Today will be our sixth ride back.

While I've said that he doesn't seem to have lost a lot of fitness, I'm also still trying to take it slowly.  I'm not so good at that.  My goal was to gradually increase the workload until our ride time and distance were approximately the same as it had been before he had a three week vacation.  And once we reached that, we'd start jumping again.  I miss jumping.


Even our baby cross rails and verticals.  Miss.

But I'm also trying not to be sloppy about bringing him back.  It's not just the quantity, right?  It's the quality of the work.  So he's being asked to work harder for shorter periods of time.  I've gotten really complacent and lazy since I lost my trainer.  Settling for "meh", because meh is easy and I'm lazy and sometimes, I just don't feel confident enough in myself to ask for better.  Then, of course, this was compounded when I lost OR and TE.  Do you even realize how important it is to have people around that bolster and encourage and just silently hold accountable?  Is this why I sat in a pasture for three years, trotting in circles and scared to death of the canter?  Because it was just me and I didn't have the gonads to do better.  Even if they never said, hey, how's that outside contact on the bend going?, just watching and being around other riders made me want to ride better.

So here's part of me asking for more from him, Wednesday night.  I call it "swishy tail."

Not 100%, but I think all four off the floor.

Definitely all four off the floor.  Also, pissed off pony.

I love that I still have issues with my right side being higher than my left.

Just wanted to show how far he was reaching.

Swish, swish, swish, little camel.

I opted not to ride on Friday, because it was even hotter than Thursday.  Instead, Archie and I hung out and drank cheap beer.

It was disgusting, but so, so cold.

And we can see the elusive Thoroughbred, resting in the breeze of his stall fan.

Saturday, my lazy ass actually set an alarm.  I rode for about half an hour, trying to take things easy for the old man, and was off his back by 9:45.  I don't know if it's because he hasn't been asked to canter in three weeks or if he was feeling particularly exuberant, but those freaking walk-canter transitions were explosive.

Raccoons!

Brown and black.  It's a theme.

Because I had been so overachieving in the morning, D and I were able to do fun stuff for the rest of the day.  I'm lying.  We did the same shit we always do:  gym, lunch, shopping, a treat and home.  But we were able to watch a movie before going out to dinner.

I couldn't talk myself into rousing when the alarm went off on Sunday.  I meandered out to the barn and didn't really get on him until noon.  Fortunately, it was a shit ton cooler and there were some nice breezes.  The BO was dragging the ring while I rode, so we did laps around the outside of the ring and through the grass.  We had to talk a little bit about those canter transitions and the Kid got super pissed off about getting the right lead.  Pro-tip:  if I ride like I know what I'm doing (how long, again, have I been doing this?), Archie is 800 times more likely to do whatever it is I'm asking for than if I sit there and think really hard at him.

Derp derp.

We went on a walk to the river afterwards.  Dude spent three weeks off, had his turnout halved, and is just a fucking superstar.  I don't feel like he's lost much fitness and he certainly still has his brains.  I returned to the barn with my feet kicked out and my arms in the air, catching the breeze.  I love this horse.

We're experiencing this wonderful little heat wave right now, so it was hot as balls by the time I got to the barn.  I swung by C's apartment (the chick who I picked up at the grocery store) (who rides at this barn) (and who realized the $500 price tag she quoted me was the trainer's special) and dragged her with me to endure the heat.  She's planning on buying a horse and can't budget the $1k price tag for her current barn.  She'll be temporarily moving the mare to my barn until another place opens up.  This was all with my barn being sight-unseen.  Really sort of scary that someone would trust me that much.

(I had separated my turtles for aggression and the asshole was hanging out in this blue container until I finished the outdoor pond.  I don't think she's hurt, I think that jerk is hiding under all the leaves.)

(The only real casualty - a house-warming gift.)

