Declaring Victory

Tristan walked and trotted sound on the longe line on Tuesday night, and when I examined his foot, there was no pus at all. We'd been going back and forth on whether the pus was some sort of weird moist environment reaction to the meds in the poultice, or whether it was drainage. The poultice had dried thoroughly and stayed stuck to the bottom of his foot during Tuesday, even though he lost the rest of the boot, and so created a mostly-sealed environment. No pus inside that means I am confident that it was drainage after all.

Wednesday night I rode, and while he felt all sorts of stiff and hinky, he also felt even in the way he struck the ground, which T. confirmed, through the walk, trot, and canter. It makes sense that after a week off and on stall rest he wouldn't feel great. I stayed on long enough to confirm to myself that a) he wasn't sore in his feet at all and b) his whole-body issues were related to the stall rest, and I could feel how to work through them. I didn't want to push him too far and make him sore after being still for so long. I soaked his RF one last time, since I was there anyway, and took his "DO NOT TURN OUT" note off his door.

C. checked in on him last night to clean out that foot, and reported that while he was sick of having his feet messed with, he looked good otherwise. I'll go down tonight and focus on stretching and straightening and working him through and getting him ready to go XC tomorrow.

Not an ideal place for a lesson - mentally or physically - but I feel good about his soundness, and I will present our challenges to the trainer before we begin. If he shows signs of soreness or it's not going well, we'll pull up. I do hope we'll be able to school productively, though, as this is our confirmation/confidence-booster before going BN at the Groton House Summer Classic next weekend.

Sound (ish) again?

After five days of soaking and poulticing, last night I put Tristan on the longe line and he looked sound at the walk and trot - a bit fresh, even. I soaked and poulticed one last time, and left instructions to keep him in today.

Tonight, I'll tack him up and see how he feels under saddle. I've also put a call in to the vet to clarify. He never had what I would call significant discharge from an abscess; he had white pus in the cleft to the left of his frog, but I'm not sure if it was from an abscess or some goo from the poultice.

Here's the real complication: the farrier looked at him on Monday, and his opinion is that Tris is just all-around footsore up front. He said he couldn't find any particularly reactive spot on the hoof that would indicate abscess, and believes Tris should go in front shoes.

I am really reluctant to do that, for a variety of reasons. He's never worn shoes before, save for the six week experiment with bar shoes before we turned him out. He's certainly worked more often and for longer than he is working at this point in his life, though not at the level of difficulty/athleticism that he is getting to now. The vet both a) pinpointed problems to the RF and b) did a set of radiographs to check sole depth, and was happy with that sole depth. Last but not least, I can either afford to shoe him or to event him this summer. There are not funds for both. If I don't event him, I don't need to shoe him. If I event him, I can't afford to shoe him. It's a nasty little Catch-22.

In the meantime, we'll see. If he's sound to ride tonight, I'll soak again, and check on Friday night. I'll check in with the vet and see what she says about the footsore/"good depth of sole" debate. I need this XC school on Saturday as a last run before Groton House, but if he's not sound - he's not sound, that's that.

Fingers crossed.

Baby's First Abscess

So...I haven't yet managed the rest of the Hitching Post writeup. Life intervened. This week, life intervened in the form of Tristan coming out of the stall for his Tuesday night lesson and, within a few seconds of walk work, getting very, very lame. I have never ridden a horse that head-bobbingly lame. So cue panic attack on my part.

I was pretty sure I'd felt a bit of heat and swelling in his right hind, and T. said he thought RH or LF, so we started cold hosing the RH. Then we added soaking. Then I hit my wall and called the vet out for Thursday afternoon - I was flying to California for a wedding on Friday morning and needed more certainty before I left.

The vet flexed him all four around, and saw him lame on his right front. Then she determined that he was very very sore to hoof testers, and he was very noticeably off on the longe line, and suggested radiographs of both fronts just to make sure, and to check his sole thickness on the RF.

