While I'd never label myself an optimist, I don't think I've ever been as questioning about what's next as I am lately.  I keep just waiting for something else to go horribly wrong with Archie.  While he has a brilliant, ugly scar, I feel like Archie's injury from December left a bigger mark on my brain.  To call it PTSD belittles that which is endured by those really suffering trauma, but it's the closest thing I can think of.  I'm surprised when he's whole, when he has both his shoes, when he doesn't tell me to arbitrarily go fuck myself.  I just keep waiting.

This sight is enough to make me hyperventilate.

I haven't been riding him in the ring since he received his not-yet-reoccurring-airway-obstruction non-diagnosis.  Because there's a lot of sand and if hanging out in a stall sleeping for ten hours is too much on his respiratory system, I don't want to make it worse.  But it's been raining lately and I have to prepare him for riding in the ring now that it's dark at five-thirty.  I figured it'd be okay.

And he didn't cough at all.  Instead, he was NQR.  It felt like he was intermittently short on his right front, which is his curved hoof and the one he most recently ripped off - and has since been reattached, like a while ago.  But, since I'm saying that it's the right front, I'm leaving lee-way open for it to be his kicked left hind, which really means that I can't tell horses and it's the left front.  What little I do know is that off on soft equals soft, so I don't think it's the new farrier.

I can't get a flattering shot.

I worry about my eighteen year old ringbone-infected retired racehorse having other little issues in his feet, though.  So we're going ahead and pulling rads when the vet comes out tomorrow.  I don't need luck.  I have math and science and a super fucking resilient Thoroughbred.  We make our own luck.