Oh the weather outside is frightful....

Quick question to those who are more technologically inclined than I am concerning the yellow font in the Stories section of this blog. My technology IQ is slightly above the handicapped area, and my ability to seek out and correct weird HTML mistakes is, well... nonexistent. I admit to never even having seen Google reader before (much less know what it actually is), nor do I have or use the internet on my phone (small electronic items have about a three to six month lifespan with me. My current phone is pushing seven months, and after much abuse, now not only doesn't charge when it's not in the mood, but shuts off at random intervals by itself, usually only during important vet related phone calls.) I added in the yellow text color for the Sunday Success Stories via the "compose" section of the blog... just picked it out of the group of font colors offered. I do like the way the yellow looks against the backdrop - black is not enjoyable in the slightest to my eyes - but I don't know why Google doesn't figure out how to translate this into Reader. Any suggestions?

I am happy to say that the horrible two weeks of 100-degree drought that all of New England was experiencing has finally broken. I was on the brink of breaking down and choreographing a rain dance routine with my roommate, who runs another barn in the area, but all my unspoken prayers to the gods of rain were answered yesterday in one giant torrential downpour that continued on into today. I have never been so happy to see precipitation past my years of high school and college, since snow days no longer apply to me now. Our grass pastures were all looking a bit crispy around the edges, and one little hanging basket of flowers that I forgot about now dangles charred from its final resting place, a sad memorial to all things once green and living. I might be able to keep a barn full of show horses healthy and happy, but remember to water a hanging pot of flowers, I cannot. (That is what working students are for.)
With all this unpleasant heat and humidity, Gogo's legs took a surprising turn last Thursday. I had been able to leave her wraps off for the two weeks leading up to it without so much as a question, the legs staying as cool and tight as I expected they ever would be. For some reason, I felt it necessary to wraps her legs after last Wednesday's ride - perhaps I sensed a change in the weather? Either way, the next day I removed her wraps and was surprised to find both legs were BIG. BIG! Very big. They went down somewhat with movement, but no amount of coldhosing or wrapping changed anything. She looked great during her jog out though, which was a relief. It was very odd. The following two days, the legs were improved but not amazing. I did get on her and ride, and we did some of our trotwork, seeing as she still felt exactly the same (and looked good to the people on the ground). Saturday night, however, I decided to throw in the towel and just try to get the excess edema out of her legs and stay off of her until our next ultrasound, which is scheduled for tomorrow at 8:30am. Saturday night, I poulticed and buted her, and Sunday AM found that it had none nothing. Cold tubbed... nothing. Treadmilled... nothing. Later that evening, I poulticed again, and found that Monday it was the same story. I wrapped her plain on Monday evening, stopped the bute, and just went back to ice booting her instead of cold tubbing - nothing was making a difference. Tuesday, same story, only the wraps didn't seem to be helping much, so I left them off last night. This morning, her legs were HUGE! Absolutely enormous. I took her out to jog again, and voila! The edema was much improved. Sigh. She jogged out well, although it's a little hard to tell because of the angle in this video:



Tell me this: can YOUR barefoot horse trot across gravel like that? (And this is after four months of complete stall rest, and no real turnout in nearly ten months! Lord that makes me ill to say outloud though. Or well, type outloud. Or maybe just type.)

Trotting made the legs vastly improve. Later in the day, she got clipped and bathed, and after her bath, the legs looked as good as they had last week. Ugh. Gogo, what is wrong with you!?

We go back to the vet tomorrow morning for our regularly scheduled two month checkup, and unfortunately it looks like her hocks are also on the list. She does flex hock positive on the RH, and trimming her is a little bit of a struggle - it's hard for her to stand with her leg up on the stand for any length of time. I don't want to have to do it, but she needs to be comfortable in order to properly recover from her other acute injuries. That being said, it scares me more than a little to add a new range of motion to an already tender tendon, so I will be discussing it fully with Dr. C tomorrow. It just... sucks. All around, it sucks. I'm worried about the edema, and I'm worried about the hocks. In general, it feels like the greatness of June just all came crashing down. Except... she's still sound.

Kinda don't know what to think about that. We'll find out tomorrow.



I spent some time last week (before the legs filled) prepping all of Gogo's paperwork for the AHHA (American Holsteiner Horse Association). There was a lot of paperwork to do, but I think I have everything in order. It was a little complicated to get the registration numbers of her parents, take photos of her and have them developed, and make sure every last little piece of the forms were all filled out, but I did it! She, however, was not cooperative about taking identification pictures for the registry:



Fail.

Although, honestly, it's all dependent on the ultrasound tomorrow. I'm not sending those papers in until we're cantering. Let's just see what we find.