WELL NEVER MIND THEN

I am climbing back up on my horse and putting in more riding time after too long of a break for my sanity. I've had a couple of really nice rides this week, getting some good schooling things accomplished, and so forth.

Last night, I longed and worked a bit on transitions, and after some theatrics Tris gave me a lovely walk-canter transition to the left: just stepped right into it softly. Then I asked him to go right.

And he wouldn't trot. He would sort of stumble a few steps and then launch into a canter or fall back to the walk. He was discombobulated. When I finally pushed him to actually trot, he was sooooooooo short and propped.

Well, fuck. Cue despondent thoughts about basically everything I have done in my life ever. You know the drill. It's what we do with horses.

I put him away and spent a furious half an hour texting back and forth with the barn manager. I was concerned about the balance of Tristan's feet, and we agreed to consult with our old farrier on the new farrier's trim. So I took lots of photos of Tristan's feet.

And then my hand brushed his RH - what I thought was a muddy spot - and came away bloody.

Aaaaaand double fuck.

It turned out genius asshole pony had taken off a significant chunk (and I do mean chunk) of his RH heel bulb, on the inside, probably by stepping on it.

I grabbed a paper towel and scrubbed it with water to sort of re-irrigate and get down to flesh. He bled like a stuck pig everywhere, which was fun. I poked and prodded and yep: definitely sensitive. Definitely a nasty little scrape. Not quite call-the-vet worthy. I slathered it with Corona and sort of left it at that. I am a little bit regretting that I did not wrap it, but...it just didn't seem quite that deep. And I want it to scab over, not stay moist and whatever.

Tonight, I will clean it out again and see if it has started to heal at all, then probably use alushield on it to keep it from getting worse.

In the meantime, this is going to make it much harder to soak the foot with White Lightning - I don't want to expose raw injured skin to the chemicals in it. I'll have to either wrap the foot v-e-r-y carefully or figure something else out. Of course the RH was the worst white line problem.

Also meantime, no riding for me for the foreseeable future. Good thing I have plenty to do around the house?