Like a pony, struttin’ for the very first time… Like a poooony….
It is with great sadness that I share this news with you. Ro is no longer a pony.
We sticked her this spring and she was 14.3ish. My heart breaks.
As if to make up for her technical horsey-ness, Ro has been spending this spring channeling her inner pony.
Unfortunately, that means she’s been giving me the proverbial short, choppy pony gaits.
But let’s be realistic. No matter how much I long for a pony, her pony gaits are not a function of her size. She only has them when any horse would have them: when she’s tense, hollow, and not coming from behind. Voila: insta-pony gaits.
All resolved naturally by really making her come from behind.
Which is the interesting catch-22 of riding, right? When you have a horse who is not quite balanced and through, if you push forward, they’re likely to rush and collapse on the front end. Instead of short, choppy strides, you get fast short, choppy strides. But if you slow them down to balance, you lose the energy and impulsion and have to build that back up somehow. Which means you have slow short, choppy strides.
Or, if not “you,” Ro and I. It’s the story of our lives. Or rides, if you like.
So, Ro and I have gone into boot camp. We’re going to go forward and straight if it kills us, and we’re going to find the trot that I know she has in her.
I can already feel a difference in her. I used to get on and it seemed like I spent most of the ride trying to get her to balance and connect, and now we have something to work with almost from the start. We’re still early in this boot camp, so strength is a major issue right now, but I’ve noticed that even when she falls out a bit, she’s still much more free in her trot than before, and it’s easier to ask her to reconnect. There’s definite progress.
And it shows on the lunge, too. She’s starting out in a trot that I would have been happy to end on last fall, and she’s really starting to figure out how to push from behind and open up in front. I actually stopped and texted a friend today, because I couldn’t believe the trot I saw—not only forward and balanced, but also really lifted at the withers for the first time and extending her shoulder up as well as out.
She has decent gaits on her, but that was a trot we could take into the ring and be very competitive with.
So - building, building, building. Forward, straight, strength. I can make peace with no longer owning a pony if this is the alternative, because this shows signs of turning into something pretty awesome.
Confused… and pissed
This is Ro, right after we finished the trephination on Monday and moved her back to her stall:
A coworker took one look at the picture and said, “She looked confused. And pissed. Like she knows she should be pissed but she isn’t sure why.”
That’s about right.
She really was fabulous throughout everything, though. We flushed her again on Tuesday and Wednesday, and so far it seems to be working. The question will be whether it stays working or if in two or three weeks it all comes back again.
She’s already back in work, although I have given up on getting her into the show ring this spring.
We had a clinic scheduled for next weekend, but I called last week to take Ro out of it. I’m not particularly worried about the risk of EHV-1 in our area, but per discussion with my vet, there was a chance Ro would still be clearing out some snot for a week or two. In a non-EHV-1 atmosphere, I might have been able to work with the clinic organizer, provide vet records, whatever to reassure people about Ro’s health and the safety of their horses. But with EHV-1 in the picture… people would freak out, no matter what I said, my vet said, or the clinic organizer said.
Fortunately, the clinic organizer was very accommodating and we’ve moved our rides to the fall clinic. She ultimately cancelled next weekend’s clinic anyway (better to be safe than sorry), and I believe there are other riders moving to the fall clinic as well.
This is probably better anyway. Ro has had so much time off, and what riding we’ve done has been so inconsistent, that we wouldn’t have gotten as much from the clinic as we could have anyway. Hopefully we will be better prepared for fall. For much the same reasons, I’m not bothering to try to get her into a schooling show in June. I think EHV-1 will have blown over by then, but we might as well wait until fall when, again, we’ll hopefully be better prepared.
So, we’ll see. All this hinges on my being able to ride more consistently over the summer.
But my luck may be turning. As I said, I did not pick Animal Kingdom for my fantasy game, so you can go blame someone else for him coming second. Two of my picks did middling-well—Dialed In and Mucho Macho Man. Amazingly, my third pick won. Go Shackleford!
