August Update

That's really how it goes, doesn't it? A once a month update....shameful.

On the one hand a lot has been going on and on the other, not much. Shortly after camp, I was turning the horses out for the night. I don't know if I did something or if Angel saw something, but she spooked. I was leading her out by her halter, so when she spooked, she reared back taking me with her. This is my #1 recurrent injury: a horse rearing back and me getting my arm virtually yanked out of my shoulder socket. It's like a whiplash and hurts for days. This time was no different, I couldn't lift my arm up or hold anything with a weight to it without my shoulder screaming. Not sure what I did, I rarely ever go to the doctor for one I'm cheap (I'll admit it when it comes to me, I'd rather skip and splurge on my horses) and two I don't like to sound crazy. I learned a long time ago that regaling the nursing staff with detailed stories of previous horse related injures, like they can't just look it up in my file, and that fact that I continue to do it, makes me sound crazy.

After I had healed up and was ready to ride, Dino got hurt. I'm still not sure what he did, I had gone down to feed in the morning, the horses had been in their stalls, and Dino had fresh blood on his front left. It looked like a puncture wound, but wasn't and it came up from the bottom. Nothing in his stall revealed the source for the injury. The 'cut' itself was between the inferior check ligament and the deep digital flexor tendon, right above the suspensory ligament. Dino's leg was extremely swollen and tender. At first I cleaned it with betadine solution and treated it with Well-Horse and continued to keep it clean for days and it just wouldn't get any better. Not only am I cheap, I'm also a hypochondriac when it comes to my horses and I was slowly convincing myself that Dino had a flesh eating bacteria. So I changed tactics; gave Dino bute (1 gram was upped to 2 grams) and applied fura-zone and that's when the heat showed up in his leg. Cold hosing didn't make it any better and stall rest made it even worse, so I switched tactics and applied cool pack green jelly. By this time the 'cut' had healed with the help of blue lotion, but the swelling, tenderness and heat had remained. Within a 48 hours of using the jelly, Dino's leg returned to normal and he returned to light work on the third day. The unusual part in all of this, Dino was never lame but I certainly was not going to try and take any chances.

Dino's leg on August 8.


Dino's leg on August 31.

Dino has now returned to light work, not because he's sore or anything, but because we have nothing else on the agenda this year, shows or clinics, and winter is coming so I'm backing off the workload now. Right around three times a week he's being worked and currently only on the lunge line. I'm really focusing on picking up the right lead in the canter and keeping the consistency. We're about a 60, maybe 65%, consistent in getting the lead the first time everytime. When we get to 80%, I'll go back to riding him and work on getting the right lead under-saddle.

Which then takes me to the inevitable yearly question: "To board or not to board?"