Red incurred a fairly serious injury to his hindquarters - a torn muscle and strained Achilles tendon - last year in June. In the past week, he's come up lame again - he's happy to trot on the lunge but pretty gimpy - I'd grade him at least a 2 out of 5 lame, maybe even a 3. There's a contusion low on the outside of his left hind, with some hard enlargement, but increasingly I think that this isn't the problem and that he may have aggravated his injury from last year - these things are prone to reinjury. There's no significant swelling around the left hock as there was last time, but he's been asking for a butt and left hindquarters massage every time I groom him for over a week now - something's up. Tonight I put him on the lunge (very briefly) and he's certainly lame, although not at all reluctant to trot. Since he insisted, we rode bareback at the walk, with lots of nice figures and some lateral work. He was happy with this, and went back to eating his hay (instead of banging on his door or nickering to come out), while I slathered on some Sore-no-more gel in all the possible sore places. He seemed to enjoy this, so it must have felt good. One day at a time . . .
Bummer . . . but at least I have two other fine horses to ride in the meantime.
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