Friday, August 24, 2012

Red Trots! (and Welcome to Visitors!)

(If you're a visitor from Haynet, welcome!  Please note that most of the tab pages have yet to be filled in - please check out the sidebars instead . . . And, to all readers, I promise to provide more pictures soon . . .)

Before we get to recent doings, for those who are newer to this blog, here are pictures of the horse crew:

Dawn - 15 year old TB mare:


Pie - 6 year old QH gelding (that's him on the header as well):


Red - 11 year old QH gelding:


These three wonderful horses are my three riding horses - there are also two horses (Lily and Maisie) and a pony (Norman) who live at a wonderful retirement place in Tennessee.

Now, on to updates . . .

The big news from yesterday was that I was able to ride Red at trot - very briefly - under saddle for the first time in over 8 weeks.  I lunged him first to check on his soundness - he's improved a bit since last week and while not quite 100% - he's stiff starting out - he gets better as he goes and is very close to being completely sound.  He's been on full turnout since his injury, which may have slowed his recovery but also probably has led to better healing - the ligament and tendon fibers have healed under moderate stress of moving in turnout so will be stronger in the long run.  Yesterday, we did our usual walk work under saddle and then did just a few minutes of straight-line trotting - he was happy to do it and there was no appreciable difference between diagonals when I was posting.  Also, in the recent past, he's been protecting the left hind in downwards transitions to walk by "dropping" it and using the right hind to support the transition - yesterday, after one or two trot/walk transitions where he was still a bit careful, he apparently felt comfortable and did some lovely, flowing transitions where he was using both hinds equally - this is a big indication of how much better he's feeling.  We'll continue our rehab, mostly at the walk but beginning to add a bit of trotting so long as he continues to feel well.

Pie and I also had a lovely quick ride through the pastures with another boarder - the weather was very nice and there was a good breeze.  Pie and I may get in another good ride today.

Dawn was more comfortable on the cross ties in the barn aisle yesterday evening - not at all fidgety.  She is still refusing to "nose rest" with me and is just putting up with me - she's still upset about my younger daughter leaving again - but there was no snappishness despite the fact that she's in heat, which may also partly explain our recent difficulties.  Her heats haven't been that bad since I started her on raspberry leaves, but this heat seems stronger, or it could just be the recent upsets she's experienced. A very sensitive mare . . .

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