSE IT WOULDN'T BE THAT EASY.

after i cleaned it, but before the vet saw it.
literally split down to the tissue underneath.

So that got added to her list as well. I love giving her special little surprises when she sees us.

She thought he had probably been kicked, and to just keep it cleaned and sprayed with alushield. Then on to the real stuff.

We started with a thorough neuro exam, including over poles as that was one of my concerns--sometimes when he goes over them it's like he's completely unaware of what his feet are supposed to be doing. Not just like he's an idiot that clobbers through them, it's like he legit cannot process what he's supposed to do. But of course yesterday in front of the vet he was perfect.

He passed all the other neuro stuff as well except circling to the right. He can't do it unless I'm right at his head pulling him around me, and even then his hind end is crab walking around in a very not normal manner. 

We did flexions which he was of course lame for the hind end ones, but not positive for anything in the front.

We talked PSSM2 which would be the most likely variant for a TB. The test for that is a muscle biopsy which we opted not to do (yet). She agreed there was no harm in pounding him with Vit E despite his blood work showing he looked good there. She wasn't sold on EPM as he looks--again--SO GOOD with his muscling and conditioning and she would expect him to look more unthrifty.

However, she did say if I wanted to treat for EPM regardless (and to not bother spending money on the testing as pretty much every horse in the area would test positive without ever being symptomatic) she would support that. 

I then had to bully her a little bit into going forward with the hock injections. With how lame he looked yesterday, and considering he's been on and off lame for months and months now, she didn't think the hock injections were the magic cure. I don't either, but I DO know that they have historically always really, really helped him and for fuck's sake why would we not do something for him we know will do him a little good. 

We ended up xraying the hocks for the first time since 2023. Joint spaces still looked really good, the miniscule amount of arthritis he has had remodeled some, but nothing exciting.

We got three out of the four spots done successfully--the outside of the right (the one we really wanted of course) she kept hitting a blood vessel and didn't want to risk contamination but trying a third time to get a needle in. She said she would come back out in two weeks if I thought he responded at all to them to try that one again.

big mad he couldn't dive directly into his hay
three minutes after finishing his hocks. bro
blows through sedation like it's nothing

Right now the plan is to wait and see what the hock injections do for him. Add the Vit E. And then decide do we want to spend $1k on a month of EPM treatment, or $1k to go to Cornell for a consult when we don't even know what direction to point them? I'll probably first shell out half that and get in contact with another vet in the area that has a lameness locator to see if she can't narrow things down for us. Both my vet and farrier aren't confident that's going to reveal a lot since he's lame so many vague areas, but we've already wasted this much money, right?

The vet and I did scratch our heads for a minute and toss out the idea: is this one lameness we can't get to the bottom of....or am I just the unluckiest mother fucker alive and for the past year he's been rolling from one problem to the next and sometimes those problems trip over one another and spawn new problems and some are interconnected but some aren't they just never seem to end. The day before she came, he looked pretty sound. Then he wounded his chestnut and was very sensitive to that and looked like shit moving. Because his leg hurt from being kicked and injured? On top of being due for his hocks? Like where does it start and where does it end and start again?

Who knows. Cross your fingers he just really needed his hocks to get done, and maybe he's a six months between injections horse now instead of a year, and he just needs a boost of Vit E. Wouldn't that be a nice reprieve? 

WW: He's Not Dead Yet

I don't know, guys. There are new things to say, but they're also the same things I keep saying. The horse is sort of sound one day, not sound the next, definitely sound here and there--rinse and repeat. My next benchmark is going to see how he reacts to getting his hocks done at the end of the month because at that point I'll have done pretty much everything I plan on doing intervention-wise.

In the meantime, here's a pictural wrap up of all the things Sir has been busy with, posted in whatever willy nilly way blogger pleased. 

monthly pemf appointment is always a highlight

he got microchipped (trying to manifest a return
to usef competition) during his dental appt so ofc
we had to snag his baby pics

just a smaller, darker version of the grumpy donkey he is today

somehow snagged 3rd level champ with our 2 whole 
shows we did last year

first ride in the outdoor for the year! he wasn't particularly sound,
but happy to stroll around the property doing splash parties the past 2 days

continues to have the best time with his besties

good thing they have the mares next door to keep watch since there
isn't a brain cell among them

doing a ton of posture work to try to help him help himself

got a new shoeing package behind:
rolled toe, full pads, magic cushion with copper sulfate

brought about by this monster abscess that farrier thinks
is a sign of his feet starting to give out supporting his shitty hind end.
lots more on that front eventually--she basically told me to find him a
companion home because she doesn't think he'll be sound again.
but i don't think we're quite there yet!

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.