Grieving

 solo ride... chatted about fleck

Another long walk

 Day off work. First farm only had one, second farm cancelled. so yay day off

Took dan to ashland for a Bro Hack with marvin and kelli. long walk. no water treadmill because someone else had the water complex. trotted over a few logs and then went to play in arena for a few minutes. kelli said he looked lovely.. nice slow tempo, which let him rock back and be soft in his neck. he felt good. A bit "earthbound". very responsive but... not as energetic. Like... I inhaled and he trotted (without me kicking) but he wasn't... snappy! 

Half pass to the left is hard.. because i can't turn my butt that way? Or because he doesn't want to load the right hind? Both? 

Came home and got lunch ready for fleck. Gave him his food and then gave the others a snack of sanfoin pellets and... fleck died. 

dan was upset. Very worried... concerned... then stood guard over him, even when the girls left. Didn't want to leave him alone. snuggled with me and even talked to me a bit. I'm so sorry sweet boy... i'm heartbroken too. 

Solo hack

 Farrier came for everyone else....

took dan for an afternoon hack. Had the farm to ourselves, but did stop and chat with caroline. tried to take Oliver's apple through the window shade screen. 

lovely hack. lots of trotting. 

started in jump arena with trot poles and then played with haunches in and shoulder in and half pass. Worked on my position

then long hack. trotting in grassy paths too. 

finished tiny bit in arena practicing SI/HI/HP again. But tired boy.

Good pony though!

Vet and farrier day. And cookie day

 Missing three shoes this morning... doh!

vet visit.. still a bit lame at trot per dr. barrow. but palpation feels fantastic. opted to not ultrasound... just start trotting (for real) but hold off on canter for a month or so and see how he does. also suggested shockwaving him. duh!

foot rads... good angles, but maybe long in the toe. otherwise good. yay. 

home. 

patrick came and reshod him (two days early) and fixed Fleck. 

shockwaved  (and right before I got started Funny bit through the extension cord and shocked herself and the shockwave turned off. Thought she broke it.. luckily it was just the extension cord (not the one attached to the machine) and the machine turned back on once i plugged it back in. And Funny was fine. 

begging for cookies at dinner. Seemed happier and less grumpy. (pain??)_

 

Bummer

Blech... Today is a not so great day emotionally. I am hormonal and a bit cranky. I got up early for my lessons and have been running non-stop and my lessons were good but hard. And I'm all up in my feelings about things. 

 

So I was torn about joining Kelli for a ride. I was half tempted to not ride Dan at all, but... also, wanted to. And if I did ride, I really wanted to just hack him because.. no point in doing arena work yet. But then that meant i had to haul to Ashland for a third time again today... which was the second time that I've done that this week... And that's a lot. And I really need to bushhog.... But, I decided since the weather was cooperating.. I would ride. 

So I went and fetched him and... he's missing a hind shoe. Man...... I probably should have just turned him back out. But, I was now sort of committed and I had talked myself into it by telling myself that I wanted to see if the ride yesterday made him dramatically worse or not really worse? So I told myself that the ground was soft enough, he had enough foot, and we would stick to the non-rocky places and just see. So we hauled to Ashland.

When I got there I noticed that his front shoe was slightly twisted so I picked it up to see how bad and... half the shoe flopped off. Sigh... So I had to pull that one. So now he's missing a diagonal pair. Okay.. probably really shouldn't be here and could have called it quits and went home. And probably should have... But I was already here....

  

So I tacked up (bareback pad) and we headed to the arena where Kelli was. She did a little bit more work and I wanted to feel how Dan felt so I did some lateral work at the walk. He wasn't thrilled about it... then I picked up the trot. And he actually felt pretty darn good considering he was missing two shoes. I don't think he felt any worse from the day before, just... now a bit sore in the feet that were missing shoes. So.. we played a tiny bit and then I tried the canter again. Same thing... the left lead is fine but the right lead sucked. Okay.. well... poo. :( But... at least he's not worse. I guess. Although in my hormonal state, I was pretty darn bummed that he's still so broken at the canter.  

We headed out for a short hack. I meant to just go around the lake but then decided that taking the slightly longer way down by the green lake would avoid the rocks more, so we ended up hacking longer than I meant. And of course going down the hill to the green lake was super rocky and fairly steep so 1/4 the way down I got off since he was starting to stumble. I was already contemplating getting off when I saw the rocks anyways. But before then, he had fun splashing in the lake and working that shoulder atrophy. 

 

I still felt bad though. Sorry bubs. Not only am I pushing you too fast for your stifle, now I'm riding you with two missing shoes. Hopefully he won't bruise or abscess. But he's also tearing around the pasture at home, so....

And... early this morning, when I went to fetch Lyric for her 8 am lesson, Danimal was sleeping. He did NOT want to get up. ha ha...