This is a new one for me. I’m writing a blog post at midnight in the lounge at my barn. By the time y’all are reading this it will be morning and hopefully everything will be mostly right as rain again. Until then, let me write a little bit about my evening and how I came to be laying on the barn couch at midnight with my laptop. This is going to be a long one with few pictures, just…
Once upon a time I had a green horse. Rides were somewhat unpredictable, and some lessons I could do my best and things would still kinda suck overall because he was green. Then I took weekly (or twice weekly) lessons for two years. I added a weekly training ride. We went to shows with the only goal being “get around”. We did more stuff at home on our non-lesson days. Slowly it started coming together. Simon has always been a…
I’ve been trying to push our flatwork up to the next level for a few reasons. First, let me give you a brief synopsis of how I usually hack my horse. Wow you’re lazy today. Well, lazy means I’m not getting run away with! I can do lazy… I’ll call it “long and low”. Well we’ve done a few laps now, I should do circles or leg yields or something. That was moderately successful. Those hard hard. Let’s canter! Two…
Earlier this week we talked about Simon pants, I was a bit meh. I basically made the decision to do some easy (read: inexpensive) things to further try and fix our problem, try to stop being so neurotic about it and essentially ride him until it goes away or gets bad enough to really dive in and diagnose. Five days later, I am feeling pretty optimistic. First in my plan of attack was to get Jen to ride him to get her…
Last year, I did a post showing how Simon evolved in the first year I owned him. Since this July marks two years since I’ve had the creature, I figured I’d do another before and after type post. Again, we’ve had our ups and downs but I feel more strongly than ever that this horse is the perfect match for me right now. I just hope he stays sound and we can enjoy many more years together. We may be…
Confounding horse continues to be confounding… but then again what else is new? Let me dive into some more detail. Simon finished his 7 day rest and 2g bute/day on Friday. On Saturday morning, I headed out to the barn to give him a light walk/trot hack and see how he is. Now I realize he will still have some bute in his system at that point, so I expected him to feel amazing. Overall, he did. Huge shoulder swing….
Took time this weekend to repeat a mantra to myself – pout less! With more reflecting at the vet’s diagnosis, it wasn’t too hard to do. At this moment, I’ll be able to ride my horse in a week… which is no big thang. For now, I’ll just take it one week at a time. After some family time with my mother in law Saturday (and a massive cleaning spree to get ready for her visit), I was a pretty…
Having a show horse is like 100 hobbies in one. One of them? Fishing. Not for actual fish of course, but for a lameness diagnosis… because when your horse is one hot mess like mine there isn’t always a clear answer. We headed to the vet on Friday afternoon with the goal of getting an ultrasound to diagnosis a suspensory and some x-rays to see if he has kissing spines or not. I took away a lot more information than…