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.