Good Friday, Easter Weekend, and Good Rides

I took Tico outside for a couple of hacks Friday (the company I work for was bought out by a  French Canadian firm; we get Good Friday off but not Presidents Day :( ), and then yesterday.

We went out to the fields behind the property and just walked around a bit. He was a really good boy this time - a few weeks ago there were monsters and dragons lurking everywhere, and I couldn't get him off his tippy toes. Then last week, there was a dreaded wild turkey walking in the field about 100 yards away from us as we were coming across the field and back towards the barn, which turned him from the slightly up but listening horse to a "channeling my inner arab" head high, tail up, idiot who wouldn't listen at all.

We took a refresher lesson the following day (more for me than him; it's my lack of consistency that allows his lack of discipline).

So, Friday and Saturday I wanted calm, relaxed, and listening; I got it. No grabbing for leaves or using his relaxed head down position to make a grab for grass. We crossed a tiny brook without doing the leapfrog jump - he drank from it first, of course - instead simply walking through. It was nice. :)

Friday was pretty chilly so I went back into the indoor to actually do some trot and canter stuff; yesterday was so beautiful I went to the back ring to enjoy the sun.

It always seems windier in that back ring than closer to the barn, and yesterday was no exception. He sometimes does the "there's a monster!" spook in either of the back corners but yesterday he was a star. The only thing that marred the whole ride was that as we were cantering around (a nice, on the bit canter, not careening around) and I asked him to whoa, he stopped quickly , tripped, and went down onto his knees.

As I've mentioned before (and in the previous post as a matter of fact) Tico is conformationally challenged. He has the dubious honor of possessing what a vet who fluoroscoped his right front fetlock a few months ago referred to as  "the bone spur of the year", most likely caused by his crooked front legs, perhaps in conjunction with poor shoeing. Lord knows until I found my current farrier he was still getting that poor shoeing. He has limited flexion in that joint, and his left front isn't much better. So even if he sits on his butt in a reiner stop, those front feet can get in the way when he tries to move them.

To keep him sound, he gets trimmed and shod every 4 weeks. This horse can grow a toe like you read about, even in the winter.  Yeah, it can get expensive, but this farrier listened to my vet (the previous one didn't), fixed his chronic lameness by shoeing the foot in front of him, and he's been sound ever since. At first with a 5 week trim cycle, but lately we've been doing 4.  He's due to be done the 24th.  So, his toes were long, and he also still had the borium studs in his shoes.

I jumped off him, took off his SMB boots, checked his legs and joints, put the boots back on, walked him around. He looked a bit embarrassed, but not lame. I got back on him and we walked back to the barn, schmoozed around, then walked back to the ring with another rider. He hadn't taken an off step, so I asked for a trot. No limp. Yay! I asked for another canter. Again, no limp. I rode him about 10 minutes more, working him in both directions.

We went back to the barn, I got off, took off the boots and bell boots again, checked all his joints (no heat, no swelling) groomed him, picked his feet, and gave him Kashi bars and carrots. He deserved them - what a sweet boy he was!

After I told her about what happened, I said to one of the other boarders "It's really nice to have such a tough little horse". It really is.

It was such a nice day, I didn't want to just leave after my ride. I spent some time cleaning tack outside in the glorious sun, and spent more time with a bunch of really great people - the barn owner, manager, and fellow boarders.  We make each other laugh, we help each other out, and we share in each others pain when bad things happen. I'm really happy I'm boarding at Crystal Farm.

An hour or so later, the vet came to do the second round of spring shots. Tico was of course an angel. :) He got the rest of the bag of carrots before I headed on home.

The barn is closed for Easter, so no riding today. A shame, it's a gorgeous day today, too. Yay, Spring may finally be here!

Tico is a Veterinary Marvel

Tico has crooked legs.

There's no getting around it: he's been known to stand with his feet pointing in opposite directions.

Granted, this is a bit exaggerated: there was grass to his right, and hay to his left, and he didn't know which was the most likely direction to result in him EATING, but this gives you an idea.

He also has a bone spur in his right front, that I've known about since 2007, when I had his front feet xrayed. He'd been lame a lot, and the blacksmith wasn't trimming him the way the vet was telling him needed to be done in order to keep the crooked legs happy. He kept trying to "fix" the crookedness with a straight trim, and it wasn't working.  I was getting really frustrated with the way things were, and just wanted to get a look at what we were dealing with.

