Check It Off

I was finally able to get the vet out to take a better look at Stinker.  And I have to say, I like this one much better than the first one I tried.  It is very important to me to have professionals that take an interest in my horse.  I am well aware of his limitations and I am trying my hardest to do what is best for him, and I don't want to give someone my money while they phone it in.

So tired after his lesson

First the vet ran him through a serious of ground tests to see if there were any neurological symptoms.  She actually ended up working him longer because she was so amazed at how well behaved he was on the ground.  "Do you do ground work with him?"  "You must do ground work with him?"  "Look at him, my horse doesn't even do this this well."  "No really, I haven't seen a horse behave this well ever."  She must have overlooked the fact he nips when you trot him out.  But other than that he is quite well behaved on the ground.

She then asked to see him under saddle, which I was actually very thankful for.  He is such a different horse under saddle than he is on the ground.  It is hard to explain to people how he goes under saddle, because it is not reflected in his behavior on the ground.  She wanted to see essentially a simple lead change and I said I was willing to give it a shot, but that was not something we have really done.  I also explained to her that I haven't been cantering him a lot and I spend a lot of time working on relaxing and stretching.

And itchy

Of course he walked around really nicely to start, but unfortunately the trot was not great.  In hindsight I think the abscess was starting to bother him, because he was much more inconsistent and scooting than normal.  At the time I thought it was just because I was riding poorly.  It was probably a combination of both.  I never did get very good trot work out of him, but I did get some smatterings of ok work.

We finally called and the vet said, "Well I can see why you are having trouble, but I think you are doing the best you can with what you have.  He is very lucky."  Which it has been awhile since someone told me how lucky he was to have me.  I always translate into "a normal person would not deal with that BS" but I am not normal and I love my little anxious troublemaker.

I was trying to check his legs and he was looking for treats

So the final verdict was to keep doing what I am doing and from what she could tell everything seems to be fine.  She did say that because of the way he gets tense and flailing under saddle it is very difficult to sort the behavioral and physical out from one another.  Which that has basically been the story of the last few years.  The game plan is to get my saddle checked again next month, do another loading round of adequan and keep doing what I am doing.