Both front feet looked ok on the screens, and she palpated his RF fetlock to kingdom come. Everything combined pointed to an abscess in the RF, so his protocol was soaking, poulticing, bute, and stall rest.

I've never soaked or poulticed a horse before, so that was new. He'd stood ok for his soaking of the RH, but was a holy terror for the first soak of his RF - soaked me, the barn aisle, and basically everything but his foot for the first 10 minutes. He was much better for his second soaking, and was fine for the poultice.

Then I flew to California, and had a series of small breakdowns, one of which ended in messy tears, about abandoning him, especially after I ran into some obstacles nailing down a Friday night helper. Luckily, we have a lot of very, very good people at the barn who are helping take care of him. I'm still out in California today, but flying back Monday night and get to finally help take care of him myself.

I'm helping a friend with her toddler on this trip, and exhausted, and my coping skills are not good after the roller coaster week, so of course I'm having huge anxiety problems about my responsibility or lack thereof as a horse owner, about how he's in pain and I'm not there to help him, and until he actually starts draining I'll be nervous that it isn't really an abscess. I'm also worried about our scheduled XC school coming up next Saturday - that was supposed to be our prep run to go BN at Groton House. Next Tuesday is my withdraw-without-penalty date for Groton House, so I have to decide whether to chance it.

Oh, and the vet bill? Let's not speak of that. There goes the beginnings of my savings for a new car.

Hitching Post Recap: Dressage

...and then life intervened, whew. I haven't even turned on my home computer since Monday, much less been able to work from it.

Back on track. Tristan woke up on Saturday morning disinclined to participate in the day's activities. He paced his stall, followed me around while I cleaned it around him, had hoovered up his grain but was fussing too much to really eat more hay after that. I cleaned his stall as best I could - he'd tracked hay a fair bit, next time I'll know and bring a hay net - and put him on the trailer. We got to the grounds about 6:50. My goal was to get on by 7:30.

Thank goodness I had some help getting him ready, because he would. not. stand. still. He's typically a little fidgety in new places to be tacked up, but this went beyond the pale. He was flinging everyone who hung onto him every which way he could. Eventually we got tack on him, but it took three times as long to do a running braid in his mane - and unfortunately it looked terrible - because I couldn't get a grip with his flinging about.

He was a hot ticket in his warmup too, and I fell into my typically nasty trick not wanting to put leg on because he was so reactive. Please understand that Tristan's reactive is an order of magnitude smaller than most horses; I prefer him that way. He is spooky and light so rarely that it unnerves me when he is. I can out-stubborn my horse all day long, but as soon as he gets reactive, I feel like I'm riding a horse of spun glass and hesitate to apply firm aids.

Luckily, T. talked us through it, and pointed out that when I actually put my leg on, firmed my reins, and rode him, he was going nicely. If I'd had another 15 minutes I might've really settled us in, but the warmup was not terribly productive. We moved down to the secondary warmup and did some trotting. I opted out of cantering down there to avoid problems with the little kids on ponies without steering.

I felt good about him once he was in the ring, though, and overall, was happy with my test. He was responsive and mostly willing. The first left canter circle was terrible; sort of a 15 meter egg shape instead of a proper circle. After the free walk, though, I felt great about everything. I knew we'd nailed the free walk, which is one of Tristan's favorite things, and I felt great about the right trot circle and then, bless him, he gave me an right lead bang on cue. My halt wavered a bit but I waited until he'd settled and gave a full, proper, measured salute.

(Pet peeve: riders who slide into a halt and nod and fling their hand out to the side in .25 seconds while their horse is still jigging. I halt, confirm he's settled, put down my hand, half count, put down my head, half count, and then bring both back slowly. Then I look at the judge, then I drop the reins.)

