Best-Laid Plans

Things have been happening so quickly I haven't updated. To recap: last Thursday Tris was a bit off. I blamed the crack in his RF, and scheduled him to get shoes on Friday.

Wednesday morning, he came up quite lame in the RF, and stayed inside. Thursday night, I went down to check on him/ride, and he was very VERY lame - and leaking copious amounts of pus from an abscess that had burst through his coronet band, in line with the crack. His leg was also quite stocked up. I am about 99% sure this is the same abscess we dealt with some months ago, that just never quite blew out before.

Friday morning, the farrier saw him, put shoes on, and said he was getting near to done draining, but to keep soaking his foot. So I've been doing so. There has been some reduction in his leg, but it is not cool and tight. The area around his coronet band where the abscess blew is still open, still hot, and I believe still draining a bit. He's also still got a clear pulse in the leg, so: still working through.

He went back out for the full day on Sunday, and I was hoping the leg would go down with some walking. No dice. It also didn't get worse overnight, so there's that. I checked in with Mass Equine, and they weren't worried just yet. Tonight, I'm to put him on the longe line and see what he looks like at the trot, and bute him for a few days to help resolve things. I'll check back in with him for a few days.

I don't feel comfortable putting him back into work with his leg blown up like that. If it continues through the middle of the week, we may have to scratch Valinor this Saturday. With everything that's been going on, we've fallen behind on our prep. If his leg isn't magically better tonight, tomorrow morning I'm going to scratch from King Oak.

I'm an odd mixture of heartbroken and zen. I am pretty clear on my options, and pretty clear in that I don't think we're ready for King Oak, and even if he were magically better tonight we'd be hard-pressed to get ready. Scratching tomorrow, on the closing date, gets me a refund to re-direct toward hunter paces and schooling shows in the fall. Then, who knows? The possibility of getting to a recognized event diminishes greatly if I scratch King Oak, but it doesn't vanish. We'll keep working.

200 Situps

I've felt for some time now that my own physical preparations for riding were lacking. My schedule was so crunched, however, that there was no time I could scrape out regularly to exercise more. I would go to the gym with my boyfriend, using his pass, when our schedules lined up, but other than that, not much on top of riding.

While away on our road trip, my sedentary lifestyle and road food meant I gained a few pounds. I don't really have body image issues, but I noticed that with that extra weight came a bit of a tipping point of lethargy. I've been losing energy for some time now but this was my signal that something needed to change.

I've instituted two small things that will help turn around, and in the coming months might visit the idea of getting my own gym membership and making sure I carve out time to use it.

The first is that I've downloaded the 200 Situps app for my iPod Touch. I followed the program for a few weeks a few years ago, and liked it. So far, I've found the app is a good way to keep track of where I am with the program. It was only $1.99, and it should help my core strength. I'd love to add the squats program too, but I doubt my knees would take it.

The second is that I've redoubled my efforts to eat better. I've always been vegetable-averse but I've let that slide the last few months into generally unhealthy eating. In the past, I've successfully and happily made healthier lunch choices. Time to go back to that. Lunch today was melon, cottage cheese, some whole wheat crackers, and water. I've packed some protein granola bars for snacking to stave off the temptation to grab fast food on the drive to the barn.

It's late in the season to be pushing hard on this, but if I can get myself back into better habits and carry them through the winter, next summer will be much better.

Welcome back, have a crisis!

I was already a bit nervous about being away for two weeks on a road trip. It had been a complete mental vacation: certainly I missed Tris and I missed riding, but we were so involved in what we were doing that I wasn't planning and fretting constantly like I usually do, so I felt behind the ball.

My nervousness was not helped when I pulled him out of the stall and looked at his RF. He's had a small toe crack there for a little while now; I've been keeping an eye on it, and had asked the farrier to come check it just before I left. He did so, and took the toe down pretty far, but there was some crack left. While I was gone, the crack moved aggressively. There was some flare on the right side of the hoof, and a bit of a bulge at the coronet band in line with the hoof. None of which I was a fan of.

Crack in RF, with a bit of flaring all around, worst on the outside.

Side view. If you look closely, you can see a bit of a bump near the coronet band, about where my car's tire is.

He was reluctant to go to work, but not off, and he is reluctant to go to work on the best of days. I did not ride particularly well, and was second-guessing myself quite a lot, wondering if I should pull him up. He took some off steps, but he was never lame, and when I pushed, he moved quite nicely.

Nevertheless, as soon as he settled back into his stall I called the farrier. We've had this conversation before, when he had his abscess: he's working with more intensity than ever before, and wearing down his feet much harder. The quality of hoof is still great and rock-hard, but the quantity is lacking. I'm sure that contributed to the aggressive growth of the crack. He's certainly chipped away at his toes before, but he's never had a crack move like this before.