I think I’m well out of the running for the overall fantasy game, but it’s not like there’s any actual money involved. I’m kind of psyched that I picked the winner, and he wasn’t one of the favorites. That never happens. Now for the Belmont… then I can go back to ignoring racing again.
Hole in my head, hole in my head… I need an owner like her like a hole in my head
Ro here.
Let me tell you something about the Lady Who Feeds.
She’s like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
This morning, Lady Who Feeds showed up out of the blue while I was munching my hay. She never shows up in the morning to ride, so I figured I was getting more food. Awesome possum.
But no. She leads me out of the stall and right by the truck that belongs to the Man Who Pokes and Prods. Not cool. Not cool at all.
They put me in the washrack and gave me one of those shots that makes me all sleepy and sweaty, which, really: yuck. And then stuff got quiet. A radio got turned off, and people walking by would be noisy, noisy, noisy… look at us all… and go by as quietly as possible. They’d look at me, then look away, and what, am I leper or something? Totally rude. Admire me, don’t ignore me.
But Lady Who Feeds was scratching my forehead, which I like, and then the Man Who Pokes and Prods was scratching my forehead, which was cool. And this is what I mean about Jekyll-and-Hyde, ok?—
Here they all are, telling me how awesome I am and scratching my forehead… and then they drilled a hole in my head. They drilled a farking hole in my head.
Not cool. So not cool.
Fortunately for all of them, by the time I realized what they were doing, the hole was drilled. They were all quiet again and not messing around with my head, so I took a few moments to contemplate my revenge… and suddenly the Man Who Pokes and Prods was fussing around my head and there were some weird, weird sensations going on. And then there was some nasty-tasting liquid coming out of my head, which I’m sure is not how things are supposed to go.
I started to make a fuss, but oddly, I just couldn’t be bothered to do too much. I still haven’t figured out why I didn’t kick them all to smithereens. That’s just not like me.
It seemed to go on forever, though, that nasty water dripping out of my head. While I was trying to figure out if I should spit it out or drink it, I kept half an ear on their conversation. They were talking about the size of my brain, and how small it is, and I’d just like to point out that I was not the one coming up with idiotic ideas like drilling holes in heads. What’s the point of having a big brain if you can’t recognize a stupid idea when you have one?
Then, thank god, it was all over and the Man Who Pokes and Prods stapled up my head, like I’m some sort of school assignment, and the Lady Who Feeds took me back to my stall. I admit I was looking forward to munching on some hay while I contemplated my revenge, but she did the unthinkable—she took away my hay. Pure evil.
But for the next hour, she kept coming by and telling me how awesome I was, with lots of scratches, and eventually she came to her senses and gave me back my hay, which was awesome. I was thinking, hey, she’s back to reasonable again. Life is good.
And then—as if I hadn’t been through enough—The Guy Who Messes With My Hooves showed up. Honestly. Do they have no compassion?
I got a hole drilled in my head in the morning, and now they wanted me to stand and let him mess with my feet? I let them know just what I thought about that, but they had no sense of humor. That’s ok. There’s a time and place for revenge. The Guy probably isn’t to blame here. I’m sure it’s Lady Who Feeds.
About the time my tail hairs were starting to turn black with resentment, they finished. I got to go chill out in my stall for a bit, which was probably good for them. And after a bit, Lady Who Feeds came back… again… but this time we just went for a long, long hand walk with a little trotting. I was good with that, actually. It was nice to be out and moving around, especially since Lady Who Feeds more or less let me pick the pace and didn’t get too pushy about how fast or slow we were going.
I halfway expected her to try something stupid when we went back to my stall, like tacking me up, but she appears to have gotten over her evil side. She fed me lunch and then left me alone with my hay for the rest of the day. Finally.
But really—what was the point of all this? In the morning, I’m happily munching on hay. In the afternoon, I’m happily munching on hay. We could have done without all the stuff in the middle, you know?
April: Goodbye and Good Riddance
This post comes with its own drinking game: take a shot every time a new injury or illness is mentioned. Put your local poison control on speed dial; you might want them later.
So, when last we talked about anything serious, it was early April. I was supposed to be moving Ro to a new barn and Ro was up to her eyeballs in snot. I resisted putting a paper bag over her head, but I did sneak her in under cover of darkness.
