I lied- I didn't post the pictures. I didn't even have a chance to upload them till this morning, so I figured I'd just post them with today's post.
Cadence looking toward the forest raring to go
Anyhow, Cadence got her stitches out yesterday. The vet said her leg was looking great, so over the next 2 weeks we'll be gradually increasing her work while letting the top part of the wound heal. Our ride yesterday was awesome too. 20 min (5 in hand, 15 under saddle) of walk, with lots of focus on straightness, suppleness, and self-carriage. She was truly carrying herself, and I was able to correct her when she started to lean on me (which was always on a turn) by lifting her with my outside aids. I was very pleased. Her halts on the other hand... need some work. She locks up her neck, leans, barges, and grabs. Eventually, once I get some semblance of lightness and bend, we continue on. Once she was supple and carrying herself, her halts improved (or rather her transitions into the halt improved) but once halted we were back to square 1. Tonight is more of the same, but with 20 minutes under saddle and 5 of hand walking.
Pictures to come... I'll be sure to have them up ASAP
Guilt is an amazing thing. It does crazy things to your mind, and impairs your decision making skills in (upon occasion) disaster-inducing ways. At least that's what happens with me. Guilt is really the only reason I can find to explain why I decided to take my high strung, hot headed, 6 y/o mare out on a hack... on her 3rd ride back after a month of stall rest. Yes, not my brightest idea. It wasn't until I'd hopped off her after having just sat one of the most terrifying bronc rides of my life (something touched her while we were walking through the forest, and she... exploded) that the fact I could have just hand walked her occurred to me.
I should have known that, no matter how amazing my girl is, that her pre-ride piaffing was not a good sign. Nor was her attempt to hide behind me at the sight of... a truck that is not normally parked in the parking lot. Yep, both of those should have set the warning light a flashing, but I soldiered on. For the first part of the ride, things went quite well. It was frosty, and in spite of the blue cloudless sky that had dominated the horizon for the majority of the day, dusk brought with it grey clouds that hung low in the sky. Though only 4:30, the sun had already sunk behind the horizon when we started our hack, & pinkish-orange light cast long shadows over the slowly dimming land.
Though tense, the mare was pretty good. Her brief bit of trot that she snuck in as I hopped on sent me into a panic; she had only 1 day left to survive her stitches! If she did something now... but (not without considerable effort on my part) I slowed her back to a walk, and we headed toward the entrance to the forest. She seemed to relax a bit as we walked into the forest. Cadence power-walked on, and all seemed to go pretty well, until... she stepped on a stick. This led her to brush into a tree branch, and set her into a full on bronc spree. She spun around to face the way we came, and leaped forward before launching herself straight up in the air, rearing, and then bucking. I landed on her neck, managing to almost stay in the saddle, and grabbed a hold of her neck thinking 'I must not fall off!' Fearing that if I fall, she would continue on with her antics and mess up something on her leg. She was still spinning around and hopping up and down at this point in time, and I knew we were seconds away from taking off again. No can do, Mare. As carefully as I could, I hopped off/emergency dismounted, while taking care to maintain a grip on my reins without catching her in the mouth. Once off, she trotted around a tree a few times (???) before I finally got her to settle.
Generally, I would have hopped back on at this point in time. However, my paranoia of her being injured was strong enough that I hand walked her for the rest of our hack. Aside from a minor incident that involved her kicking out & bucking as we walked down the barn's drive (I have absolutely no clue what prompted this...) everything went pretty well.
Do I regret our little 'walk'? Yes. I REALLY REALLY want this whole episode to be over, and if she's somehow hurt herself with her little 'episodes' then I don't think I'll be able to forgive myself. Howeve, I'm just trying to think positive; she'll be fine. Stitches are coming out today. It'll all be fine... it has to be.
What I must have looked like trying to stay on Cadence: (Just not NEARLY as pro...)
It seems I start my posts like this more often than not, but once again I feel the need to apologize for my absence. Life has been crazy, and its only about to get crazier. My exams start on the 25, and before that I have loads of end of semester work to complete. I'll try my best to keep my blog posts to (at least) 3 a week... but (as I'm so often reminded) school is my priority here.
Okay, onto the pony. Miss Cadence's leg looks fantastic. Like unbeleivably fantastic. Since her bout of colitis, all's been well with the mare, and on Friday I hopped on her back for the first time in nearly a month. As of tomorrow, it will have been 1 month since she was first injured back in December. On Tuesday or Wednesday, she'll have her stitches removed, and then we'll be just about back to regular work! Well, we'll have about a month of rebuilding muscle and doing lots of straightening & suppleness work. However, in her 2 'rides' (15 minutes at a walk) she's been bending and carrying herself pretty dang well if I do say so myself.
I'm going to attempt some pictures (and maybe a video) when I go out to the barn today, so If I'm successful hopefully I'll have something exciting to post tomorrow.
So the verdict after the last visit (our 3rd) to the vet was that Cadence had antibiotic induced colitis. This means that the antibiotics she'd been on for her leg had killed off some of the good bacteria in her gut, causing her to have a fever, stomach pain, reduced white count, etc. They redid her blood work and checked her fecal before sending her home, and her white count was back up and the fecal came back clear.
It was freezing cold when we trailered her home, and we had to load on questionable surfaces. Cadence wasn't all too thrilled about this, and was shaking like a leaf. When we go home, she started stretching, then lay down in her stall, and was rolling around and kicking. I don't know about you, but to me that sounds like colic. She had pretty normal sounding gut noises (they were down a titch) but I still got her up & walked her around the arena for a while. When she returned to her stall, she drank, ate some hay, and looked pretty good, so I kept an eye on her for another 15 minutes or so and then headed home. When I went back to check on her yesterday evening, she looked much better. I took her out and we walked around the arena for 10 minutes or so and walked over a cavaletti a few times.
The vet has said that she'll be able to have her stitches out some time around the 10 or 11 of Jan, and in the mean time she needs to be hand walked for 10-15 minutes 2-3x/day. I don't know about you, but I can't make it out to the barn 3x/day... anyhow, the other thing he said is that we can do the 10-15 minutes of walking under saddle. While this is wonderful news, I'll admit- it makes me a wee bit nervous. Here's why: Yesterday while I was walking Cadence, one of the lights in the arena made a bit of a noise when it came on. Cadence did a full on up in the air, scooting sideways, and pulling to the end of her lead. Because a light popped on. So I'm going to go about starting her back under saddle like I would backing a 3 y/o... slowly and carefully.
Honestly, I'd love to be able to catch a break... but that just doesn't appear to be in the cards. Generally I'm a pretty firm believer in things like taking responsibility for your choices and actions, and not BLAMINg things on anybody. However, I honestly don't think the whole Cadence situation (regarding her injury and subsequent month of torture and careful nursing back to semi-health) could have been handled any better. However, when I got home from my 32 hour holiday to visit my family for New Years, Cadence was back at the equine hospital. Thank god I have the most wonderful group of support staff (inc. our amazing barn manager, my extremely committed coach, and a group of friends that I owe my horse's life to. Not many barn owners will drive repeatedly to and from the barn to check on a boarders horse with a slightly elevated temperature, on a HOLIDAY! And not many friends would be so considerate as to haul your horse to the vet clinic for you [ALSO ON A HOLIDAY] in bad weather when they should be spending time with their family, organizing their wedding, or doing any number of equally important things) back home to watch over Cadence for me. I'll give details when I'm awake.
