The pain caused by the good fortune of others

I am feeling this right now. UGH. I can’t remember what the german word for this is, but I’m sure they have a good one…

And honestly? I can’t really complain much. Oats is still lame, but his abscess is definitely progressing and day by day it’s grosser and grosser… On Saturday I peeled off his poultice and saw two bloody bruise spots on his heels. Oh good! I added a new poultice and asked the farrier when I should be replacing it, given how his abscess seemed to be moving quickly- and it looked HUGE.

She said every day now, so my husband and I decided to do our mega run on Sunday Funday a run…To the barn to treat Oats. Ha. Well ok that was my idea. 😉 His idea was to add in a detour to the barn. that accidentally added on about 7km to our regular route…It was an adventure, all right! A cool 20km journey TO the barn and 12k HOME from the barn. A 32km day! hahahha

At the barn we had our snacks and I took off Oat’s old poultice to examine and clean his foot. It looked about the same at first as Saturday- photo below:

It’s basically his entire heel. FML.

But then I started poking harder at his heel, particularly in the space between the two eruption spots- you can see a sort of dark shadow there in this photo, and WOW it is so soft and mushy, it started turning red and pussing out immediately. Yick! Also the puss was pinkish? Not yellow? Gross and weird. I wanted to keep poking it, but left it alone with a new poultice for tomorrow (today’s) gross adventure in abscess-world… OH and my rotten pony pooped on my ARM when I was treating his damned foot! ARGH.

He’s loving wearing a boot, clearly feels good with it on. That is good because it shows me that this is indeed an abscess, and NOT another type of lameness. That is the worst!! My friend who has had a very difficult spring with her horse (Oaty’s big brother Donato!) had him come up suddenly lame last week also, a mere day apart from Oats’ sudden lameness. Only Donato’s was not his hoof- it’s his check ligament that is swollen. 😦 how much bad news can 1 person get?? I feel AWFUL for her. And creepily relieved that it’s not Oats with that problem just his bad hoof.

Can we get a break over here? I miss everything.

When do you know, you know?

Ending of a tired week. So tired. I can’t figure out this crazy body fatigue I have this week, but I hate it! And the weather, while sunny, has been freaking freezing!!

Argh, when will spring actually happen?

I want this to look small to me. Showing when 2’3” terrified me!

But aside from my tired grouching (I think I must need some days off, like more than 2 in a row due to my tired crabbiness…) I had a great jump lesson last night, and it made me wonder–when are you sure if you are mentally ready to move up?

We are rocking 2’3” courses (shh, I know this is a very small height. But I feel like I am headed to the 2’3” Olympics here!) and I’m definitely showing 2’3” next year at our winter series.

But…

One time I showed 2’3” consistently and consistently bombed it. I wasn’t mentally ready, even though I thought I was.

Yeah this wasn’t a great show…

So, is this new-found ‘okayness’ here to stay?

We are not great at this height, but that can be said of most heights, and I still feel a bit like, gulp… when I see the jumps go up, but I feel mostly…fine. We’re even doing oxers at this height, something unheard of for me. So, am I ready? We make mistakes, pick up our reins, and move on.

Last night we worked on a course that I rode off-course a few times hahah. But we started at 2” and moved up to 2’3” without any real screw-ups! It was pretty simple, with a diagonal line, outside line, a 1-stride in and out, a swedish oxer, and the outside jump to the diagonal jump.

We even bravely took the option to ride the swedish oxer the other way to go to the 1-stride line from the other direction, and good Oats didn’t even blink! I saw another rider in the lesson before mine’s horse slam on the brakes when she re-approached from the other direction.

I like and trust Oats to make the right decision- most of the time- and honestly most of the time he’s like, yeah whatever.

Love it!