Dressage from the ground

Over the weekend, we had a mini clinic at the barn that we all participated in, and that we all were humbled by. One of the boarders has approximately one million world champion titles to her name in showmanship and is an active judge, and she offered to teach us all some in-hand skills.

Obviously I was all aboard. My horse might not be able to trot around under saddle soundly (more on that later), but surely we were going to nail standing still! I am also--not to brag--quite qualified at trotting my horse out for people as he sees the vet about once a week lolol.

Spolier alert: we knew nothing.

trying to hide alllll the conformation flaws

The biggest takeaway I got was how similar it was our under-saddle work. It was basically in-hand dressage. Horse is gumby in the neck and you don't have him pointed in a straight line? When he halts his haunches swing out and he's crooked AF. Don't come into your halt with enough impulsion? No chance of halting square. Transitions jerky because your horse isn't paying attention/on the aids? Judges are going to mark down for that. 

Gah it was so interesting! Every flaw she pointed out, I was like, "Yes! He does that u/s too!"

just like in dressage there are 100 ways to eliminate yourself without
even realizing you've done it

There's a breed show at the end of July where they have Amateur Handler classes that we're trying to manifest our attendance at, so we covered both how to mask Opie looking like a crooked wiener dog and how to show him off on the triangle.

• He's cow hocked so the wider I could get him to stand behind the straighter he looked. However, we had to work within his comfort level because that's not a normal/natural position for him. I do think this will help strengthen him though. And she suggested working on him straddling two poles laid side by side since he's already mastered the single pole.
• 
  

• 

  a good boi for trying to be a wide boi
  
  

  
  
• In showmanship, you work off squaring them up off of wherever the RH lands because that's the leg you'll pivot off of. Opie's RH likes to land well underneath him (tying into whatever the fuck is going on back there), so that already wasn't going to work. Fortunately we're not aiming for showmanship rules so we had more leniency in standing him up.
• Don't hug the cones--the cones are lava! Even a sound horse is going to take a "lame" looking step or two if you whip them around the cones. Opie has no wiggle room there so big, sweeping turns with the cones as a general guide. 
• The right hand is always the leading hand up by the bit.
• Once the judge passes the girth line, then you can move around to follow them. Don't block their line of sight.
• Position yourself so you're facing the point of your horse's shoulder. Give them room, don't crowd into them. 
• To get smoother forward transitions, push the right hand forward and the horse should immediately move off. No tugging them forward! The downward from trot to walk should be a FORWARD transition, don't just quit. Into the halt, plant your right foot and stop. The horse stops with you. If they don't, they come back to where you've stopped, don't get dragged forward with them. 

getting him stood up correctly made it look like we shortened his
back by about 4 vertebrae which was needed when you're a limo

I'm sure there's more I'm forgetting, and honestly I could have been out there for another hour gobbling up everything she was saying. 10/10 recommended cross training experience, especially with someone who is so educated.

"hello, standing normal is hard plz give candies"

In other news, Riding Opie has continued to be consistent in his inconsistencies. Wednesday the LH was a little sticky right off the bat, but some lateral work at the walk loosened everything up and he was sound at the trot afterwards. Thursday we had a full lesson that he felt great in the whole ride. Friday my friend rode him and he was lame-ish LF. Saturday he was lame LF. Today he was lame LH.

No idea what the trigger is or the cause. Hopefully Friday's vet appointment brings something new to the table.

Joke's On Me

This is what I get for putting things out into the universe. Nothing good ever comes from it.

both of us in the throes of a menty b

On Saturday Opie had his saddle fitting appointment. You know, now that he was sound and being ridden more than one ride every month.

He was obviously super lame for it.

We snuck in enough trot work to check the saddle after she gave it a fluff and evened everything out--which he was, for once, easy to please over--but the LF was gimping away.

I gave him Sunday off, and then tacked him up Monday with the mindset that if he was lame again I'd give in and just go ahead and call the new vet. He was frustratingly not lame. I wouldn't say he was 100%, but he felt alright enough that I continued to waffle over if I should continue waiting it out or not.

they're getting switched over to their grass field
and everyone is feeling the spring crazies

Fortunately (I guess lolol), after doing a lovely walk warmup this morning, as soon as I picked up the trot he was Dead Fucking Lame. So lame! LF? Sure. LH? Certainly! 

So I got off and called the next vet in the queue. I debated about who I wanted to come out. Between the racetrack, eventing/hunt country, and our proximity to Cornell we're actually pretty lucky when it comes to availability. What I'm most anxious about is bringing in someone new that won't listen to what I say. Like yes, his hind end is shit, and yes it can be looked at to be improved, but for the love of fucking god someone figure out this fucking LF.

I ended up settling on the track vet. For one, they're looking at a million lame thoroughbreds a day. I know they've seen some shit. But also Hubby's cousin works for their office so I knew I could trauma dump on her over the phone and get some insider trading by way of stealing a cancellation appointment for next Friday when they're booking out all the way into mid-June. 

some days he is clean, some days MB sends me video
of him being jet black 5mins after he's been turned out
with his tail bag hanging in shreds.

