Remember when? (Groton House.)

Remember when we were kicking patootiebootie at Groton House in 2009? Tied for second after this particular dressage test with a 31.5, broke the tie with a clean and very close to optimum time run on XC, and moved to first after a clean stadium round. The competition was so close that the leader after XC dropped all the way to 5th after one rail in stadium. That show was my favorite of the season and a highlight of my year, and watching these old videos makes me hurt all over wanting to do it again so badly.



You have no idea how badly I want to breed this mare. I kick myself every day over it. Nobody knows how that baby would turn out, to be sure, but if it ends up anything remotely like her at all, it will be my dream horse a million times over. A million and one times over.

(Edited to add: I am not going to get an OTTB. I'm just not. Nor am I looking to purchase another horse anytime in the remote future. I don't want another horse just to have one. Horses are expensive and a risk. The likelihood that I will get another horse while I still own Gogo (which will be until the end of her days) is pretty small, unless it's her foal. So no suggestions on what I should go out and buy! I'm not going out and buying anything.)

Mami Loves Springtime

Spring is here, and overnight everything in my pasture has exploded into a sea of green. Little yellow flowers on stalks (which I can only assume are non-poisonous even though I don't know what they are, seeing as no horse I've seen in the area is dead yet and every pasture for miles has them) are blanketing the fields. Gogo has taken this fresh growth as a new opportunity to completely ignore any other food I have to offer, and has stopped eating her supplements. Who can blame her, I'd rather not eat anything but green grass either if I were her! This has given me a new drive to force her to wear her muzzle, and starting yesterday I insisted that she give it another try.

Of course, the second she saw me coming with it, she turned tail and bolted headlong, cantering lightly all the way from the front part of her pasture to the back. She maintained her right lead perfectly right from the get-go, performed a lovely and perfect change to the left about halfway across, and then executed another perfect change back to the right when she reached the other side. I was late for work and not about to go galumphing across all of nature to try and reach her, so I just gave up and put her flysheet and muzzle (flymask has already been lost to the depths of my 15 acres) by the gate, and tried again at lunch. As predicted, once I finally reached Gogo across the entire length of the field (gone are the days when she'd come running to me... grass is WAY better than mom), I put her gear on and waited to see how long it would take for her to figure it out. Of course, she didn't figure it out. I watched from my house as she wandered listlessly to and fro across the length of her field, eventually ending up standing pathetically by her gate. She stayed there for hours, again. And when I took off her muzzle, she refused to eat her supplements, again. I'm going to have to get something to mix them with, I think. But what? For being a voracious pig she really can be quite picky when she wants to be.


Mom, take it off!!!





Aaah that's better.
Check out the completely out of control mane. I have given up on it for the moment.... it flipped to the wrong side and continues to be a total wild and hairy nightmare. Also check out the CHUNK.




Ham. Or maybe I should say pork...y.





Happy, fat, gleaming mare. She might be filthy (no matter how much I groom and bathe her, she's just... dirty all the time!), but underneath all that shedding hair I can see dapples trying to escape!

GRAIN UNDER ATTACK!

I'm pretty sure that I have been given repeated signs from the gods of horse obesity that Gogo's days of grain-eating need to temporarily be over, and I think after this last one I need to listen. Firstly, Gogo is clearly gaining weight rapidly, and should not be carrying extra weight around on that leg, so if I can find any way to cut out extra calories, I should take it. Secondly, I already lost four bags of (incredibly expensive) Gro N' Win that I purchased in Connecticut when water leaked into my trailer during the snowstorm on the drive down to Texas and contaminated the grain. I managed to salvage a bit, but didn't have much, and searched desperately high and low in search of a grain dealer anywhere remotely near me that carried Buckeye. I finally found a place in Grapevine, over an hour away from my house. It was worth it, and I made the trek out there and brought a few more bags of grain home.

