Don’t you hate it when you’re right?

Or: I officially give up.

Got the diagnosis and while it’s not all bad, it’s still bad. Oats has a partial tear in his medial tendon near the DDFT. While it is not a whole tear, it still isn’t great. He will be on rehab for the next 3 months, and then we can reassess if he will need surgery or if it has started healing on its own. No field turnout- maybe never actually. 😦

I do have to ride, funny enough. Walk rides, 20 mins a day, every day. Icing his leg. /after our ride, I use DMSO + cortisone, which my vet will drop off at Greenhawk for me next week. Wrap up the leg. Rinse, repeat.

Get the vet out in a month, see how the swelling goes.

My horse camping weekend is cancelled, it was supposed to be next week. 😦 My trip up island is cancelled, as I have to do his rehab religiously now starting tomorrow.

I think this is it for my blog or until he recovers or something good happens. I am not in a good place anymore.

 

It’s not a secret unless it hurts you to keep it

Oats is lame, and this time it’s not a ‘oh just a big abscess’ sigh of relief. He is REALLY lame, and it looks serious, and it felt serious. And I also feel like I caused it.

From this, last weekend…

He went kind of off on Thursday. I got to the barn early to set up some jumps in the field (love jumping in the field!!) and prepare for my Thursday lesson, which is my dressage lesson but to keep Oats fresh and interested, we do some jumps here and there too, mixed in.

To this, this weekend. FML. 

When I got Oats into the cross-ties, my heart sank, a bit. I saw his right hind ankle/pastern was very slightly swollen. I knew that this meant he was very likely lame, and I was right, unfortunately. I took him down to the field, hopped on, walked around to warm up and trotted…BAM. Head-bobbing lame on the right. Pretty good on the left though.

We both saw it, I definitely felt it, and I hopped off to cold hose & wrap his leg. It wasn’t that bad, the swelling and everything, so on Friday I decided to saddle him up and ride him, see if a day off made a difference (he was not turned out at all). He was ok, about 80% there so I could sense ‘some’ change but nothing that bad. We did light w/t/c and slowed to a walk, I was going to hop off and everything changed in 1 instant. He stumbled, HARD, and almost went down.

He was instantly, seriously, lame.

Game over for us. 😦

With my friend facing a recent, terrible lameness episode (that will take up to 2 years of rest/rehab) to resolve, it’s fair to say I am on an absolute hair trigger. Oats has a vet appointment on Thursday and every single day I play a miserable waiting game. This summer has been just terrible.

Easy to corrupt

And…Oats is lame again. EFFFFFFF.

I can’t string together two good weeks this entire goddamned summer. Yay. Missed out on my dressage lesson, even when I went out early to go set up stuff in the field to use. I pulled Oats out into the cross-ties, went to brush him and immediately noticed a puffy right ankle. Not that bad, but enough to make me wonder, and bingo, my wondering was right. He was lame on the right hind.

Trotting to the left he was ok, to the right= lame. 😦 both myself and my trainer noticed it immediately. Wrapped, cold hosed and freaking fingers crossed AGAIN.

Nobody can catch an effing break this summer, eh? Oh and also Tucker has been on and off again not eating/going downhill this week too. YAY…….life is so great, isn’t it?

BC Day Adventures on horseback

So I have a friend who is big into trail riding- she has a great trail horse, and all the fun gear like a speaker that hangs on the breastplate of her saddle, and a TRAILER! I am a self confessed trail riding chicken with my own horse. Other trail horses, no prob. Trail ride on Oats? Ughhhhhh…no.

However, since our other friend has a horse that is recovering from a torn ligament and will likely be off for a year (god, now that is another bad story entirely 😦 ) Our trail friend had nobody to ride with, and so I gathered up my courage and said I would ride on the trails with her. And so, a plan was made!

We went up to Glenora on Sunday, to the Cowichan Valley Trail that is basically a section of the Trans Canada Trail. There are a few trail options at the trailhead there, but we took the most basic one- straight ahead 🙂 It is very horse-friendly, with lots of parking, two small paddocks, hitching posts, water and a manure pile.

