I plan on eating a tube of Ulcergard for breakfast tomorrow.

"Nobody said it was easy
No one ever said it would be so hard
Oh, take me back to the start"
~ Coldplay

The steady progress Gogo and I had been making up until around mid-January has obviously slowed considerably in the past month, pockmarked by various hiccups for one reason or another. Since January 24th, I've only been on her 8 times. While she had had the totally horrible and mystery blip a week and a half ago, it had resolved itself in three days, and she was looking and feeling outstanding. I followed my vet's instructions, started her back up last Saturday after jogging sound for the latter part of the week, and she's been doing fantastically ever since. She worked well on Tuesday, and had Wednesday off, seeing as it was also my day off and I had no plans to go to the barn. The staff had instructions to leave her overnight wraps off and they did.

Yesterday, however, I arrived at the barn after she had already been turned out. Normally, I like to be there when she goes out so I can be the one to do it (and I can inspect her legs), but I had put her on the Wenesday turnout list for the first shift of turnouts, and since I wasn't there to change it for the next day, she was already outside. When I went to go bring her in, I could see all the way from the barn that both hinds were big. Very, very big. Whether or not they had been big in the morning (or the day before), I don't know. I was rather alarmed at their size but thought that perhaps the fact that she hadn't had wraps on for two days had caught up to her, and she was just filled like crazy. (Which, of course, you'd think would go down in turnout.) On closer inspection, however, I was not happy to find that there was no uniformity to the swelling - it was located entirely in the area of her SDFT. Nothing higher up or further forward was involved. I put her on the treadmill, thinking that perhaps she just didn't move around enough in turnout to make them go down, and was unnerved to see that movement did NOT make them come down. That was my first clue at the AECs that something was wrong - movement did not make the swelling go down. I had one of my staff jog her for me and yep, sure enough, she was quite lame RH. What was even more alarming was that the leg immediately after got even bigger and HOT. Blisteringly hot. Back into the tub she went, and I was most unhappy to find that even after a half hour of standing in freezing water, the leg was still warm directly out of the bucket, and immeditely burned up again. The swelling did come down, but I tried to put her ice boots on while she was back in the stall - she was so uncomfortable in them she couldn't even hold still. She shifted around, lifted her legs, kicked at the wraps, and shuffled around and around her stall miserably, refusing to even stand still for a fresh flake of hay. The RH swelling was very, very painful to touch. Exactly like how it was the day she originally injured herself.

I obviously went home feeling pretty crappy yesterday.

I did not expect improvement today. I had a call in to the vet, and quite honestly thought she had reinjured herself - I felt pretty certain that I would be making another trip back to the vet in the near future. Today's protocol included intensive cold-tubbing, icing, anti-inflammatories, wrapping, minimal handwalking, and strict rest, and after I went through the barn to do my morning check on all the other horses, I pulled her out of her stall and into the washrack. I hadn't done more than just dry wrap her the night before, just to see what the legs would be like the next morning. I cringed as I started to pull her wraps off, unsure of what to expect.

And.... they were cool. And tight.

Huh.

I continued on with the aggressive cold-tubbing and anti-inflammatories anyway, and when I pulled her legs out of the tubs, they were icy cold and had zero fill in them. Nothing like yesterday at all.

Huh.

She went back in her stall until around 2pm, when my constant eyes-on-the-ground boarder arrived. We pulled her out of her stall and took her over to the arena for a jog. She'd had 500lbs of Banammine at 8am, enough to take the inflammation down but probably not enough to make her feel 100%. I expected her to be pretty lame still.

And... she was not. She was about 98% sound. She didn't look very strong, to be sure, but quite frankly she looked far better than she had two days out from the last freak mystery lameness two weeks ago. And this was about 15 hours out this time, with a far more alarming presentation of the lameness. And unlike yesterday, after she jogged out today the legs stayed totally tight and cool.

Huh.

I kinda... have no idea what to think, really. I don't think she's reinjured herself severely, because she'd still be lame and the leg would still have SOME heat and swelling in it. It seems like more adhesions breaking up or perhaps a continuation of the other possible adhesion breaking up, but seriously... it's WEIRD. Really, really weird. We're going to be super conservative over these next few days and reevaluate at the end of the weekend to see what we have, but it's pretty obvious that despite the fact that she was cleared to canter, she is not ready for it yet.


Unfortunately for me, the fact that we're approaching an entire month lost to more time off than saddle time is posing a serious risk to the upcoming season. Even though our first scheduled event wasn't going to be until the end of June, if we really want to be competitive and ready to roll this year we are going to need more time than we have. She's going to need six to eight weeks of really being legged up and actively galloping, jumping full courses, doing LSD work and legitimate dressage as well before I even think about turning down the centerline at an event at Training level, but is she going to be ready for that? Whether or not she would be ready fitness-wise, would those legs be up to it after such a short comeback period? I see no need to cut corners here. There is no need to push it if there is any question about her strength at all. Unless she is ready in the beginning of May to start really serious training and fitness work, then our season is over before it even begins. Unless she is ridiculously sound and ready to roll, I see no reason in pushing her hard. I see no reason to spend a ton of money on shows if she's not going to be competitive or it's going to compromise her soundness. I see no reason to risk anything at this point. This mare is too special to push anything unless and until she's 110%. It's not worth it. She has so many competitive years left ahead of her IF I give her every chance possible now.

So at this point, I'm not sure what to do or what to think. I'm going to see how she does over the next few days, and then perhaps I will have a clearer picture. I think it's safe to say at this point that our upcoming eventing season is suspended at this point until further notice. You never know, everything might work out, but... what's the hurry?



As today's Men's Super-G gold-medal winner Aksel Lund Svindal said after making a miraculous rebound from his horrible crash while training at Beaver Creek in 2007, "it doesn't matter if it takes you two months or ten, so long as you come back 110% percent." (Obviously in my case we're talking about a much larger timeframe..!) I'll do what it takes to get this mare back. If it takes us a year of doing nothing but trail riding and chilling out, I'll do it. Whatever I have to do to secure a sound future for her, I'll do it.

"You see the world in black and white
No colour or light
You think you'll never get it right
But you're wrong. You might."

Obviously, it seems like I'm handling this really quite well at this point. I can assure you... I'm not. All I can think about was how my first horse died abruptly after three years with me, and my second horse who had a major injury started to backslide after 8 months of stall rest and progress and died after not quite two years with me. I've had Gogo for three and a half and she's starting to backslide now too. I'm not sure what I've done to make the gods of horse ownership so angry. I try and I try and I do everything I can for these animals, they're my entire life. So why do things just fall apart despite all my best efforts? What am I doing wrong?