Horse ailments and lessons

I so wanted to come home and write last Friday, when I had another lesson on Dude and we trotted figure eights. That sounds like a very small achievement, but really, it was so exciting! I told Emma that it was probably the best ride I'd had on him in ages. He had a week off because it seemed he had an abscess, so we were basically starting over since I had only two lessons on him previously at this barn. He takes forever to warm up and kind of passively fights me on the smallest things, like staying on the wall, but eventually last week he seemed to resign himself to the lesson format and that was when we actually trotted a few big figure eights. I rode him tonight at the walk and we just practiced steering and bending. Unfortunately I can't have a lesson this Friday because we're going down to pick up Maddie from school. No continuity with my lesson program :).

The whole abscess thing was very strange. I arrived one night, a Thursday, to find him very sore on his right front foot; he was standing with it cocked or stuck out in front of him with little weight on him. I soaked him that night and left it unwrapped, and put him on bute two times per day. It was bad enough that first night that someone actually called me later from the barn to let me know he was standing funny. I soaked him and buted him for four days, and wrapped him at night. I left him unwrapped during the day to air it out, and since I was coming twice a day his stall was staying pretty clean. During that time, he would not pick up the opposite foot for me to pick it out; I guess the inflamed foot hurt so much that he didn't want to put weight on it.

I stopped the bute on Sunday night just so I could check him out Monday and call the vet if necessary. He seemed a bit better, and ended up staying in through Tuesday. On Tuesday night, he let me pick up his other front foot for the first time. I kept him in on Wednesday just to be safe, because it was still kind of messy out in the paddocks. The ground got harder Wednesday night into Thursday, so he went out. And he's been going out and looking fine since. Well, looking fine except for the bald spot right above his tail where someone bit him today. I'm scrubbing out his feet with Betadine every other day just to keep them dried out.

On the Friday that Dude was lame, I rode Bestie in a lesson. Lunged her first and she was very well-behaved on the line. When I got on her I could still feel how "up" she was, though. Not surprising at all when you consider that I hadn't been on her since August because of her injury. We ended up just working at the walk and I could feel her settling down. She can get herself so worked up. Emma said that I need to be Bestie's rock; that she needs to be reassured that everything is ok. It's like starting all over with both horses at this point, but fun to be back on them both.