I asked my husband to come as our lead rider on his bike! We were honestly not at all sure how Oats would be on the trail, so we thought it would be safest to have a hand on the ground just in case the horses got nutty.

They didn’t though! Good as gold! I was really impressed and surprised. Oats can get silly waiting- he tries to rear, or go in circles, but otherwise he was as cool as a cucumber. From the minute I got on, he was just chill. He is NEVER like that at home on the trails, so I was pretty surprised.

We even got to the trestle and the horses were like no big deal?? Even my dog is afraid of bridges (but she is a huge wimp, sooo…).

We chatted, rode, had snacks and water from Katie’s saddlebags and I even rode up behind Ian to grab a Clif bar out of his backpack while he was cycling. I never thought I would be able to do that?! It was so fun, and just a really chill day.

Rocky (Katie’s dog) was also really well behaved too. The trail was busy, lots of cyclists, runners, dogs, but the horses and everyone kept it together and I was appreciative of how respectful and careful the cyclists and other trail users were. Yes! Plus it was great of Ian to come and ride his bike, because then he could pick berries for us- there were thimbleberries, wild blackberries and huckleberries. Yummy!

What a great day.

Heavyweight Champion of the Year

Jump lesson~! Now, it had been a good few weeks since I jumped (holidays, missed lessons, Oats had an abscess) so I was ready for a good one and it did NOT disappoint! 😉

Whee! So cute

We are still in the indoor- the outdoor is…a mess and I am not sure when it will be back in action. As of yesterday it was still too deep! But we had some fun new jumps, so I enjoyed experimenting with those for sure.

We warmed up pretty well, it was feeling like a hot day and even though my lesson is pretty early- 10am, and I am warming up by 9:40, it felt quite warm and I was still recovering from a terrible sinus headache that plagued me ALL day on Friday. So my head felt like a balloon…But Oaty was great!

Ha, I never ride in the arena anymore….Fields for life! 

We worked over a small course, smoothing things out. The circle jumps went really well for the first few times and then by the last course, I was tired and definitely not on my game. HOWEVER because I have a bad habit of bailing out when I get tired or to my third round, I just felt like, who cares? I will keep doing it! Keep trying! And it was fine- we did grind to a stop in the final fence, but I take credit for that mistake..I kind of stopped riding. We re-approached and bingo! It was excellent.

Love the summer weather for sure- just wish the pandemic/work wasn’t so insane as per usual this summer… 😦

Nelson is great in the summer!

After spending time in Kelowna, we headed up to Nelson to do a little exploring, trail running and eating/drinking. And it was fabulous! Very hot, sunny and gorgeous out. We stayed at a cool hotel downtown- the Adventure Hotel- which is pet friendly. Great because we had both critters with us 🙂

We went on a trail run on the Trans Canada Trail, and there were SO many thimbleberries!! Very tempting, and I guess, tempting for bears as well…

Since it was quite hot in Nelson, we did the run in the morning, and did a little bushwacking and found an old railway (still had the ties), followed it down to the lake, while getting eaten alive by mosquitoes. It was a gorgeous little interlude.

Then we got back to the room and the sun was very intense. We grabbed a drink/shower, and went for a walk along the waterfront with Gidget. It turned out to be a pretty long walk and WOW I had a terrible headache by the end of it. Turns out Ian and I both got a bit of sunstroke that day….I felt awful for the entire day. Never shook it.

We then went to a local brewery and enjoyed a beer, and by that time I was developing a miserable headache…

We chilled in the room for a bit, feeling like crap, haha. Then we went to this cool Hungarian restaurant and the food they had was pretty great! We only went out to eat at places that we could sit alone, nobody close by, and outdoors. This one fit the spot!

The next day we had to pack up and begin the loooooooong drive back to the Island. Of course we had ferry drama- but we made the 6pm!! if you can believe it!! And we were all pretty darned tired, Gidget, Ian, Tucker and me. 🙂