Things were going well until a few days ago. It is unclear whether or not this particular nuisance originated inside a bag of already contaminated grain, or if they came in through my open screen door, but I started noticing a massive influx of teeny tiny little beetles gathering near my door. I store my grain in my house specifically to safeguard it from rodents and bugs (you have no idea how terrifying Texas bugs are... I've already found THREE scorpions in my house... SCORPIONS!), but apparently, as my old landlord pointed out to me, I guess I should have gone one step further and gotten galvanized steel garbage cans. Worried about my grain, I went out and brought home some more intense storage containers, and poured the little bit of my first bag of Gro N' Win into the bin. When I poured my second bag into the bin (why did I do it second??), I pulled back the empty bag, looked into the bin, and gasped. It was CRAWLING with THOUSANDS of bugs!!! Closer inspection of the bag showed lots of little holes all over the bag that I didn't see before. Did the beetles sneak into the bag, multiply and start busting out, or did they bust in?

Either way, my entire remaining store of grain is gone. And my house still is crawling with bugs despite my best efforts to eradicate them. They don't bite, they so far haven't gotten into my food, and they haven't done anything except be annoying, but if I can't get them under control I'm going to have to bomb the house. Damnit all. Thought I could protect my grain in here, but noooooo, apparently not...


Anyway, I threw in the towel and gave up. The grain is impossible to get and impossible to store, Gogo is a Fattie Boomblattie, and she's not doing anything but eating right now. For the first time in four years, I'm taking her off of the Gro N' Win. Instead, I contacted SmartPak, went through their list of multivitamins, and ended up picking the SmartVite EZ Keeper Grass Formula. From now until she's presumably back in work someday, she won't be getting any grain. I also went ahead and ordered SmartShine, seeing as my bag of ground flax also got destroyed in the buggy process. It's cheap, although it's probably completely unnecessary. I loved the freakishly amazing shine that flax brought out in her last spring, and some extra Omega-3's won't hurt her. (If you notice in that picture from the shavings in her tail, she hadn't even been groomed yet that day... she was just that shiny standing around in her stall!)

It's a minor calorie reduction, but it's something to try and counter her ever-growing foodbelly. The other interesting thing is that this is the first time Gogo will ever be on a soy-free diet. (I mean, nearly every horse feed and supplement has some sort of soy base or derivative, but I guess you could call it for the most part 'soy-free.') While I don't honestly think that Gogo has a soy sensitivity, I am interested to see if removing soy from her diet will cause her white line to tighten up - a common problem with soy sensitive horses. Her hooves are rock-crunching and always have been, but she's had just a hair of white line separation and very slight flare on all four for pretty much ever. It just hasn't really ever gone away. I had attributed it to the soggy mushy climate of New England, but it's still here now that she's been in Texas for four months. Gogo easily drops a whole new foot in about six months. It will be interesting to see as her foot keeps growing down what happens. Trust me, nobody loves Gro N' Win more than I do, but you never know!



Can you find the Mami in the picture? :)

These climes, they are a' changing.

Spring is fully in bloom here in Texas. It's a bit weird to me to say that, because the temperature being constantly in the high 70's feels more like summer to me - it feels a bit like I've missed out on the rainy, lush, gorgeous green season that I'm used to. It's still very yellow and brown here, but a lot of things are blooming and turning green in hidden places. We've not had a drop of rain in over a month... in fact, I think we haven't had any precipitation at all since the last snowfall.

