My endurance/horse training note book (that Steph Teeter at endurance.net designed) has a cartoon this week that instructs me to find something to celebrate.
Farley is 4 MONTHS post injury. I moved her to the big pasture a couple of days ago. She has shown her appreciation by not touching the bale of hay I put out there for FOUR days and is subsisting entirely on some sort of grass and shrubbery out there. *shrugs*. She’s wonderfully sound. How can I tell? She spent 10 minutes galloping away from me in evasive manuevers yesterday. When not galloping, she would do this awesome, knee snapping BIG trot. Seems rather silly to ride my horse at a walk after all that. BUT – I’m not keeping her on stall rest for a year, and the risk of a tye up is too great if I keep her in a small pen too long (although as she loses condition the risk becomes less and less I hope), and honestly – let’s face it. The leg is wonderfully tight. A month ago the suspensory looked GREAT. The reinjury to the SDF is small. If she can’t be an endurance horse because at 4 months post injury she decided to run around a medium sized (for California) pasture over good footing…..then it’s not in our cards to continue an endurance partnership and we’ll do something else. It’s not a 100% I would have my endurance horse back if things went PERFECTLY, so I’ll take my chances (while not being stupid) and let her be a horse as much as I can over this year of recovery.
So although I MAY have taken off my helmet in disgust at her antics and vainly tried to counter her movements in flip flops and shorts while avoiding the fox tails that were trying to lacerate my toes……I’m not having any heart attacks at this point.
Yes, I eventually got on my fat little mare, who instantly went behind my leg because she argued that dressage at a walk is so HARD, and she couldn’t POSSIBLY be expected to go on the bit her in condition……No signs that she was going to throw a major temper tantrum – but I’ll probably wait a few weeks until AFTER pebble beach dressage show, and then hop on her with saddle and dressage whip and discuss what it means to be in front of my leg.
Silly horse. I’ve been giving a lot of thought of how to go about making her an endurance horse again, and what my “rules” will be once I do so. With four months off of saddle and a year until any major work…..I have a chance at to restart Farley in endurance and dressage according to what I’ve learned in the last couple of years, and establish new goals!
Another celebration – my arm is 6 weeks post break, so I’m officially cleared to weight train (albeit slowly and gradually) again and have been doing all sorts of “normal” stuff! Like hop on fat slow ponies that resent my very presence in their pasture.
Yet another celebration – I have caught up on all my silly blog reading. Just in time to go out of town again. Please, for the sake of my sanity, PLEASE don’t do anything this weekend so interesting it requires copious amounts of blogging. I JUST caught up. 🙁