Flatlined

One small step upward, one long plateau in front of us. Fortunately, there's nothing better than a NY winter to do absolutely nothing but grind it out. 

Opie got all last week off to chill (as much as Opie ever chills), and then I popped him on the longe over the weekend to see if there was any noticeable improvement. Besides warring with himself over manners vs rumpus time, he looked super sound w/t!

would like to do the bolting but knows we don't pull on the longe

settled for much striking just so i knew he was crazyyy

much prancing as well tho

That was obviously encouraging; as well as him rocketing off the hind legs, no sign of the LF lameness any longer either. On Monday and Tuesday I got back on him for two fifteen minute rides. The first one was exactly what I was looking for--he was launching me out of the saddle and begging me to let him do more work. 

The second ride, I turned him out with no sheet on because we had one day of no rain and it was supposed to warm up into the sixties. However, it was still in the 40s in the morning and he has a horrible time with being cold after Lyme, so he started off the ride super tight. MB watched him trot after I was like, "Omfggggg, he's back to being lame!" and assured me he just looked like winter Opie that hadn't had his pre-ride BOT time. Once he got some more trotting in, his stride evened out and he felt normal again. 

So important note to self, even in the fall, if it's chilly and he isn't already dressed in his jammies, he needs to marinate in them for awhile first. 

post-ride red light while refusing to eat because that
was also a thing this week i think i've finally sorted out

Wednesday, I popped him on the longe quick. He rolled/knuckled over his LH ankle at the trot once, and then when he picked up the canter going left he was fine for the first few strides and then non-weight bearing in the LH. Which was certainly alarming to say the least, and he did the exact same thing the weekend before I took him down to the clinic. The vet had no insights. One of my friends thought his stifle might have locked for a few strides, but I'm super familiar with locking stifles and it didn't look like that to me, and he immediately went back to normal dropping into the trot. MB thought SI still, and he's weak AF, and maybe we just don't look at the canter for at least a month--which was my thought as well, so we're just going to pretend it never happened until we get a lot more muscle on this thing.

It did, of course, lead me even further down the SI rabbit hole (as well as: the start of DSLD, he's severed his extensor tendon, his pelvic symphysis is damaged to the point he'll never be a riding horse again, etc etc). That wasn't a fun journey let me tell you lolol 0/10 recommend.

In the "horses are the worst" universe, MB actually dealt with a very similar situation with her Arabx last winter. Weird traveling hind end lameness with random unrelated front end lameness, none of it really showing up on imaging, and never getting an actual answer for what was going on. She spent the winter doing the most slow and boring rehab with him, and he came out the summer looking the best this horse has ever looked in his life. 

So MB is my inspiration in this. If I can keep this horse alive for the winter, there might be hope he can return to being a useful member of society next year after all.

every day he is determined to be retired at 12.
yesterday was a fat hock from a bunch of scrapes.

I did lesson yesterday for a very exciting 20 minutes. MB gave me a ton of low-key lateral/flexion exercises to do at the walk, and at the trot she held my hand and told me we did not need to do a traditional warm up with this horse. We're going to have to think outside the box and work with whatever he's giving in that moment, and whatever he responds well to. He's SOOO out of shape on top of compensating for being lame for months, it's going to take a hot minute before we even think about doing normal horse things.

Fingers crossed none of us lose our minds (or our soundness) in the next couple of months!

Upward Trajectory

To be fair, it's not hard to make upward progress when the bar is set so very low.

accustomed to a standard of living regardless
of his work status

But actually! He has genuinely been improving in the past two weeks. The week after he got his aluminum wedges put on, we stuck to the tack walking protocol. Mostly strolling around on trail, but still doing our "put your hind end under yourself so it doesn't completely disintegrate off your body" work in the ring. Each day he felt better in the LF, but I was starting to feel it behind the saddle. Which honestly was fine because he already had his SI injection scheduled to address the behind the saddle issues. 

I brought Hubby out one day to get video for me to see if what I was feeling matched up with what things looked like. The good news is, the LF did look significantly better--although I can still see it--but wowza, the hind end picked that day to be completelyyyy useless.

still knows his job with zero input at least

So that was the end of the tack walking until his injections. I didn't have a problem sitting on him if I felt like I was helping him and he was coming out feeling better than when he started, but that stopped being the case. Instead we went to the ground. Ghetto butt band secured, we worked on massive circles on the longe over walk and trot poles.

standing wraps work just as well as expensive rubber resistance bands

By this Monday, he was honestly looking really good. For him. In comparison to the last two months. Let's not get ahead of ourselves. He looked 90% sound at the trot, still maybe could see something LF, and the hind end wasn't as loose and through as it could be. But it made me hopeful the injections are the last missing piece of the puzzle to get this thing back into work for longer than a couple weeks at a time. 

pre-injection pemf because what even is money lol

Tuesday morning we hauled down to the clinic for stabbies. Unfortunately for one of my favorite barn kids from our last barn who now works at the clinic, it hasn't been warm enough for a thorough bubble bath in a minute, so she got to settle in for the tedious task of a pre-scrub before the surgical scrub. Opie might be permanently stained brown from iodine at this point, but at least he has the most sterilized butt cheeks in WNY. 

can't wait until he gets back into work so i can
body clip him
#manifesting

He gets to spend the rest of the week hanging out doing nothing before slowly starting back into work next week. Hopefully the mysterious LF lameness also continues to disappear. No idea why the shoe change helped so much when all his diagnostics were so clean, but don't look a gift shoe in the foot. Or something. And his Lyme re-test came back squeaky clean so we can't even try to blame that. 