See the bump in front of the ball joint? That shouldn't be there.  I thought I'd have a 9 year old pasture pet, looking at this.

But I changed farriers and got one who listened to my vet. The new farrier trimmed and shod Tico so that there was no undue stress on his joints, basically allowing the crookedness to remain since that's just the way his legs went. He started to go sound. He had limited flexibility in that joint, but it didn't seem to bother him.

But of course the underlying problem of a crooked leg was still there, and the bone spur wasn't going away. When his toes grew long, he'd get a bit gimpy. So I started having him trimmed more often, which helps.

Fast forward to 2014. It had been a long time since I'd had any images of his fetlock done. It was winter, and the blacksmith was trying to space out the trims a bit more, since conventional wisdom says horses don't grow as much foot when they're not out on green grass... but I guess Tico is an exception to that rule. He was growing his toes as fast as ever - the blacksmith would schedule him for 6 weeks, but at 4 weeks he'd be looking long, and I'd be calling for a reschedule. 

Meanwhile, there's a new performance horse trainer resident at the barn, who likes to use a vet from Kentucky who's a leg and joint expert. He travels with a portable fluoroscope, xray machine, and other arcane veterinary diagnostic equipment. The trainer was  going to be getting him up to look at and possibly do injections on some of the reining horses. I added Tico to the list of horses for him to look at - I was thinking that Tico might need another injection in his fetlock (I've had it done before, as well as his hocks, stifles, and hip joint, though not recently).

The vet took a look at a bunch of the reining horses first, and then we brought out Tico. The trainer and I mentioned his need for a reduced trimming schedule and then the vet picked Tico's foot up. 

"Well, dang - I'm going to scope this for free - I gotta see what this looks like!"

We brought Tico into the area where he had all the equipment set up, and he ran the fluoroscope over Tico's fetlock.  And swore.

The image was pretty amazing: that bone spur was now quite a bit larger - which certainly explains the lack of flexibility (around 20%, according to this vet - which was why he wanted to look at it).  I'd thought the joint was fusing - and I think that was a possibility before he scoped it  - but the various joint capsules looked pretty good - the cartilage was still there, and there was pretty good spacing (though it was less even looking back to front, due to the crookedness of the foot from fetlock to hoof).

The vet said "That's got to be the bone spur of the year for me!" which given that he specializes in joint issues is a little disturbing. The trainer pointed out that the year just started, but the vet said he didn't expect to see something like that again, and certainly hoped not.  Poor Tico.

On the plus side: he saw no reason to inject Tico, since the joint walls and capsules really didn't need it and you can only do those injections so many times before they don't really help. He suggested using Previcox and gave me a bottle of it to put him on - and since it's a COX-2 inhibitor it should help with any other arthritic aches and pains a 16 year old horse is likely to experience. I'd been giving Tico a bit of bute on weekends when I used him, but we can likely take him off that if the Previcox helps, and it won't do stomach damage. 

Bone spur of the year! I wonder if they give awards for that...

New Toy

I got a GoPro Hero 3+ 

Tico got to show off his lack of manners. Seriously, he NEVER has acted like such a brat. He knew there'd be video evidence, the little delinquent.

Ima Cute Lad. Born Apr 9, 1983. Died September 10, 2013.

It was time. It was too soon. Goodbye, my dear sweet Duster.

More than twenty years later.

Bonnie Scamp... and Tico with the same antlers.

Sometimes I hate fall weather.

Should have posted about last weeks trail ride, but was lazy. Who knows, maybe I'll remember enough to post it anyway at some point... there were definitely memorable moments.

In the interim, yesterday.

Thank you Tico, for the not-so-gentle reminder that I'm not getting any younger: yesterday (a day filled with big, chilly wind and lions and tigers and bears, oh my!), we were walking in the back field parallel to some swampy woods, when some kind of a bird took exception to our presence, about 30 feet away.

It took flight through leaves that already had been altogether much too suspiciously noisy and mobile to begin with (at least in Tico's estimation) and Tico executed a quarter of a second 180 degree turn.

I was at that point, shall we say less than centered on my horse? As a matter of fact, I'm not sure my head had caught up with the rest of my body for another second or so.