It was pretty clear to me that the crack wasn't going to heal without help. After almost seven years of going barefoot (save for one cycle in which we tried to support his heels with absolutely no difference in his way of going, so pulled the shoes), he'll get four shoes all around on Friday, with pads & packing in the front to support. I am a bit sad; I really though we could make a go of it. Perhaps somewhere I could control his turnout environment completely, and check him every single day, and work with a farrier who specialized in barefoot trimming, we might've. I can't help but feel like a bit of a failure - either because I've pushed him too hard or because I haven't managed his gorgeous feet well enough. All those conflicts are internal, though. I've always said that I would get him shoes when he gave me signs that he was no longer comfortable barefoot. We're there.

He was pretty pleased to get some extra hand grazing time while I got my camera.

The cherry on top was the call this morning from the barn that he was sore on his RF, probably from riding last night. So I feel rotten about that. He'll be on stall reset until Friday, when he gets his shoes. I'm not quite sure what to do about the XC school we have planned for Saturday. It may be that he just needs the support of shoes, and he'll be totally sound. It may be that he needs some time off to adjust.

Going forward, however - we are entered at Valinor on Saturday following, and King Oak after that. King Oak closes on the 21st of August, so he needs to show significant improvement by then or I might consider scratching him. I'd be heartbroken to get so close to our goal of going recognized and have to cancel it, but - that's horses, I guess.

Lesson Notes: #$#!@ Outside Leg

Balance, balance, balance: between forward and supple, between solid in my aids and position and soft and forgiving, and of course the good old-fashioned kind.

Some nice moments, but overall inconsistent. We touched on consistency a few weeks ago, and haven't climbed back up that mountain. He'll swing and get soft and round...and then fling his head up and lose it five minutes later. I'll lock in with my seat and have soft hands...and then he'll jut his shoulders out and I'll get a bit out and it spirals down from there and ends up with a rock-hard and static left rein.

I'm fighting some unevenness in my own body right now, too. There's something slightly odd going on with my left hip that I need to overcome that's making it more difficult to keep my left leg really wrapped around. I can't quite nail the feel of a solid outside rein while tracking left.

In all? Productive lesson. Good lesson. Once again more proof that if I could just ride, if I could just be in the right place and give the right aids, he would be going so well, but when I break up my own fluidity it just...disintegrates. It's like juggling fifteen fresh eggs and as soon as I drop one the rest go splat, and then I have to walk all the way back to the fridge and start the juggling routine again, one egg at a time, before we approach that level again.

Tuesday night was my last ride for nearly 2.5 weeks; I'm away for two weeks for a long-awaited and long-planned-for vacation. I arranged for the best barn kid ever (which could so honestly apply to half a dozen kids at our barn, which is amazing) to sit on him during that time, and deeded over my two missed lessons to her. Probably I'm going to have to eat crow when I come back and she's improved him dramatically in just two weeks, but - I'm okay with that.

When we get back, life starts to fly fast and furious: XC again at Scarlet Hill, followed by Valinor at Elementary, followed in short order by King Oak. Home stretch!

Worrying

This was never going to be a week conducive to rest and relaxation. I'm leaving for a long-planned vacation/road trip on Friday night, and there are dozens of small details I still have to arrange before then. Work is work. I'm facing up to some major changes in my life going forward.

However, two things right now are particularly heartburn-inducing.

The first is that I just mailed my entry to the King Oak Farm Fall Horse Trials. This is it. This is what we've been working toward all summer: our first (and likely only) recognized USEA horse trials. I've obliterated any semblance of budget I may have had as well as a few savings accounts to get us to this point, fretted and stressed and worked hard in every single ride I had available to me, shunted all other commitments to the side. After all that work, I'm still not sure we're ready. Oh, we'll be safe. Tris will go around. We certainly will not be competitive, but then my goal was always to complete, not to compete. But will it be a good, positive experience for both of us? Will I embarrass my friends and my barn and my trainer? (I worry a bit as well about embarrassing myself, but I'm more or less used to that.) I wish I didn't feel so sure that this is our one shot, and I wish I didn't feel such pressure to do it right. I wish I could be one of the many hundreds of people who surely enter willy-nilly and without carrying so much baggage.

My secondary panic is tied to the above: I'm stretching every bit of financial give I have. I had planned out the summer carefully but not allowed enough of a buffer, and I've had to dip into some savings accounts to round out the edges, and that stings. Last month there was the vet bill for the abscess; this month, my jump saddle needed billet repair, the truck needed new brake calipers & hoses, and my car insurance came due and increased in price. I spent the first three weeks of July running under budget and in the last week went $1k over. I am by nature a financially cautious person, which is at odds with being a horse owner. There are plenty of internet jokes about the expense of horses, but the hard truth is that owning a horse? Is a really, really poor financial choice. That becomes apparent to me in very dark moments when I realize that many other life possibilities are closed off by horse ownership, especially when I rely 100% on myself for all of my plans - buying a house, having kids, doing any sort of traveling that doesn't involve my tent.

Most of the time I cope. This week, on top of all the other planning and figuring out and anticipation, it's got me nearly constantly on the edge of a panic attack.