Check Engine Light

The truck decided to pop the check engine light on while I was hauling Butterball back from JT's a few weeks ago. In spite of being a thirty-something ::cough cough:: adult, I panic called my brother who confirmed that I could in fact keep driving since the temp gauge and oil pressure gauges were fine. The truck ended up probably being a computer update that needed to happen. It has since turned it back on just long enough to prompt a phone call to the mechanic, who I managed to call on his personal cell, not the office number. I blame him for having called me from that before. But anyways, that awkward phone conversation aside (sheesh do I HATE talking to people on the phone). The light turned back off for a few days. And then popped back on again. But always seems to vanish when I head to the mechanic. So he hasn't looked at it yet because they can't check a light that isn't there. 

Anyways... Butterball flashed his own check engine light at Majestic. Hind shoes had already been reapplied, he got Magic Cushion, equioxx, and a week off. Then JT got on to work some on our pesky canter transitions. Except even at the walk he was pretty sure that he could not flex his left hind leg to step under himself. He wasn't off, but he wasn't happy about flexing that leg. And that was at the walk, making it highly unlikely it was just feet. So he got signed up for some hock and stifle ProStride with our favorite lameness vet. She initially asked if we could do biologics because he's a pony. But I reminded her that I'd pulled insulin levels and he had been fine. So then she said she'd still do biologics because he is young. Excellent, lets do it. It also made me feel better about doing multiple joints in the eight year old horse. It also made me sigh to myself about having pulled his hind shoes. Hindsight... 

I also FINALLY got his teeth done. JT's other comment was that he was pretty resistant when she initially picked up contact. I had definitely noticed that too. Through more fiddle fucking around, this time the fault of me and a car dealership, distinct from the aforementioned mechanic, I had missed my scheduled appointment in January. The dentist I use is a veterinary dentist and in SUPER high demand, so I had to wait until Saturday for her to squeeze him in. We actually trailered up to her beautiful and peaceful farm. It was a lovely day to hang outside in the shade in her perfectly set up area. 

I knew his wolf teeth and incisors were sharp and suspected the rest of his mouth might need some work as well. This suspicion was correct and he had an area that was probably catching and locking a bit when asked to flex left. The goal is to do him again in six months. She also smoothed and took back his wolf teeth to make them wider. She has seen horses who chew on plastic buckets, which is one of his fave moves after taking a nice long drink at shows, get their teeth embedded in the bucket. Obvious chaos then ensues.

He gave us a bit of a scare the night after the dentist and didn't finish his dinner. When he was turned out he stood sadly in a corner and didn't go straight to grazing. Heart rate was a tiny bit up so he got banamine and then a couple of overnight hand grazing sessions. He was most delighted by this, seemed fine at every session, and I think believes we should do barnyard grazing sessions every night. 

Two days later he got Pro Stride in his hocks and stifles. Since it creates enough product if you dilute it with some of the platelet poor plasma to do two sets of joints, we did the TMTs and his stifles. He was SO ZONKED on his drugs. 

Holding his head so he didn't faceplant 

But then woke up juuuuust enough to need his sedation topped off. Even with me holding the front leg up, he was tidily moving away and gently trying to kick the needle out. There's not a mean bone in his body so he wasn't trying to kick the vet, just trying to remove the needle. So dorm top off and one twitch later, he stood like a statue. The hocks were pretty dry so probably the culprit. The stifles were unlikely to be the problem because the joint capsule was basically sucked in there was so little effusion in them. Since he got extra sedation I took advantage to really go at his mane and take it back to show ready levels. Then we headed home. He had the week off since I went out of town, but when I got back I headed down to JT's for a jump lesson before Carolina. Aaaaand when I picked up the trot my pony had a flat tire. The only thing I could find was a weird, intermittent click in his stifle when he fully loaded the joint. 

I hopped on social media to sell my entry and in the process gave his vet a heart attack. This led to some Sunday texts to verify it wasn't a septic joint. She came out Monday morning and checked him. And my poor decisions in December and January were still the problem... he was quite sensitive to hoof testers on the toe of his right hind, over one lateral nail that is near a bruise visible over the hoof wall, and over his medial heel. He was improved soundness wise compared to Sunday. But it was still there on a circle on the rocky driveway. She thought the stifle clicking was due to him abducting the leg to avoid landing on the sensitive parts of the foot. 

Circle kittens

I ran ideas around in my head for 24 hours and put him back on equioxx and started packing with magic cushion again. In the end, I decided the long game was more important than this upcoming weekend and found someone who wanted my entry and stabling for 50% of what I paid for it. In the grand scheme of silly horse math, I wasn't too upset by that outcome. 

Hopefully this is the final flash of the check engine light for my poor pony. He sees his farrier next on the 24th, so I may have him put him in hind pads as well while he grows a bit more foot and heel. 