 Since I was adamantly saying with my reins "there's no way in hell you're going to run back to the barn", he started crow hopping.

 Miraculously enough, he stopped when I bellowed "CUT IT OUT!!!!!" so I shifted myself back to the middle of the saddle, and we worked on getting past that spot for the next 10 minutes or so.

 Yup, didn't fall off. Still, my knees, back, shoulders, elbows and and neck hurt today like I slammed into a wall.

A Beautiful February Day

We had a really nice day yesterday. Actually, as far as winter goes, we've been having a really nice winter: not too cold, not much snow (especially compared to last year) and a goodly number of sunny days. Of course we'll probably pay for this in the summer, when it will either rain everyday and be more like Ireland than Massachusetts, or be hot, muggy and not rain at all, creating drought conditions after the lack of snow over the winter.

Aren't I a ray of sunshine?


Anyway, yesterday... I hadn't seen Tico and Dusty since last weekend, when we'd had one of the few really cold days. I'd left them in their heavy winter blankets, so on Tuesday, it having started getting into the upper 30s and 40s again, I'd called to ask that they be switched back to their sheets. Unfortunately, that message only made it as far as Tico - poor Dusty was in his winter jammies still when I got there, so I pulled the blanket off him immediately and left him naked.

Both of them have pretty good coats - Dusty's being particularly unique: he'd been clipped in the early winter because it had simply grown too long and too early for his comfort. Now a considerable amount of it has grown back. Nearly white. He's a palomino, and the girl who clipped him for me had been practicing before doing her own horse. She gave him an eventer clip, which looked really precious on a 28 year old quarter horse. With the clipped hair grown out now, he looks particularly odd.



Though yesterday was pretty fine, Tico seemed a bit wired. He was giving me the horsie silly eyeballs while on the crossties as I did a quick sheath cleaning (what can I say - he's a pig and there was gross black junk stuck to the inside of his legs), brushed him, saddled him, and was preparing to put his bridle on. My friend Elaine was working at the barn yesterday, and she was doing the afternoon turn-out changing of the guard. She opened LC's stall door, and Tico decided that was the most frightening thing EVAH, pulled back hard nearly sitting on his butt, broke his halter, and ran out the back door.

I grabbed the broken halter (I have no idea why) and my lead line, and followed in time to see the tail-in-the-air horse equivalent of the one finger salute being waved jauntily my way. He started running down the track between the turnouts, finally stopping about half way down. I muttered under my breath "you better not roll in the mud with that saddle on, buster..." but he was more interested in trying to eat the dead grass, thank goodness. I wrapped the leadline around his neck, turned him around, and threw him in his stall where he got to enjoy the after-ride carrots I'd placed in his feed bucket, the twit.

I finished tacking him up in his stall and we headed into the indoor for a little bit, so I could get on (mounting blocks RULE) then out the door and down the track between the turnouts again. Lately I've been riding him in what Dover Saddlery calls a "Hackamore Noseband":



You attach it to a regular headstall, and when adjusted correctly it rests on the bone (not the cartilage) of the nose and applies pressure there. It isn't and shouldn't be necessary to strong-arm a horse with that, and Tico is pretty well-behaved in it. I like it in the winter particularly, because cold bits make for unhappy horses, and he seems to like it, too.

The wind was howling down in the back ring. For some reason, it's always much windier down there than up at the barn about 100 yards away. I don't know what the crows were up to, but the murder sounded like they were murdering each other in the field beside the ring.

To make things even more akin to Armageddon as far as the tiny brained equine was concerned, some people were walking dogs out in the field behind the ring, continuing on to the graveyard. We could glimpse them through the trees, but not really see full bodies.

I asked them, quite nicely, if they would please say something so my horse wouldn't think they were demons from hell come to eat the poor little booger. Nothing. I asked again, more loudly. Not a word - except they appeared to try to go further into the woods. Which didn't fool Tico, not one bit - he now knew they were planning an attack. Jerks.

It made for a lively ride. There were a couple of nasty little spooks which seemed more crow-related than demons in the graveyard related, but other than that he behaved pretty nicely, and we had good lively trots and easy controlled canters. I was actually pleased with the little twit by the end of the ride.

Last night, just before falling to sleep, my mind pulled back the memory of one of the spooks, and my body jerked in a larger reaction than I'd had while it occurred. Isn't it odd the way the mind works?