Pie's Back! and Back In the Saddle Again

Pie and I had an uneventful trip back from Madison yesterday.  Everyone at the vet hospital seemed to really like him - the 4th year vet student in charge of him said that he was a "mellow fellow".   They had him up to a full food ration on the last day, and he didn't colic, so that's a good sign.  He's doing well so far, which is all I can hope for at this point.  They still don't know for sure what was/is wrong with him, although there's a list of likely possibilities, some of which are things that would eventually have poor outcomes.  All we can do for now is keep an eye on him - he may get/stay better or get worse, only time will tell.  I'm just glad to see my Pie face in his paddock and will enjoy every day I get to spend with him.

Today I rode Drift - Pie is supposed to get at least one more day off from riding and Dawn's about to come into heat - every time a gelding walks by her paddock she goes "Eee!" and strikes with a front foot and swishes her tail.  It's been about 10 days since my last ride - we had constant heavy rain the last week of September and then we had Pie's repeated colics and trip to the vet hospital to deal with.  For a horse that'd had a vacation, Drift was very good, although as I was leading him around setting up cones and poles I had to have a conversation with him about not putting the lead rope in his mouth - apparently his prior owner thought this behavior was cute and it crops back up from time to time.  He somehow managed a couple of days ago to scrape up the whole inside of his left hind, from hock down to pastern, but it was looking pretty clean and he was sound so he was good to go.  We think he may have rolled in his paddock - he often rolls all the way over - and gotten a leg through the board fence - it looked like that sort of scrape. We did lots of figure work and there wasn't a single balk on our upwards transitions, which was a first.  We also worked on activating his hind end - halt to trot and backing to trot transitions.

If Pie's continuing to feel well tomorrow, we may take a little hand walk on the trail, and then if all continues to go well, we'll take a short ride the day after.