Gogo's daily life continues to be simple, day in and day out. In light of all the recent breakthrough and resistance issues with dewormers, I've adopted a new deworming protocol, and you should too. Gone are the days where we could slap a one-side-fits-all deworming schedule for all our horses, religiously administering paste every two months, rotating through two or three different classes of dewormer with careful selection. As it turns out, we're setting ourselves up for future disaster with this schedule - it worked to eradicate the major parasite issues we had up through the 60's, but we no longer have normal healthy horses just dropping dead from parasite overload anymore. We've largely eradiated parasite issues, but we've also set up circumstances where parasites are now evolving to be resistant to our classes of chemical dewormer, ivermectin especially. Some horses may already not respond to treatment anymore, and you could be dumping a wasted chemical into your animal. The only real way to tell is through a fecal sample, and bloodwork for things that don't show up in manure (like encysted strongyles, bots, and tapes). It's difficult to say why certain horses manifest their worm loads the way they do - sometimes a fat, happy horse can be a heavy shedder (releasing lots of eggs back into the pasture), and sometimes a skinny horse might not have any sort of worm load at all - but the point still remains that we need to treat every horse as an individual. We don't slap four shoes on and dump 6lbs of sweet feed into every single horse on our property, do we? So why would we treat every horse with the same deoworming protocol? Those days are over.

My new particular protocol for Gogo at this moment in time with my pasture situation is as follows: Fecal in the spring, fecal in the fall, target for what is needed, and if nothing is needed particular, then do an ivermectin/praziquantel in the spring and a moxidectin in the fall to cover things that I can't see on a fecal. That is going from deworming six times a year to two. That is a BIG change for my totally anal self, but it's absolutely necessary. My pasture is grass, obviously, and it had horses on it before she got there. She was also exposed to Marti when he was here. I pick the front part of my pasture where she likes to poop a lot, but there is still poop out in the vastness of the field that I'll never find, and parasites like to hang out in grass just waiting to be ingested. Gogo missed the evolutionary bandwagon when it comes to things like not eating and pooping in the same spot, so I was concerned that she might have picked something up out there. I've been religious for years when it comes to a three-way rotation, on the 15th of the month every other month, always. But as Solo's mom knows, when it comes to worms you just don't know.

I took Gogo's fecal sample in to the vet's on Monday, and was pleased to hear that it came back completely negative. Despite that, as I mentioned before there are still things that don't show up on fecals - tapes don't show well, and encysted small strongyles obviously won't show either - so I hit her with Equimax today to be on the safe side. She's not coming in contact with any other horses, and she's not going anywhere anytime soon, so her risk of getting infected is pretty low. We'll retest in the fall and see where we stand. I'll have to change this plan should she ever move barns or get another companion. For now, it works very well.

The other thing I am currently doing is a psyllium purge. I've never had to worry about this before, coming from a wet and muddy climate, but one day the other week, I just so happened to look at the ground for some reason a little more closely than I had been doing. Wow, this is really sandy, I thought to myself. Really, really sandy. And the entire floor of she shed is sand. And she's eating food nonstop off of all of this. Oh man... that is a recipe for some sand colic right there. She's not been out there for THAT long that I think she's in any sort of real danger, but still, it is good add this to my monthly to do list as a precautionary measure. She's four days into her purge and no reported problems.



Yep.... our life is not very exciting, but there you are!

Duh, winning!

I have nothing but fun things to report today. Firstly, I'd like to ask if anyone else has a 65+ pound lapdog. I am currently being squished.

Secondly, Gogo's soundness is continuing to improve by tiny little increments. If you remember me stating last week, Gogo's lameness is most apparent at the canter, where she can maintain the left lead for as long as she wants but can only canter on the right lead up front - she crossfires behind and stays on the left lead. But the other morning, when Gogo saw me arriving for breakfast, she cantered to me from where she had been grazing across the front part of the field. And she cantered ALL the way to me... on her right lead!! Not that she should be cantering, but it was a good 10 or 11 strides, and it was fully maintained on the right lead... not one switch or crossfire! The legs both look great every morning (or well, at great as they ever will). They still have fill by the end of the day, but that's the way they get when she's warm. The fronts do it a little bit too, like they always have, so it doesn't bother me. That's just her new norm, I guess. They've been that way since she first injured herself nearly a year and a half ago. Yikes.... I can't believe it's been that long. This coming week will be a year since the original injury to the right too. Again, it's hard to believe it's been that long.

