Hurricane Prep / Lameness Update

Oh joy, a hurricane is on the way. It seems like Rhode Island is going to be right on the edge of the affected area and we will be much better off than New Jersey and New York, but we are still preparing for the worst. I stocked up on grain yesterday, filled the outside water tubs, soaked pelleted bedding in case I need more. I also stacked some hay in the barn. I am trying to minimize the time I'll need to spend outside in sustained winds of 50mph ;) and all of our hay and bedding is stored in a garage that isn't connected to the barn, so bringing the hay and bedding into the barn will be helpful.

I have been really struggling with Lucy's lameness, partially because she's uncomfortable but mostly because I am really so irritated that I am in this situation. I really have to question if her wellbeing was taken into account during this clinic. We have jumped big jumps, galloped across fields, done clinics, events, and hunter paces back-to-back, and I have NEVER seen her lame like this. Before she went to the clinic, she would occasionally take some funky steps and I would kind of watch her for a second, wondering what was going on, but within a second she looked fine. I watched her move on Saturday and she was so incredibly sore in her right hind that when asked for a left lead canter, she immediately swapped her lead behind, unable to canter properly to the left. I asked her to trot and then pick up the canter again so that she could fix her leads but it was the same thing each time. Yesterday I rode her in the indoor and she felt much better, so I really hope we have turned a corner.

I wouldn't be as frustrated if anyone who was associated with the clinic had checked up on her, since the organizers and the person who used her knew she was lame by the end of it, but I haven't heard anything. If I had borrowed a horse and returned it lame, you can bet I would be calling, emailing, and probably sending a horsey care package! I would feel terrible.

UPDATE: The lady who borrowed her called me this afternoon and we had a nice long chat. I feel much better.

She has a chiropractor appointment this week, and another massage appointment next week. I tallied up the costs I have had to try and get her sound before EA and I am at over $200. If I am unable to do EA, I will be out another $200 between entry fees and the hotel reservation that I cannot cancel. Absolutely ridiculous, but I just really hope she feels better.

Thank you to everyone who voted for Cairo in the photo contest. We are still in first place! Voting continues until the 31st so if you haven't voted and wouldn't mind, please check out the contest :) The link is here.

Here are a few photos from this week - we had some beautiful warm weather so I took Cairo to the beach.

an exceptionally beautiful jelly fish that washed up on the beach

Cairo telling a young black lab who's boss

She met a little hound friend and they were instantly in love

taking a wave to the face! what a beast.

I should have seen this one coming.

Well, this past weekend ended up being interesting to say the least. First of all, Cairo's surgery went great on Thursday,and she is on the mend. Her incision is already healing very well. The best news came yesterday, when the vet called to say the margins were clean and she is cancer-free!

Lucy had her clinic this weekend and I really have mixed feelings about it. The clinic ran for three days, and each horse did three hour sessions once a day. That is 9 hours of work in just three days, and while I think Lucy probably gained something from it, I do think that was a lot to ask of the horse. Clinics are a great way to introduce yourself to some new concepts but the idea of going to a clinic and having all of your problems magically fixed in a short amount of time is very false in my opinion. I really liked the clinician and thought his approach was very effective.

When I went to pick Lucy up, I was told that she was off just slightly in the hind end, which was not a very nice surprise. Of course she still worked for the whole three hours on Sunday, too. So now I have to figure out what is going on, how sore she really is, if it's an injury or a strain, and then decide what to do about it. Lauren jumped her on Wednesday and she looked fabulous, not off at all. I have watched the video of her riding that day about 8 or 9 times and I can't find any hint of unsoundness.

Lucy got Monday and today off, and she will get tomorrow off as well. She got bute with her dinner, too. I had a massage therapist out to look at her tonight to pinpoint where she is sore, so that I could have help deciding if this was a vet issue or not. The massage therapist determined that she was very, very sore in her hind end and when I told her about the exercises she did at the clinic (sometimes being backed all the way around the ring), she said, "well that will do it!".

Lucy enjoying her massage. My friend Maddy is
holding her for me :)

The massage therapist recommended that she should have tomorrow off, but we can go for a nice long walk in-hand to let her stretch her legs, so I will take her for a walk on the trails. She'll like that. Then on Thursday, she can go for a low-key hack. We'll do some stretching and easy trail rides this week, have a flatwork week next week, and if she seems ok then we will do some very low gymnastics in preparation for Equine Affaire. I also emailed the chiro to see if he can come out and look at her. If at any point she seems to be getting worse or not improving, I will have to get the vet out and cancel Equine Affaire. I really, really hope this isn't the case since I am looking forward to EA and it is all paid for. It would be very disappointing to not go but I will absolutely put the horse's best interest first.

Trigger points are not your friend.

Lucy had her massage appt last night. Up until last night, she has been very tolerant of all of the poking and prodding that I have put her through. Last night we saw another side of her, though, and it wasn't very pretty!

The Massage Therapist's name is Meri and she is very nice. As soon as she arrived, she did a quick overview of Lucy and asked me what kinds of issues I had been having with her, and I filled her in on the story so far with her left side and hind end, and told her about the stuff Dr. Katz had done during the chiropractic evaluation and treatment. Within five minutes, Meri had pretty much scoped out L's entire body, and knew exactly where all the trigger points were.