• If treatment isn't working, then you have the wrong diagnosis.
• Diagnostic analgesia (blocking): lesions are clinically significant if they correspond with blocking.  (Which, I think also can be taken the other way:  if there's a lesion but lameness doesn't improve with blocking of that lesion, then it isn't clinically significant.)
• Imaging modalities: 
• radiographs (x-rays):  due to cost/size/ability to transport, this is still the first line.  
• Always take all four directions, because it's easy to miss stuff.  In fact, you still might be in the wrong area or performing the wrong test (which leads back to performing correct diagnostic analgesia).
• There has to be a 30-50% increase in bone mineral before the human eye can detect it.  So, you know, shit has to be pretty fucked up.
• ultrasound:  high user dependency, which means that if the person performing the u/s isn't the best at his or her job, you may miss stuff or misread stuff.  
• nuclear scintigraphy: (I'd never heard of this one until I googled it later and found out that this is the fancy name for a bone scan)  sensitive, but not specific.  Difficult for soft tissue, but good for the sacro-illiac joint.  Rood and Riddle has some pretty good information and photos on it.
• computed tomography:  AKA, "Cat Scan".  She didn't even touch on this one because she said that it just doesn't happen.
• magnetic resonance imaging (MRI):  this was Dr. Holmes' favorite.  She said that in the past, there was an issue with horses waking up from general anesthesia, but that it is now very safe.  She talked a little bit about the two types of MRI magnets and what they were for and showed a few photos, but essentially:  it's safe and they're going to shove as much of the horse into the machine as they safely can.

Here's a photo of an MRI.  Of course, it isn't a UGA photo because they haven't shared the presentations.  (I've requested!)

Archie had his six-month vet visit on Friday.  The vet offered to couple it in with one of the other two visits, but I wanted to get that hoofer rechecked.

And pony is sound.

Abscess has blown.

The Kid will get his shoes put back on next week (hopefully early) and we will resume work.

As this is only (knock on some fucking wood for me) the second abscess that I've dealt with on Archie, I wanted to tabulate how this affected me.  Especially when I had to make decisions like, do I go to the gym and then go boot and wrap the Kid, getting home at about 9 pm or do I skip the gym?

(I skipped the gym.)

So, does L or H get to name the dinosaur?

From Hill:  I want to know about what you ride in and why?  Show us your Equestrian Fashion choices and tell us why you wear them!

Another Walmart t-shirt. The rest the same.

Dog spine.

Human spine.

When we collect a horse or bring a horse into contact, the spine isn't moving upward nearly as much as we feel like it is.  What we feel is thrust.  The back end pushes up into the front end, where the legs act like pogo sticks.  She mentioned picking up a dog's hind legs and trying to get it to walk forward on its front legs.  It isn't natural because the front legs don't pull.  They slingshot forward by the force made by the back end.

Dr. Uhl also talked about transverse rotation of the spine.  This is the explanation for feeling a shoulder drop or crossfiring.  When bending, instead of the vertebrae staying straight, they angle outwards from the top.  The correction she offered for this was, under saddle, lots of correct lateral work.  In hand, to slow things down, increase balance and correct asymmetry.

From Science of Motion.

Finally, she talked about the actual lesions and lameness.  Both are the result of improper loading of the bone.  Bones are made to handle new work, as the little inner workings shift to accommodate the new stress.  Think of shin splints.  You get those when you push too hard, too fast.  If you worked slower, the bones would adapt to handle the new work and would release anti-inflammatories while doing so.  Same thing for horses.  When we push them too hard, we cause lesions in the bone structure.  Generally, by this point they're already lame.  Osteoarthritis is the result of a loss of communication of those little inner working things (I'm sure she said, but damn), telling the bones to remodel.  This can lead to bones releasing debris into the cartilage and damaging it.

She studies with Jean Luc Cornille and advised everyone interested to purchase his book/dvd "Science of Motion."  It's on my list!

Tossed in some Georgie and his unicorn.

Someone asked about her thoughts on chiropractors.  She responded:  chiropractors work statically but it is a dynamic problem.  They can help, but as soon as the horse moves, the problem will be created again.

Other quotes:
→ "As long as you accept that the lameness is incurable, it will be."
→ "When it's right, it's easy."