Thirdly, I have two stupid (or should I say AWESOME?) new polls on the side of my blog just begging for your votes. I am too computer-illiterate to get polls to post in an actual post (believe me, I tried), so they're in the sidebar after much failed cutting, pasting, and grumbling on my part. They both need a little explaination:

1) In discussing some of Gogo's, erm... quirky habits, I had someone comment to me that she was nearly as crazy as Charlie Sheen. All I could think was... NEARLY? I couldn't decide who is nuttier. Charlie Sheen might be great at spitting out nonstop word-vomit, but can he spin, rear and leap at the most inopportune moments? That's a tough call. Definitely want to hear feedback on this one.
(Edited to add: As if to add to her side of the argument, this morning when I gave Gogo a bath, she very definitively sat back and broke her halter for no reason at all when I was washing her face. I've only been washing her face for four years.... apparently, I was not allowed to do it today!)



2) Gogo's mane is OUT OF CONTROL. It's always been ridiculously impossible to maintain, but now that her head is down and grazing for most of the day and night, her completely awful mane is now growing both forward and straight up. No more falling nicely on the right side of her neck.... oh no. When showing, it takes endless pulling, fussing, and braiding over to get her mane to even vaguely stay on one side of her neck. It's a right pain. Part of me wants to just let it grow and grow and grow, and just see how long it gets by the end of the year. Nicole, who has had horses with long manes before, has warned me against this, citing how much of a pain it is. I figure it can't be more of a pain than trying to maintain it at a nice pulled length while she's in a field. The other option is to roach it - just shave it all off. I can't decide which would be a better option - without a mane, the flies might bother her, but with a mane, she might get too hot in the summer. What does everyone think?



Lots of little other things are happening, but they're all small. Fecals, feed-through bug-off supplements, and tail maintenance are all on the list to be written about, but for right now I have chores to do for my fattie. Go vote!

Gogo's Kryptonite

First of all, I just want to say that the Eventing-A-Gogo blog just reached 300 followers! I cannot belive that 300 of you actually think my life is interesting enough to read about! Although we are talking about Gogo here... she makes EVERY day interesting! Thank you all for following along in this completely crazy journey!



Gogo is easily the smartest horse I've ever met. She problem solves and pieces information together in a way that I have never seen another horse do in my life. She is quick-thinking, intelligent, and has yet to prove to me that there is a problem on this planet earth that she can't think herself through. The scraps she has gotten herself into - and subsequently gotten herself out of with only minor scrapes - have astounded me. From getting three legs tangled in a panel of a roundpen and extricating herself carefully before anyone could help, to figuring out how to push backwards with all four legs on a stall wall when she is cast (which gives her room to right herself and stand), she always manages to use her ridiculous brainpower to overrule her senses and figure everything out with grace and ease.

Until now. Gogo has finally met her match in an innocuous piece of everyday tack, its heinous straps and basket surely molded by the Devil's hands himself in the fires of Hell. Like Superman when he meets kryptonite, Gogo's powers of intelligence and reason are completely sapped when she encounters this evil and torterous device. O lord of dieting and weight loss, how could you approve of such a cruel piece of equipment? No, it couldn't be, not.... THE GRAZING MUZZLE!



I introduced the muzzle to Gogo a few days ago after she had finished her breakfast and was just settling in for a nice morning graze. I slipped it over her head, made some small adjustments, and stepped back to admire the picture. Gogo just stood there, a look of utter confusion and bewilderment on her face. She was not concerned about this strange piece of equipment, she just... looked like every brain cell she owned had just leaked out of her ears and had left a vast and empty void in her head. There was no lightbulb. There wasn't even a candle. There was just a blank stare.

I offered her a bite of grass through the little opening in the muzzle. When it touched her nose, she jerked back, sneezing at the tickle. I tried again, but had the same response. Again, and again. She took a small nibble once or twice, but mostly she kept sneezing. And standing. And staring blankly into the distance.