Fiddle F*cking with Things that Ain't Broke

If you'll recall, I pulled Butterball's hind shoes in early January. I had major doubts about the farrier I was using and figured there was less to screw up if there weren't shoes involved. We had a mostly great January after that, including joyfully bouncing around Majestic, feeling like we could just pop right over anything I pointed him at. We did have our blip at the horse eating pink roll top, but that felt like green horse + spooky jump + leaning adult ammy rider combo going wrong, as it will sometimes. Then Hillary and I went back to Majestic on Friday. And it wasn't as much rainbows and sunshine as it had been on our prior trip. 

He was a very good boy, but was just kinda weird. Spooky to jumps he has been fine with in the past, including the tires where he said no freaking way about 30 feet out. So basically very not himself. 

We were thinking hind foot soreness was the issue because his hind feet had worn A LOT. I think he definitely CAN go barefoot behind, but he'll need an adjustment period where he only does light work and potentially some hoof boots for the road hacking we do. Fortunately the farrier was coming on Monday. Later that day I also remembered that he had run out of his Relyne GI about a week prior and because I'm an asshole I had not gotten around to ordering more yet. He's not a particularly stereotypically ulcery horse, but he does do a TON of travelling and competing, so I've had him on it since I got him and being off of it coincided with new spooky behavior. Alright, then hind feet? Tummy? Both are fixable, yay!  

I started him on 1/3 tube of GG daily until I could get him back on the Relyne. He had Saturday off, but then Sunday when I groomed him, he had muscle spasms in his epaxials basically any time I touched from mid-barrel up to the muscles themselves. I palpate his back EVERY TIME I ride him and had not gotten any soreness leading up to that day so felt very WTF about everything. He had also just gotten drenched with a slightly chilly rain, so I considered my options. I ended up taking the front shims out of my mattes pad in case that was dumping too much weight on the back part of it. The fitter had told me that the panels were too long for his back but it was probably temporarily fine since I'm not that heavy. Then I tacked him up and we did a nice, loose, stretchy 15 minute ride. After I untacked I palpated all over again and got absolutely no spasms. So whether that was the rain, the shims, or some other freak thing, it seemed better. 

Monday he got his hind shoes back. The farrier barely had any foot to trim, soooo yeah. Not great. We did a little dressaging on Tuesday. Today we headed over to Majestic for the schooling show. Our dressage was... meh. I'm tired of saying the same things about the canter, so see prior posts. I was a bit bummed about the centerlines because I had scribed for this judge a couple of weeks ago and thought I was being SO DEAD ON. Apparently my dead on is to the left. I was very pleased with the final halt though. The day prior it had finally occurred to me to trick train it with the click and treat. We started working on it on our hack so that there was minimal pressure to feel like we ARE WORKING ON HALTING NOW DAMMIT, I'M GOING TO TENSE EVERY PART OF ME AND ATTEMPT TO SHOVE YOU INTO A BOX. I breathed out with a light "wooahh" and then just tried to close my upper thigh and softly halt. If he stayed square and straight he got a click and cookie. If he wiggled into it but halted there was a pat but no treat. This worked like gang busters and honestly worked a bit too well down the centerline which was part of our not getting to G. If I'd found the centerline though and made it to G it would've been a much better halt than any prior test. 

Stadium was an experience. Parts of it were absolutely great. But I forgot that the outside line was a 5 to a 2 and tried to make it a 6 to a 2, which led to a great chip for the 6th stride and then 3 strides in the 2. After that fuckery on my part, he opted out of chipping to the base of the next oxer and ended up stopping, knocking rails, and kneeling in the jump. He paused for two seconds on his knees, I think assessing the situation, and then pulled us back upright. He was actively shaking, so I patted him a few times while they reset the jump. I trimmed the actual crunch into the jump out of the video because nobody needs to see that. We then picked the canter back up and carried on, with one other weird windmill jump. I think that one was him just trying to be careful from a weird spot with a bit of a shake to his confidence. Afterwards, we felt him all over and nothing palpated sore. I added studs since it was wet and I was unclear exactly what the refusal had been about, then headed to warm up. JT instructed that if he felt weird then I was to pull up. But if we were going, I needed to be committed to going. Y'know? Don't half ass it and question every single step leading to bad jumps that knock both of our confidence, but if he's doing weird things then stop. 

He warmed up great, so we headed out on course with her and my friend who had shot his rads in the chase cart. The course was pretty long with an optimum time of 5:09.

1- Honestly this was the weirdest one. He was quite spooky and it took a tap on the shoulder to get him to commit to the jump. 

