I didn't have to work this weekend, which was nice since it added a lot of hours to the weekend. I decided to ride Dude. Katie has been very busy and is working this weekend, and the poor guy has been looking kind of down in the dumps watching me tack up Bestie. I had brought his bright turquoise saddle pad because the other one we had at the barn got eaten by mice. Burned me up - it was a gorgeous cream, black and gold Mayatex and the rodents chewed a big hole in it. Once I got him saddled up the girls at the barn made a fuss over him in his pretty saddle pad and you could tell he thought he was hot stuff.
We were out in the arena about 25 minutes. It was pushing 40 degrees today, so fairly warm, and it just felt nice to ride and not be super bundled up. He was pretty peppy, and we did a nice big trot. His saddle is so much less cushy than Bestie's; my rear end was killing me toward the end. We had the arena to ourselves until the end when one other horse and rider came in, and it was a lot of fun to bop around.
A couple days ago Katie discovered a little spot just below Dude's left hip that barn manager Caitlin diagnosed as rain rot. The spot is about the size in diameter of a pencil eraser and slightly raised. I scrubbed it with Betadine (then scrubbed the scrubber) and treated the spot with some ointment - Farnham Tri Care - that we have on hand. Have gotten recommendations to use MTG or icthammol from others, but will stick with what we've got for now. The scrubbing didn't seem to bother him. It's the first time we've ever dealt with rain rot, so we'll see how it goes...
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