I led her outside of the pasture to the greenest, most plush spot of grass I could find in the yard. She, true to form, put her head down, but when the grass tickled her through the hole in the muzzle she lifted her head again and just stood there. Just... stood. And sneezed. And stared blankly into the distance.

'Well, I guess she'll figure it out... she's super smart... right?' I said to myself as I put her back in her pasture. 'I'll come back at lunch and check on her.' I felt certain that when I returned on my lunchbreak, I'd find her grazing peacefully somewhere out in the pasture, working hard for those precious blades of grass that really aren't that difficult to put through a tiny hole in a muzzle. When I left, she was standing blankly at the gate, watching me leave as if to say, "Um.... what am I supposed to do now?"

When I returned six hours later, she was still standing in the EXACT same spot. She didn't even bother trying to go find out how to make the muzzle work, or at least try to figure out how to commit suicide by hanging herself on the fence by it, breakaway strap and all. She spent six muzzled hours just standing. And sneezing. And staring blankly into the distance. I took off the muzzle, and she shook her head and blinked at me, as if her brain was waking up after hibernation. She nonchalantly meandered away to graze, and I sighed and hung the muzzle up, determined not to give up just yet.

That evening, I brought her over to the pasture behind my house, which has gorgeous and thick green grass bursting up all over the place. Surely, I thought, this grass would be soft and tempting enough that she would figure the muzzle out, right? I was wrong. She kept sneezing and standing in one place, even with the deliciously tempting grassy treat at her feet, and finally just gave up and walked away. She walked and walked, and I came back to her side and followed. She kept just ONE step ahead of me, just so I couldn't catch her and kept walking. And walking. And walking. Finally, I just trotted forward and grabbed her, and tried to shove more grass into her muzzle. She just sneezed. And stood. And stared blankly into the distance.

That was the point that I gave up, put on a regular halter, and turned her loose in the pasture for a little bit of good grazing while I laid in my backyard and enjoyed the sunshine. She was so thoroughly delighted by this that she didn't leave the spot she was in for nearly an hour.



Gogo, meet ultimate nemisis. They shall do battle again shortly, but somehow I feel as though it has already permanently defeated her. Or maybe her enormous brain power will kick in, and she will find a way to destroy it for all time. Only time will tell.


Standing... and staring...

Sunday Success Stories

(Sunday Success Stories have been revived here at Eventing-A-Gogo! Each week, we feature a reader's own personal journey through overcoming difficulty and adversity, sometimes against all odds, and pulling through no matter what. These stories are about those who never gave up, and who made a difference in the life of an animal who just needed a little love and care in order to turn around and really bloom again. Send your success stories, past or present, to EventingAGogo@gmail.com!)

This week's Sunday Success Story comes from Kae, who blogs over at Partners In Crime. She writes in to tell us about her new and budding relationship with her mare Reina, whom she found just five weeks ago in someone's muddy backyard. In just these past few weeks, Reina has begun her transformation from balking and sour to confident and forward. It's only onward and upward from here!


Partners In Crime - Reina's Story



I first saw Reina in small pen in someone's muddy backyard. She was tall, super thin, muddy, and her hooves were a mess. But she was still breathtakingly beautiful. The first thing I thought when I saw her: "What's a pretty thing like you doing in a field like this?" She was bought to be a trail horse for the man of the house, but she was too tall for him to get on by himself. So, she sat in that field, doing nothing, for at least two months before I came to visit her. They said they got her from a big breeding farm in Kentucky, and she had papers, but she was never raced.

We had two rides - one on a trail - together before I bought her. She didn't understand basic direct-rein steering, and she certainly couldn't neck rein. Any pressure on any rein meant "STOP! BACK UP!" and back up she did. That was just about the only thing you could get her to do under saddle on cue, actually. She would go forward, but only if she wanted to go forward. Any leg pressure for a trot and she'd hump up, pin her ears, swish her tail, and continue walking. If you somehow managed to get her into a trot, and wanted to canter? She'd let out a giant buck! And then canter. A stride or two, maybe. But there was something about her - aside from the sad state she was in - that I loved. She was smart, and even with all her ridiculousness under saddle, she wasn't spooky on that trail. She went under, over, and through whatever I asked (as long as it was in the direction she wanted to go, at the pace she wanted to go, of course).