2- Bench, Canter it, jump it, don't do anything weird 

3- Boathouse that can be quite spooky, but was not for him 

4- Ramp

5- Wagon

6- Water

7- Table

8AB- Brush rails to corner, these were not at all related really

He jumped the SNOT out of this one, but because of the shrubs his front half was immediately cut off, so you get a take off picture

I was unsure of what spot we were getting to this and rode it a bit in the backseat

But at least gave him the reins

9- Chevron

So cute!

10AB- half coffin

11- Roll, shared with BN 

12- Cabin 

13- Cut out cabin

14- More rails

15- Down bank

16- Trakehner

17- Log and box 

After the water the whole course felt pretty great. We did of course chip the final fence, but y'know, other than that... He was responding to my half halts with my body and felt light and pleasant over things. The verdict from JT and my friend was definitely hind feet though, he was reluctant to take the spots where he really had to sit and push. He got his feet packed after and will get Equioxx as well as a few days off. 

The moral of the story is don't screw with things that are working. Keep his hind shoes on, keep him on the Relyne. 

Edited to add these because I don't know when/where else I'll post them, but lookit the speedy pony! Also I posted the heart rate because I found it hilarious it dropped from the start. I wouldn't say I'm nervous before leaving the box, but I guess my heart rate disagrees. I think the low point towards the very end was a glitch. 

All the Therapy and a Ben Update

At Goggles last chiro adjustment, his vet noted some consistent soreness in his caudal thoracic/cranial lumbar area. Her feeling was that he is a big and long horse and gravity is doing its work there. She recommended the Equiband. However, he also wants to very much tilt his pelvis under and immobilize it, so just the belly band, not the hindquarters band. This seemed like it would be safer for me too, given his proclivity to kick first and ask questions later. I had bought this for Yoshi way back when, so I dug it out of the tack trunk to try on him.

His first reaction, as suspected, was to kick at the band, but it was only once. He's starting to put a little more trust in me it seems. The second time I grabbed it from the underside he put his ears at odd angles but then accepted it. 

We just did 10 minutes on the line with the rope halter. I haven't lunged him since this time last year at the GY's. He did a lot of long lining at JT's though. It's probably a good hole to fill in anyways, so after letting him eat some we did some walk-halt-walk and then added in a bit of trot. The trot was instantly rushed and anxious, but after several circles he came back down to earth. I've got some trot poles set on the lunge circle and he politely aimed himself at those. He did them in two ways: the slow, articulating the joints more way, or the rushed almost fall on the face way. After a couple repetitions of the correct version we called it quits. It will definitely be several sessions before I even dare to ask for a canter. I want that anxiety waaaayyyy down before we go there. Since I haven't lunged him since last year I don't actually have a comparison for with equiband vs. without, so that will be something to experiment with over the next few weeks.

He also has a tarp living in his field now. The first day we introduced it I had my husband lead Ben over it several times and then had Ben stand on it while Goggles watched. Then I left it in Goggles field in a 3 foot x 12 foot section with landscaping timbers to hold it. The next day I rolled it into a 8-12" section (still 12' long) and had him go over it in hand. There was a LOT of angst and going backwards and at one point he pulled away from me and galloped around the field trailing the rope. I tried to bring my own energy level very far down and eventually he got over it. We went back and forth until it was kind of casual and then called it good. 

The next day we started off better even. He went right over in hand with some rushing still, but more willingly than the day before. We repeated, slowing each step down, to make sure he was truly thinking about it. Then I rode and had a good, productive ride. I finished the ride back in his field going over it on as loose a rein as I could. He launched the first few times but got more relaxed about it pretty quickly.

The next day I made it slightly larger and took him over it in hand again. That's the plan going forward, increase the size very gradually every few days until he's chill with a normal sized liver pool and then with a tarp in general. It's probably good for his pasture grass too, I set it in the fence line where he likes to run next to Ben, and I'm pretty sure he's still avoiding it when I'm not there, giving the trough he created a minute to fill in. We're in the rainy, sunny, grass growing time of year right now. 

Second width, pausing to make sure we're using all the brain, not just rushing it to get it over with 

As noted above, Ben now lives at the same farm as Goggles. This spring I was seriously thinking about listing him for sale - I don't really have time for two horses in full work and maybe his dainty feet would be better suited to a career on footing such as local HJ or dressage (with someone who doesn't care about his tongue). But then he came up bilaterally sore up front after a trot set on decent pasture footing. And I threw in the towel. I talked to his vet and farrier and we pulled all four shoes. His farrier offered glue on composite shoes as an alternative, but I don't need him to be sound right now, so yanking all the shoes was the final decision. He came down from the mid-Atlantic region two years ago barefoot, so maybe he is a horse who needs his vacation time barefoot to stimulate sole growth? The more we tried to protect him, the easier his feet bruised. 

Through some changing circumstances, he also needed to be out of the GY's about two weeks after his shoes got pulled. Goggles' farm owner offered to keep them separate if I wanted and was delightfully accommodating with moving Ben in on relatively short notice.

