Still walking. Still lame.

We're three weeks to the day since the chiro appointment that knocked Opie seriously out of whack--whether it was from something the chiro did or just something the chiro aggravated that Opie did to himself. 

He's maybe better than he was, but he's certainly not in any good shape either. 

He doesn't do the falling out/down thing with the LH almost ever anymore--maybe once in three rides--but it's turned into a consistently visible lameness at anything faster than a walk. BM wanted me to try cantering him before moving on to trotting, and while that didn't make sense to me, I asked for it for the first time yesterday and he physically could not do it. I even tried to just urge him forward into any canter at all, forget a dressage canter, and I pulled him up after less than half the arena. 

He can trot, but since the trot is where you evaluate for lameness it's obvious he's not comfortable in that gait either. I've trotted him one lap each direction twice now, and he was worse this morning than he was yesterday. A barn mate was riding with me and stopped to watch. He was almost head bobbing every now and then and she said it looked like he was stepping short with the RF to compensate for the LH. He was better to the right than the left, but off both ways. 

So is the not falling out thing an actual improvement, or has it just morphed into always lame instead of lame for those steps his hip was dropping? With only walking I don't know if he's been this type of lame for these past two weeks or if this has developed within the past few days.

I'm giving him the rest of the week off from riding because I mentally cannot. Plus his expensive AF ice wraps are useless AF. Unless he magically makes a giant leap forward in soundness, this is going to become a vet visit as soon as I have the money for it. 

Fuck you, 2020.

Ride Notes: The Stifle. Probably.

Well, more like Walk Notes than Ride Notes, but here we are.

"y u no bring me in for the riding?"

To recap the time line:

• Last Tuesday Opie got adjusted by the chiro. He saw/felt there was a stifle issue. We decided to do a week of descending Bute dosage, starting at two grams and going down half a gram every two days. 
• The next time I rode him was on the weekend. I rode him lightly both days. He continuously fell out from the left stifle.
• I didn't ride Monday. On Tuesday morning BM came out to assess wtf was going on while I was in the saddle.

always with the head tilt

While waiting for BM to arrive--no more than ten minutes--I got on Opie and started walking around and doing some walk-halt transitions. He didn't want to halt square by putting full weight on the LH. I could get him to do it if I shifted him around enough, but he wasn't willing to do it on his own. He was still falling out in that leg probably once every other lap.

When BM got there she was able to clearly see it from the ground as well. We talked through what I was feeling, what she was seeing, and the progression of how this played out. 

• She noted that his muscling was very even so it probably wasn't something he had been dealing with for awhile and was compensating for. 
• The likely guess that made the most sense to both of us was that he was either being a fool in the field with his friends and slipped (not even remotely out of the ordinary), or he was rolling in his stall and torqued it while getting up...possibly using his anti-casting boards and banked shavings to unstick himself. 
• The chiro then exacerbated the issue--obviously not intentionally--and now he's feeling the effects from that.

We talked about what a vet could do since the stifle is a tricky area to image, and agreed it probably wasn't going to make a difference to wait it out for a bit. I'm going to do a few weeks of walk only. He finishes his Bute this weekend, and I'll switch him over to Bute-less because even though I just started him on Outlast I don't want to kill his stomach any more than I have to. I also have Ice Horse stifle icing suspenders on the way because icing never hurt anything. 

If, after a month of that routine, he's still not in a good way, obviously the vet will be out. But the good news was with the continued Bute and time off when I got on him Thursday to walk him, he only fell out once as I turned him across the diagonal. 

riding or not, always gets the butt scratches

In the meantime, BM passed off Mo onto me which I know is mostly because she wants his crazy ass back in work so he's sane when she has the time to start riding again. Whatevs, he was a good boy for me this morning and at least it's more exciting than walking.

lucked out and was getting off right when the attack
chihuahua appeared

Opie also got his feet done this morning, so I've spent ALL THE MONEY I HAVE on him. Please do good things with it, sir.

got to hang out with farrier's puppy so no real loss

Chiro Appointment Notes

Opie's chiro appointment did not go at all as expected. The LH is always the problem leg, and I figured he'd also need a couple of adjustments in his back and poll as those are pretty standard Riding Horse areas of abuse. I was right on the latter two accounts--although Chiro said his back wasn't in too bad of shape at all, just a couple of the normal spots that needed quick fixes. 

Then we get to the LH. Usually the consensus is that his hips have gotten knocked out of alignment somehow someway and the left hip ends up higher. Also the case this time, but after a whole lot of pushing and shoving and lifting and pulling, Chiro had me walk him down and back and declared that he didn't think there was much he could do from his end. He thought we were looking more at a stifle issue. He dug around both stifles but didn't find uneven swelling or soreness.

We decided to do a week of descending bute treatment: two days of 2gs, two days of 1.5, to 1 to half. The theory we were playing with was maybe there's some stifle and/or SI muscle and/or soft tissue "injury" (more irritation/aggression of the muscle fibers is what we were thinking), and to see if the bute helped with that at all. I kicked that off on Saturday which is also when I rode for the first time after he got adjusted.

Ok, wow. 

He was a fucking mess. He still is a fucking mess.

All the sudden his left stifle keeps slipping which makes him trip all over himself. Something he most decidedly was not doing before he got worked on. 

I rode him both days this weekend, simple w/t/c rides on long straight lines with a couple of circles and shallow leg yields thrown in to see how they felt. As stated: not great.

I have a lesson with BM scheduled for tomorrow so I'll see what her opinion is because quite frankly I'm a bit flummoxed at this point. Bobby had horrible stifles, but it wasn't sudden onset oh shit they're falling off your body sort of thing. They were locking stifles coming off the track that upgraded to a weakness that I just always worked on strengthening. 

I had planned on having the vet do a full physical work up this spring before showing started to address any issues--thinking hocks were probably going to have to be injected or some such thing--but maybe I'll have to move that up. Budget allowing of course because he also needs his teeth checked again next month, his insanely expensive teeth supplement runs out shortly after that if the dentist thinks it did him any good, and also my truck is dead for real. Plus I'd like to take lessons, he needs his feet done on a five to six week schedule, he eats two expensive add-ons aside from his magnificent mushrooms, yada yada. 

Owning horses is great.

Juuust kidding

 After two good rides in a row, on Friday we went back to the shit show of Ask More, Get Less. 

A lot of it was my fault for going in without a clear game plan for the ride which left our warm up disjointed and relatively useless. Always a good way to start things. Things just never really got flowing, although we were able to accomplish some really good walk-canter-walk transitions x1000. However, I started to take those across the diagonal ala the simple change in 2-3 and Opie instantly went into flying change rage monster--you know, without the actual change.

I ended the ride once we were able to accomplish the simple change across the diagonal, but I got us there after working through violent rearing by breaking everything down to the walk and building back up. At this point that feels excessive. 

Saturday afternoon I begrudgingly climbed back on with no goal besides No Drama. Fortunately that was accomplished. 

He wasn't too interested in big stretching, but I got him going around in a Training/First frame while keeping the thrusters going. More w/c/w transitions, some canters down the center line through a fun pole chute A had set up earlier, and then we finished popping over an 18" vertical--which was done with much panache. 

leaving on sunday after confo pics. dopie says,
don't go need more snacks first.

The chiro comes out tomorrow, and I'm on BM's wait list for lessons so hopefully those will get kicked off soon. My truck is in a bad way right now so hauling out for lessons is looking extremely doubtful at the moment.