Round and Round It Goes

Stinker has been doing his best to make me crazy of late.  Sadly it doesn't take much to make me full on neurotic, so he has been being quite successful.  It all started two weeks ago, when he started jigging a lot.  At first I thought he was just anticipating the trot because we had been working on it a lot, so I thought no big deal I will just do a few walk rides with him and that will fix it and he will settle again.

Hats are the best toys

That did not fix it.  In fact things got worse.  I started panicking about him being sore from the trail rides and his hind being all wonky again.  Then I got sick and didn't ride for a few days.  I tried to tell myself that it would be fine.  And once I got better he would be back to normal.

Last week I was still dragging, because my lungs think breathing is optional, but I managed to get a couple rides in.  They were not great.  He didn't want to walk, I was struggling getting him over his back and things generally sucked.  I decided to pop him on the lunge line to see if I could see anything.  I could not.  He walked trotted and cantered just fine on the lunge.  If I stared hard enough I thought I could maybe sort of see something occasionally, but nothing with any regularity or frequency.

Hi Human

I decided to keep trying to settle him and wait for my lesson to see if new trainer could see anything.  Then Stinker being Stinker decided to do I don't know what but he had scrapes on the inside of his left hind and a bump on his right front.  I really wanted to sit down and cry at this point because I felt like shit and I really didn't want to deal with an injury.  But he was still bouncing around (literally) so I decided that it clearly wasn't hurting him.  There was no heat or swelling in his legs so I decided to keep on as planned.

So itchy

I continued to spend more time on the lunge with him because at least there he would relax and work over his back vs me getting frustrated with him.  I would hop on him for short periods and walk him until he would start tensing up then I would get a good stretch and stop.  I was not feeling very confident for my lesson, but I decided that I clearly needed some help.