The judge said it was a really nice test, and T. said afterwards it was really quite pleasant. He has said in days since that Tris wasn't carrying any tension at all in his hind legs, and really produced a nice, rhythmical test, which was great news. Though I didn't know it at the time, we scored a 32, with an 8 for the free walk and, astoundingly, an 8 for gaits. Thanks to my hare-brained wavering during the halt, we got a 5 for that - apparently I managed to completely miss X.

One of the barn moms was kind enough to email me a few days later and say that she'd videod the second half of Tristan's test, so here it is for posterity. It starts with that lovely free walk.

Hitching Post Recap: Friday Journey

Historically, I am a white-knuckle hauler. I have an overactive imagination, a slightly cranky pony, and an older rig. Add those things up and usually the most stressful part of going anywhere for me is the ride there.

I spent last week getting ready for the trip. Water was done by Tuesday; I wrote and re-wrote a shopping list for the tack store to replenish supplies; I wrote and re-wrote and re-wrote an overall packing list and a tight schedule for Friday morning.

Mostly, all went well. I was out late Thursday night finishing packing and cleaning tack, but it all got done, and I was in bed by 12:30.

Alarm went off at 6:00 a.m. on Friday and I was on the road a little before 7:00, where I hit tons of traffic, which put me about 30 minutes behind my carefully mapped schedule, which was where I stayed for the rest of the morning, alas. Friday's activities included a short trail ride, a bath for Tris, then a run out to pick up shavings, a new pitchfork, and on impulse buy, a broom just for the trailer. Total: $50 (!?!?). Then a swing by the grocery store for some food and ice for the cooler, then back to the barn, where I probably could have gotten on the road by 10:45, only 15 minutes behind schedule, but the rest of the barn's trailers were waiting to all go together, so I figured I'd join the caravan.

Granted, I left the caravan behind almost immediately; as it turned out, they all took a totally different highway route. I was relying on my old standby college route, 95 to 93 to 89, which went just fine. Getting off the highway to the farm was a bit strenuous, as at one point I missed a turn, pissed off the GPS, and had to cross a river on a single-track industrial bridge that looked like its underpinnings had all been washed out by Hurricane Irene and then replaced with potholes and occasionally some gravel. So that was less than fun.

We still arrived at Hitching Post a good 15 minutes before everyone else, though, and I set out riding things while waiting for everyone else. When they arrived, we all tacked up and rode together in the ring to loosen the horses up and get them used to the environment. It was also a little mini warmup ring experience, complete with choking dust clouds. Tris actually felt great, so we only worked for about 25 minutes or so to keep his brain in his head and keep him loose, then hacked out for a bit, down to the stadium ring and put his nose on a jump or two that were not part of our course but served to familiarize him again with the idea of XC jumps.

I put him back on the trailer and we walked the XC course. I took photos, which helped my nerves later when I had a bit of trouble falling asleep - I reviewed the course on my camera a few times and talked myself through a course walk. I'll post them when I recap XC. It was a cute little course, not a gimme, with some nice questions and a water crossing. I started mentally preparing myself for a refusal at the water crossing, but also walked my line a few times and focused hard on thinking about keeping him straight and moving.

We also walked the stadium course, which was a little odd, a little tricky, with lots of different combinations to it. Then we headed over to the farm where we'd stable overnight, which was an utterly charming little farm with a 165 year old barn and gorgeous pastures. Tris settled in immediately, and I threw him hay and filled his water; he ate and drank normally and loved his end stall - he could hang his head over the door and look outside or watch what the goings-on in the aisle. I groomed him for a while and squared away my truck while everyone else groomed and braided.

We all went out to dinner together, which was really nice, and then when we came back we topped everyone's water and I threw Tris some more hay to keep him content overnight. He drank quite a bit of water at the farm, which was fantastic; he's usually not a good drinker while away from home. I also picked out his stall to make it easier for myself the next morning.

It was really nice being so close to him overnight; I could wander back over in my pajamas and give him a kiss goodnight, then tuck myself into the backseat of the truck and review my course for the next day. I was out cold by 10:30, which was really  nice.