Fortunately, the move went well. I received a hairy eyeball or two the first couple days, but a few well-chosen words to a few well-chosen people did the trick. News seemed to spread through the rumor mill that my horse was not contagious, and the hairy eyeballs stopped. Learn from me, grasshopper: the trick to controlling barn gossip is to start your own rumors before others can start them about you.
The antibiotics ran their course, and the sinus infection cleared up. We started getting back to work. I broke my foot.
I admit, it isn’t a bad break. It took me a week to decide to go to the ER, and the ER tossed me a funky shoe, some narcotics, and sent me on my way. Don’t ride, they said. I considered their advice. If they really wanted me to stay off a horse, I reasoned, they’d have put an actual cast on me. That went up to my hip. I am having a hard time taking their funky shoe seriously. I decided I would ride without stirrups and be careful about dismounting, which seems like a reasonable compromise to me.
Life continued. Ro seemed to be staying healthy. I realized a local barn is putting on a schooling show in early May, and it would be a perfect first show for Ro and I. Of course, there’s the whole no stirrups thing… I emailed the organizers to find out if I could ride HC.
Ro, who is better connected than I realized, caught wind of my plans. Just when the organizers got back to me to tell me riding HC was not a problem, Ro came up snotty. Figures. I suppose I should be grateful she did this before I sent in the entry fees and not after.
This was last Friday. I called my vet and caught him at a busy moment, but we’d already talked about our next step if the infection came back. We quickly agreed it was time to drill a hole in her head (yeah, ok, that’s not quite how he put it, but “flush out her sinuses” is not nearly as dramatic, so go with me here), tentatively agreed on Tuesday, and that was that.
Well, except for the fact that “that” left me alone with Google for the weekend, which was probably not a good idea. There are porn filters and kid-friendly filters out there… why hasn’t anyone invented a filter for hypochondriacs yet? It could redirect any medical-type sites to a page with fluffy kittens and “Don’t Worry” spelled out in big, friendly letters.
But no. By Sunday, I was so convinced my horse was on the verge of dropping dead, I couldn’t even go out to see her.
And then on Monday I went out and found her looking perfectly healthy. No snot. No dried crust of snot. No snot rubbed off on her legs. I gave her the hairy eyeball and lunged her, thinking that would bring something out. No snot.
Conclusion: Ro just doesn’t want to go to schooling shows. Since I had already sent my regrets to the organizers, she was in the clear. In all senses.
I was sure that if I canceled Tuesday’s appointment she would be dripping snot Tuesday evening. But if I kept it, she’d probably be perfectly healthy again. So I compromised and emailed the vet, explained the situation, and asked him to come anyway.
Ro compromised by having some traces of snot again.
We decided to do xrays and go from there. The xrays were… not clear. There’s no massive pocket of pus, but there’s an iffy area in one sinus and a possible tooth infection. The vet wants to take a closer look at the xrays and will probably get a second opinion on the tooth, so we didn’t do anything else today. The good news is that the xrays don’t show any compelling reason to flush out her sinuses, so we’ll probably explore some more targeted but still conservative treatments, depending on how the xray readings go.
Meanwhile, for those of you still in the drinking game, my older cat is declining and my younger cat is on a hunger strike to protest the new brand of food I bought. Apparently they felt left out of all the drama.
But hey - all of this is stuff that can be dealt with. The fact that it’s all hitting at the same time is pretty exhausting, but none of this is unmanageable. That’s something, at least.
In case you didn’t know horses are food-driven animals…
Since I don’t have many pictures of Ro, I thought I would take some while she was out grazing this evening.
A good idea in theory, but as soon as she saw me coming, Ro lead the retreat:
Having retreated as far as they could, they paused to reconsider. That’s the Lady Who Sometimes Brings Treats, and she’s not carrying a halter. Maybe our retreat was a bit hasty…
Ro came close enough to find out if I did, in fact, have treats:
Reminded me that there was grass she could be eating, and time was wasting…
And then, when no treats were forthcoming, wandered away again.
I guess that puts me in my place.