She started on Lucy's left side. At first, Lucy danced around a lot. She was very very sore. Her neck and shoulders weren't too bad, which I was surprised about and so was Meri, given the history with her feet being torn up as badly as they were. She had trigger points all along the top of her rib cage, which Meri said was from the racing saddles they use at the track. She said the tree on a racing saddle is half the length of a regular saddle tree, and it ends about one foot back from the shoulder, and that is exactly where my poor pony was the most sore.

Once she got to the hind end, she found that Lucy's hamstrings were very sore and tight, and she has some scar tissue running along them. I got to feel what she was talking about, and instead of the muscle feeling like regular smooth muscle, it felt like she had guitar strings running up her back legs into her dock area. Meri assured me that with proper care and rehab, the scar tissue would disappear in time.

By the time Meri got to the right side of Lucy's body, the horse was beginning to relax (and dare I say enjoy the massage). Again, her neck and shoulders were pretty good, but once Meri got to her back, Lucy was clearly in a lot of discomfort. Just like humans, horses develop knots in their muscles, and Meri works mostly with direct pressure into the knot, to help release some of the tension. This can be very painful while it's happening, but it will help Lucy feel much better in the long run. Of course I couldn't convey that to her so she thought we were torturing her. She did show some signs of relaxation at times by yawning, taking some deep breaths, and relaxing through her back and neck, but that would only last for a few seconds before she was back to dancing around.

When Meri got to her hind end on the right side, Lucy started to get really annoyed. At this point, Meri had been working on her for almost two hours and I think Lucy had had about enough. She was very sore and very tight through her right hip and SI, and when Meri got to the really really sore spots, Lucy kicked out at her and tried to reach around and bite her with her ears pinned against her head. I was shocked! I hadn't seen this horse make a nasty face at anything up until this point! Meri said a lot of the hind end issues come from the starting gate at the track. When a horse launches all 1,100 lbs of itself into a flat out gallop from a standstill, that obviously takes a huge effort from the hind end, and the wear and tear placed on Lucy was very obvious last night. Thank goodness she came off the track before she sustained any permanent injury. All of the issues Meri found last night are fixable with proper conditioning and stretching.

Speaking of stretches, Meri showed me a few that I can do with Lucy to help her loosen up through her hind end, topline, and shoulders. One is the "carrot stretch", where I coax the horse to turn her neck and head around towards her back end to reach for a carrot. Lucy tried to "cheat" by turning her hind end and basically doing a spin, but we got her to do the real stretch by putting her closer to the aisle wall, so that she couldn't get her back end around all the way. We did that stretch on both sides, and then moved on to stretching her front legs. To do this, I am supposed to pick up one of her front legs and gently pull away from Lucy's body. The idea is that she will kind of pull back, and then give into the pressure, allowing her shoulder and back to get a nice release. Again this was done on both sides of her body, and then she got lots of treats.

So I hope with all this therapy that Lucy will be on the mend soon. I am supposed to give her today off, and then I can start riding her tomorrow and just do some low-key "long and low" work with lots of circles and serpentines. By the end of the week we should be back to the regular wtc workout that we have been doing.

Contact!

Today we warmed up in the indoor because someone had turned their horses out in the outdoor. I got some super nice relaxed but attentive trot work out of her, and we did the usual figure 8's and zig-zags. Until today, all I have been asking of Lucy is to travel straight, and have been using very minimal contact, directing her mostly through my seat and upper body. I decided today that it was time to introduce a bit of contact and see how she did with it. At first she was like, "Hey, what are you doing with my face?" but she quickly figured out that if she softened through her neck and back, she got a release. As soon as she softened, I would praise her and let her walk on a long rein. Pretty soon she was eager to give to pressure, and clearly happy when she got her long rein. I worked on this for about ten minutes and then noticed that the outdoor was free.

I decided to do a little experiment, and without dismounting, I asked Lucy to walk out the indoor's side doorway, around the barn and across the driveway to where the outdoor is. She was like, no problem boss! She was SO good about it! We walked around the outdoor so she could check it out, because it had been about a week since I rode her in it, and then I did some quick reviews of contact with her. Since we had already warmed up in the indoor, we moved right onto cantering, and had some fabulous canters each direction. Going to the right was like heaven; she was so soft and happy and not rushy at all, but then I lost my stirrup and she got a bit quick (probably because I was trying to get my stirrup back and was accidentally nudging her with my toe...she doesn't need a lot of leg at all!).

There was a single pole along one of the long sides of the ring, and after I got my stirrup back, she cantered over it in both directions. Last time we worked over poles, she just walked and trotted over them, but there were three in a row. This time there was just one pole but I was asking her to canter. A long time ago, I watched a friend teach her greenie to canter over poles and the horse jumped about eight feet through the air, thinking it was a jump. I had that in the back of my mind on our first approach, but luckily she was cool as a cucumber about the whole thing. The first time she cantered over it like it wasn't even there (which I loved) and then the second time, she kind of hopped over it and switched her lead mid-stride. After that I made sure to be clear that I wanted her to stay on the same lead and she got it every time. She is SO SMART!

Each time I ride, I hop off at the end of the ride and think to myself, "wow, that was the best ride!" When every ride is the "best one", I cannot help but be ecstatic. I love this horse.

Tonight the lucky lady is getting a massage. I bet she'll love it.