Herro!

Other than a complete inability to keep a fly mask on Ben (thanks Goggles), it's going shockingly well. I thought they would get soooo herd bound that taking one out to work the other would cause a scene. But it hasn't. The barn owner let me throw Ben in a stall Saturday when I took Goggles away and then she put Ben back out a few minutes after we left. I also gave him trazodone. It was only his second day there so I wanted to set him up for success. I guess he was completely fine while I was gone with Goggles. 

When Ben and I walked up to the road up front, Goggles did a bit of pacing the fence line, but no screaming. And he was pacing at a walk, so really not that bad. 

They do really love each other, but I'm happy enough with them separate but able to talk over the fence line. Ben is probably grateful he's got a defense against Goggles' hind feet. Knock on wood (that is still standing), they haven't taken down boards yet, so that's nice too. 

Ben is... surprisingly sound without shoes. The first two weeks he was definitely a bit sore up front, but then he adjusted? His feet look like absolute trash right now, chipping all to pieces, but he is looking pretty good on them. I'm not riding him partially because I'm not sure if my visual of him looking pretty good is going to translate to him feeling pretty good under saddle, but also partly because I'm questioning his saddle fit again. 

Freshly pulled shoes, doing some in hand work in the GY's arena before moving

Braining so hard 

Since I dug the equiband out for Goggles, I figured why not throw it on Ben. I haven't been happy with his topline in a while (hence my questions about saddle fit), so it would do him some good. Goggles' saddle isn't a bad fit on him so that's what I put on to anchor the equiband in place. I have a surcingle but I don't love it and I'm really trying to avoid pinching his withers and trapezius which I think the saddle does a better job avoiding than the surcingle. 

Excuse me? I thought I was retired

I don't think I'm just tricking myself that there have been some positive changes in his topline since the photo at the GY's 2 weeks prior 

"Ermagerd, MOOS!" - Ben. He was definitely sore on the road, but we just walked onto it then turned around and walked back home. Gradual exposure to grow those soles (I hope). 

He was cracking me up, he spooked at the cows and tried to eat grass while walking all within the same ten seconds while he was supposed to be lunging. I don't think I've ever lunged him on grass and we keep having to have a conversation about working vs. eating. 

We've got some walk poles set up raised at one end that he's doing multiple times every time he "works" and then also have the trot poles on our lunging circle. We're doing backing in hand with good posture and working on ToF in hand too. I'm hoping this will all help his topline and then after 2-3 cycles without shoes we can consider putting him back in some up front. 

I don't have goals for him right now. He's given me so much. I flipped back through a few of our show summaries the other day. For a horse who is a chicken at heart, he sure has tried his heart out for me over the past two years. He's also a pleasant dude to be around, he's tolerating pasture board quite well (knock on wood again!), and I'm conducting my own barefoot vs. shod experiment with him. I don't think he'll ever be able to gallop XC without shoes on, but I'm hoping in some way we can create feet that can tolerate trotting around for 20 minutes without ending up bruised. I'm not ruling out him someday finding a home with someone else who will love and appreciate him for everything he is, see above about time and money, but for the foreseeable future we'll be hanging out. 

An attempt at a dressage test

Yoshi got new shoes Wednesday along with a very positive report from the farrier. He actually had a bit of heel to take off on the left foot! Woohoo!!! He was very good for the whole thing until the last 5 minutes. Then he started putting anything within reach into his mouth... the farrier, me, a halter hanging on a hook. Just like a toddler that was just DONE. So I slowly fed treats and we got through it. Funny horse. 

Yesterday

Yesterday

6 weeks ago

6 weeks ago 

Overall, his feet are looking MUCH healthier and I can see the hint of a heel. Hooray!

Today we rode through Training level test 1. 

Definitely rough in places - in particular the halts and obviously the left lead canter that wasn't, but y'know. First attempt. 

When this is my position two strides before a down transition... Yeah no wonder the halts sucked! 

I do not like how much bracing in the stirrups I'm seeing in the video though. This was the first time I'd set up the pivo in a few weeks, so I'm going to work on fixing the bracing and then see how we look in a few days.

Bracey bracey

I finally brought out the tripod which made the pivo much happier. It had been wandering off in the middle of rides and then sticking in the woods for the rest of the ride. I apparently still set it a bit too close to the edge of the ring though - it loses us at the canter a couple of times. 

May have something to do with our racehorse canter still

Overall, I'm so happy with how he's going. We're playing in and out of the dressage ring and he's just getting more and more consistent. We have another dressage lesson on Monday. I'm going to try to nail down weekly or every other week lessons ASAP. 

I cheated, and we jumped a log, barrels, and the liverpool the other day. He's perfect. The solid jumps made much more sense to him than poles, he set himself up really nicely for them.