So, I bought her. I brought her to the barn I had all picked out, got her feet trimmed, put her on free choice hay, started pouring feed into her, and groomed her almost every day. I decided that we would try to go bitless, since the bit thing obviously wasn't really working for her. We did flexions, worked on leading, manners, standing - anything she told me she needed work on, we did! Everything she learned, I taught with clicker training - and wow, did she ever respond to that! And, of course, we played and bonded. I wanted her to love me and trust me, so I made sure my visits were enjoyable for her. I didn't ride her again until about two weeks after I bought her, when I was satisfied that she would listen in a rope halter and that she'd gained a little bit of weight.

I hopped on her bareback and rode her around at the walk just to make sure she understood the steering situation. I rode her once, maybe twice more after that, before I took her out on a trail ride with one of the co-owners of the property. She was really nervous at first, with her head in the clouds. But she never spooked at anything, never took off with me, and there was no trace of the sour, lazy, grumpy horse I had first ridden! She was absolutely perfect, and would stop and back up with light pressure from her rope halter at all points throughout the trail ride. And about halfway through that first trail ride, a switch went off in her brain - she finally started to relax.

That was three weeks ago. Earlier this week, we walked, trotted, cantered, and galloped around a paddock. She listened perfectly. She moves off my leg and is happy to do anything and everything I ask of her. She understands my cues and works hard to please me. Her ears are always pricked up and she loves to go for me! What a difference from the horse who would only walk in one direction! I'm so proud of her progress I can barely even stand it. And she looks so much better - happier, healthier, fatter! And she makes me laugh constantly. She drinks out of the hose, plays with her tongue, yawns at me when she's bored... not only is she smart, but she has a great sense of humor!

We did trotwork today, and she responded beautifully. She moves into a trot at the lightest squeeze, and she stops within strides of when I ask. She never fights me anymore and I swear she feels like a different horse. I can feel her happiness and her relaxation in the way she moves, and I can see how easy it comes to her now - she carries her head almost level with her body, instead of flung up in the air. After our trotwork, we went on a trail ride, where she led the pack and kept up her happy, swinging walk the entire time. She didn't look, stop, or spook at all; we just enjoyed each other's company the whole ride.

And all of this... in five weeks... and bitless! I can't believe how much I lucked out with this gorgeous girl I have; she's really made me believe we can do anything!




(Send your submissions and stories to EventingAGogo@gmail.com! Gogo wants you to!)

Quickie Share

I have a quickie link I wanted to share with you all that popped up on my blogroll this evening: a post about taking time every day to do right by your horse, written by Solo's momma. Read it, follow it. And don't just do it for your horses, but do it for your other pets too, and your friends and family. Nurture those in your circle and they will nurture you.


Take each day as a new opportunity to show your horse how much you love them. And never stop looking forward.



In nine months, I hope to have that view again.

Fattie McBlattie

Marti left a few days ago to head back to his home. His owner reports that he is oing to be sent off for training, which is great. I wish them the best, and Gogo will miss her white furry friend I am sure.

