What's Up Wednesday

 

Guys. It's official. Hope for our country. Happy Inauguration Day! I mean, that's really what's up today amiright?

But you're not here for politics. (Obviously.) So let's chat about last week. Lots to discuss. You may remember that Eros and Shiny had a vet appointment on Friday. It was a good visit overall with some interesting developments. 

Pammon likes his new Monkey toy that I 
finally remembered to bring for him.

Pammon didn't have an appointment, but we did chat about him briefly. He has been given the green light to start jumping again, so that's good news! We'll take it slow, but since he's been jumping himself around during his free lunges and staying sound, hopefully things will go well. We did a line of poles in our flat lesson yesterday. It was... um... a little exciting. It was a four stride line when set as jumps, so we were aiming for five strides. The first time through he stayed nice and soft but we did six. So then I kicked up a little and from there on out it was pretty much a 4 each time. Pammon thought shortening for the five was incredibly offensive and literally was YANKING me out of the tack. It was aggressive. Made me remember why I rode him a slow twist before... that little french link loose ring was doing me zero favors. Lol. I think he was just excited though, and I appreciate his exuberance. We'll work on it.

When we last left off, Eros was a little lame. I was thinking it was probably the same front end issue we are always kind of dealing with, but Doc thought what I was feeling was coming from the back end. This was actually good news because we know Eros is overdue for some maintenance. His flexions went as expected give Doc's hypothesis, so we went ahead with hock injections and did his stifles as well. He got to have the weekend off with some cold hosing and hand walking. 

He also got his mane pulled, but it's still ridiculous. Ha. Maybe we'll do more next weekend. Anyway, I got him yesterday with a little ace (because perfect Eros is effing wild lately). He started out kind of the same, but actually felt better and better as we rode. So hopefully we're moving in the right direction. We'll see what I have a tonight. 

Shiny is where things get interesting. Her vet visit had two objectives. First was the easy one, have that check ligament looked at. Doc said whatever was going on with it has resolved and he couldn't find anything to be concerned about there. Phew. Good news. The second part was to see if we could figure out the tripping. We've run bloodwork for Lyme and EPM and both came back with low exposures. So very likely not the culprit. We decided this time to investigate the neck. And we found some interesting things. First, she has a disc problem up near her head. There is a narrowing in one of the spaces which does not change based on movement. It's very abnormal according to Doc, but there's not really anything we can do about because of it's location. He's not sure if it's really a problem for her or not. But it's something to keep in mind. The next finding was that there is some impingement around the middle of her neck. This does bother her and definitely shows up when you ask her to bend around. Since she's young, I wanted to explore options before injecting her with steroids. So we did ProStride instead. This is my first time trying it, it uses the horse's own blood, a PRP type therapy. Interesting. Since you can't rest a neck, she was able to work lightly all weekend. Necks can take up to a couple weeks to show improvement with injections, so I'm not sure yet if it will help or not. So far there is no change, but I'm hopeful. Because you have to be. 
Doc was also surprised by Shiny's attitude under saddle. She's been incredibly resistant, inconsistent in the contact (if she'll give it at all), and for a few days last week refused to canter entirely. Doc does not think all of this is from the neck issues. (The contact maybe, but not so much the other stuff.) He is concerned about her weight (she's put on lbs at the boarding barn, they have really rich hay) and thinks she's likely experiencing some insulin resistance. She did well on my less rich hay, but to keep things less confusing we're first going to try soaking the hay they have at the barn. If that doesn't prove helpful, I'll just bring my own hay over. Doc pulled blood to check her levels so we'll see what he finds. I'm not sure how I feel about all this, but it is what we have. So we just take it from here. This pony was bought to keep Rio company, and she did that job. So anything else I get to do with her is just icing on the cake. And if she's limited in what she can do, that's okay. She'll get whatever she needs. HOPEFULLY, all this is just manageable stuff and she'll be able to jump around and continue being super fun. One day at a time!

So that's where we are! Plugging along, doing what we can do. Have any of you dealt with neck stuff? Any advice? I'm thinking I'll try putting the back on track on her before we ride and see if that makes any difference. How was your week/weekend?