I'm not going to lie. I'm super frustrated. Actually I'm feeling rather pissed. It's been a YEAR. I have done everything we can think of and we've come up with absolutely nothing. The tech at my current vet was reading down the CVS receipt length list of imaging to send over to the new vet to look at and we were both giggling in a "holy shit wtf" sort of way. How have we done so much and this horse is still broken?!

Hopefully a fresh set of eyes will bring in some new ideas. Obviously I scratched our show at the end of the month, and while that's not the end of the world the situation as a whole is making me feeling resentful over my horse's continued useless existence. Objectively I know it's not his fault, but it is like, throw me a fucking bone here dude. 

Fingers crossed for next week! 

Nonlinear

In typical Opie fashion, we can't do things normally or easily. 

He was like, "I'm sound!"

But then, "I'm not sound!"

But also, "But not not sound enough to call a vet!"

While still being all, "You should definitely go home and cry after riding me lolol."

a perfect angel, has no idea what i'm talking about

Because really what else is there to do besides continuing to plug away--the whole fail forward thing--with my vet's blessing my plan was to just put it to him. Either break permanently already or let's fucking move on with our lives here, sir. 

Fortunately all his stupid body parts seem to finally have recalibrated and we're (for the moment at least) clocking along in regular work. 

With his return to First level at the end of the month, we've been working on all the things we have to hit in those tests. This includes coming back from a lengthened canter without flinging our head in the air or refusing to slow down in the slightest, shallow counter-canter loops without anticipating changes, leg yields without flinging ourselves sideways so fast that we've reached the other side of the ring in three strides, and most importantly all the speedy transitions that come from actual test riding.

i put him back in his fresh off the track opie setup.
he goes delightfully in a full cheek and figure 8
because apparently he's still a feral 4yo.

After the initial excitement over staring down the diagonal in the canter, the canter work has actually been the easiest to school. We've done a lot of the shallow serpentine work with MB over the years already, so he's familiar with doing that movement. He got told he was the smartest, bestest boy in the whole world a few times for quietly coming back to the trot at X instead of leaping through the air, and now he takes great pride in that transition. 

Where we're still getting a little spicy is moving out of the walk. We've been doing a lot of free walk to medium walk and back again to try to convince him that we don't always pick up the canter as soon as we're done with the free walk. But also at some point we do have to pick the canter back up again, grossly at First it's out of the trot so then we also have to sneak that transition in. There's lots to overthink when you're a tiny brained Opie Horse, and honestly First level has to be my least favorite to ride. 

The last couple of rides, I've really been working on the quality of the gaits themselves. Now that he's feeling stronger and sounder, I feel comfortable holding him to a little higher standard. Which is good because when he gets tense and distracted I can't even steer this thing let alone sit comfortably on him. 99% of the time the answer is renvers. So we do a lot of renvers. The other 1% of the time is just riding out his tantrum until he gets over it and magically remembers how to horse. 

how he looks when i insist my right seat bone
can be on his right back

I'm excited to have so much homework to do finally. While spending the winter walking my horse was great and all (it wasn't that great), I do selfishly actually enjoy riding and showing and fucking doing things. 

Now here's a little Opie story to leave you all with so you can appreciate his level of drama on a daily basis.

drama llama on alert

I brought Opie in for his PEMF appointment Tuesday afternoon. He met me at the gate like usual and I chucked him in his stall for a quick groom while we waited our turn. I started cleaning out my trunk when I was done with that, and as always his stall door was wide open because he's too dumb to leave it. He kept acting like he wanted to lie down and just like he was the sleepiest horse in the whole world. The bodyworker finally came over to our side of the barn and once he was in the crossties he used them to hold his head and neck up.

He was being sleepy but normal to start, and then he started shifting all over which eventually led to trying to throw himself on the ground. Now normally I would have been like, "Oh no this horse is colicking let me take care of that!" But it was Opie so I was like, you might be colicking.....but there's just as big of a chance that you're having a total toddler tantrum about wanting to take a nap and being inconvenienced by getting body work instead. 

He eventually got so insistent about wanting to lay down that we had to stop PEMF and put him in his stall where he cycled between throwing himself down and parking out. UGH OK FINE YOU MIGHT BE COLICY. I got on the phone with the vet while I brought the rest of the barn in (timed his drama perfectly to when I needed to do barn chores), and they said to give him some bananmine and if he hadn't improved in 45 minutes they'd send someone our way. 

By the time I got back over to his stall with drugs (absolutely not in a hurry because I'm sorry Opie but I was not convinced you were in dire straits) he was quietly laying down sleeping. I shoved banamine down his throat, skipped his dinner grain, and within ten minutes he was back on his feet being his usual ragey self.

"where is my dinner and the rest of my pemf sesh?!"

My guess is he had a little bout of gas that he thought he was dying from. However there is still the strong possibility that he really just wanted a nap. He can never be normal about anything.

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?