Speaking of the Princess, I need to really start brainstorming and figure out some more ways to keep the weight off of her. She is a McFattie and she needs some Weight Watchers action... stat!! She has especially bloomed over the past few weeks as the grass has started to wake up for the season... and by bloomed, I mean vastly expanded in all directions. She is a Large Marge in Charge, and I cannot possibly feed her any less than she is eating. Since she is on pasture 24/7, I've cut out nearly everything else that I possibly can, and still she gains weight. I've kept the Gro N' Win, simply because she has done amazingly well on it over the past four years (and it's also designed for low-calorie maintenance), and she's eating 1/2lb AM and 1/2lb PM. She is also eating a 1/2 cup of ground flax AM and PM, and is also getting her SmartFlex Repair supplement. Aside from that, she is getting about half a flake of nice orchard grass at both meals. That's IT. This mare was getting 10-12 flakes of a nice timothey/orchard mix at the last barn, so you can only imagine how much pasture she must be consuming to be eating barely a flake a day and still be vastly expanding. My next options are to either cut out the Gro N' Win completely and only feed her a vit/min supplement, but I love the additional protein/Omega 3s/biotin/etc. that she gets in the Gro N' Win. I think as a whole, it has vastly contributed to her rock-crunching feet, amazing strength and stamina, and her shining, luxurious haircoat. It's low in calories, but it's still giving her more calories than a supplement would. My other option is to get a grazing muzzle, which I would prefer as I think it would do a better job of controlling her weight. Now that's she's put the weight on, I have a feeling it's not going to come off easily. She is insufferably easy to keep.

The other thing that has happened in turnout is that I have completely lost my ability to keep her clean at ALL. Those of you in the south know that once a horse gets themselves into a dust bath down here, that red dirt does Not. Come. Off. You have three options: 1) buy a vacuum, 2) bathe nonstop, or 3) live with it. I've opted for some combination of bathing and living with it, although I may crack at some point and try to find a used vacuum somewhere. It's awful! She had a bath earlier in the week, and this is as clean as I could get her on Wednesday:





Those of you who are longtime readers or who know me personally know what ridiculously painstaking lengths I go to daily to keep Gogo sparkling and show-ready every day. You can imagine the horrible cleanliness withdrawls I am going through. It hurts me to see her so dirty! Honestly, though, she'd rather be a disgusting chinchilla on pasture rest than gleamingly clean and on stall rest, so I guess it's just something I'm going to have to continue to live without. Barf.

As has been the custom for the past few months, near the beginning of the month I have been putting Gogo on the lunge for two seconds to get a good look at her level of soundness, about once around in each direction. My camera had a brain fart and only recorded her going to the right, but the right is her worse direction, so it's a better assessement anyway.



As you can see, she's not sound by any means. She's not BAD, but she's not sound. It's quite an improvement from three months ago when she was hip-hiking, toe-dragging lame on that leg though. It would help get a better image if she weas actually going forward, but you know. I don't really want to kill her after all. She has picked up the habit of trotting to me whenever I come over to the gate to see her, so I get to look at her trotting most every day. This video shows her looking a bit worse than she has been... earlier in the day, she really looked quite sound. Her lameness is most apparent at the canter, whenever I catch her doing that out in the field. She can canter as much as she wants on the left lead and have no problem, but when she tried to switch to the right, she crossfires and stays on the left lead behind and the right lead up front. I really don't WANT her to go cantering around, but I guess I don't have much control over that.

Her legs have definitely improved over the past three months:





The pictures of the leg from the 2nd set were taken in the late afternoon, which is when they all tend to fill a bit - she likes to stand and sunbathe! In the chilly morning, they are SUPER tight and cool, and that is encouraging. They have always done this, ever since the injury. I imagine they probably always will.


One final thing. Did I mention her TAIL is taking ridiculous amounts of abuse from being out 24/7? She catches and tears it on everything... it looks awful and ratty. (And yet, even though it's about half the size that it was, it's still pretttttty nice!)



Ohhhh that hurts me deep inside. Poor, poor tail.


By the way, did you notice the GREEN GRASS? My apple and peach trees have exploded into bloom too. Spring is almost here!!

Photo Adventure Fridays

This week's Photo Adventure...



Somewhere over Mexico on the way to Costa Rica.
If I remember correctly, this is the last thing I saw before falling temporarily victim to food poisoning. Nice.

I've not been having very many far away adventures as of late - my work hours and time off simply don't allow for it - but I have some BIG upcoming news that may be changing this sometimes in the not so distant future. Stay tuned!