Fingers crossed we're done with vet visits for the year!

we had to wait 30 mins for the horse in front of us
to come out of sedation but sir rage monster had zero
problems waking right back up and bestowing his side
eye upon all of us. this is why he has a special cocktail
recipe in his file for sleepies

Useless

So. As promised, zero riding updates since the last post. 

We had our vet appointment on Monday (because obviously I wasn't going to get away with not having the vet out), a chiro appointment a week and a half prior to that, and another farrier appointment this morning. 

Surely, after all that, we would have some answers and a concrete plan of attack, right? I mean, SURELY.

"you must be new here."

Let's start with the chiro appointment. RW spent over an hour on Opie, front to back, up down and sideways. His main takeaways were--as expected--the SI/pelvis was out again. Right side worse than left. Also though, his left shoulder was waaay out of whack. He said it was basically hyperextended--the scapula was pulled too far forward. 

Having had zero success with the leather pads that we were hoping would help a suspected stone bruise out, and not seeing anything that would lend credence to a soft tissue injury in the entire distal limb, it was one of those things like, "Well, why not the shoulder?" I put that on the never-ending list to discuss with the vet.

He had an entire week on bute last week and got ridden once, in a walk lesson last Thursday. As with all his scattered tack walk rides, he started off feeling....wobbly? behind. But you help him put himself together, and the hind end comes sound. Total nonevent, no complaints. And he doesn't feel lame in the walk LF, but obviously he is lame so walk only is all we've been doing. MB offered to video the ride to show the vet because you put him on the longe line and holy balls, does he ever look a hot fucking mess behind. But he can most definitely not look that way under saddle. But of course I was like, "Nahhhh, it'll be fine. I'll just tell Dr A."

"should have listened to the boss lady."

Our vet visit is the best excuse to use bullet points! And we have to take our wins where we can!

• Pulled blood for a lyme titer. Planned recheck after he'd finished his treatment earlier this summer. 
• Watched him go on the longe and was immediately like, "Yes, the LF, but what is going on with the hind end?!"
• It's fineeeee. I'd show you video but I don't have any lol.
• Agreed to do the SI injection at the clinic. She asked if I wanted to shockwave him again today since that helped him (short term) the last time, but ya girl is not made of money. Even though Opie seems to think so.
• Blocked the LF foot. Still lame.
• Did the next set up of blocks. Still lame.
• Ultrasound and xrays of the shoulder. Clean as a whistle.
• Xrays of all four feet. I did want to see if NPA was an issue in the hind feet since that can be a big factor in hind end issues, and his hind feet are a little bullnosed. 
• NPA not an issue. Tiniest bit of coffin bone arthritis, but nothing to be concerned about.
• Tiniest bit of pastern arthritis in the front. Dr A said with how much of a princess he is, she wouldn't have had a problem recommending injections for the LF for that if he had come sound after the block, but since he hadn't, she didn't think that it was bothering him any. 
• Otherwise, angles and sole depth and all that jazz looked delightful. 
• Xrayed the old set splints in the front legs.
• He's had them forever, but she wanted to rule out the possibility of a re-break. Non-issue, they looked completely fine.
• Ultrasound the LF soft tissues. 
• Totally clean, no issues at all.

In conclusion, if you did a PPE on this horse without actually watching him move, he'd pass with flying colors!

buy the horse, not the xrays is the opposite of the
problem we have here.

That's actually super fucking annoying though, because after all that, she wasn't able to identify where of why he has been lame for two months. 

So the plan is to take him down to the clinic on the 14th for his SI injection. Keep tack walking him and see if continuing to help his hind end under saddle helps alleviate the front end lameness. (And also bring her a video of u/s work.) Her best guess is maybe we have it backwards: instead of the front end lameness (which did appear first) causing the hind end to become more sore through compensating, the hind end being a constant and forever shit show has caused front end lameness.

I dumped this pile of essentially useless information on my farrier like the good client and friend that I am, and said, "Do whatever you want, I don't really give a shit anymore."

She decided we might as well experiment a little bit since we had some time before the SI injection and put him in aluminum wedges. And to be honest, he walked down the aisle after that looking a little footy lolololol. But whatever. We'll see what we're working with tomorrow, and she can always come back and give him his plain steel again. I didn't have the brain power to address it this morning. 

I'm actually excited to be given the command to more intentionally work him at the walk, as the random rides I had been doing before have given us tons to work on. Like, we actually have really good turns on the haunches now!

Anyway. I'll be taking my small wins where I can. Maybe I'll not feel like the world's saddest panda at some point and do a walk ride post.