Letting go to get there

Dressage lesson last night! Our trainer noticed my warmup was a bit backed off, with me sitting in the backseat (ha, now where have I heard that before, oh right, in my jump lessons!) and so guess what we did? Get ROLLING at the trot, big trot, bigger trot, and then CANTER! All on a very loose rein. It felt kind of wild to me, a little bit like we were just ripping around, but wouldn’t you know…we had a very lovely, loose through the back canter AND trot. Ok, after the downward transition we kind of bumbled into the trot but then he’d come down and release nicely. He still has that ‘snatch’ at the reins to come down, but he was much more consistent than before.

Just look at this handsome steed!

Kind of blew my mind a little! Sometimes dressage isn’t a tightly-held warmup and trot/canter, eh?? Sometimes it is a little wild!

Oats loved it, and his canter was SO consistent, forward and light over the back. Good boy! Plus he is looking fantastic these days- not so scraggly and gross and scrawny. I’m very glad to see him gain his weight back and his coat is just shining. He doesn’t look 19 right now, turning 20 in October 🙂

It was a very fun ride and reminded me to let go of the control sometimes (duh a horse person with control issues? Say it ain’t so 😉 ) ahahaha.

Plus on Wednesday we went on a hack around the block and while he did require a lot of convincing to get past the new, huge greenhouse (that wasn’t there last time!! Scary!!) that involved some running backwards, he got over it and was a gentleman for the rest of the ride, if a bit edgy/looky. Good pony, and PHEW!! I am a big trail ride chicken, haha so I rely on him to help me out here.

And my legs update- I had my hip tendon worked on last night (THANK GOD it was driving me insane for like 2 months, ugh, so gross…the tugging/irritation was constant) and I am entering my third walk-run of the week today at lunch. Fingers crossed for a recovery- even the physio was stumped about why I keep getting injured when I am in great shape and in general don’t have too many physical issues, other than the obvious hypermobility?!! Ah….

Some good rides and things

Ended up very busy last week, so no Oats updates or anything. Where to begin? On Tuesday Oats had his dentist appointment, shots and worming. I had to be out there for the dentistry part. He was quite good, did need ear plugs hahah man those power floats are SO LOUD and the vet did say his back teeth were going, so he’s require soaked cubes eventually but I don’t want to think of that now- he’s had a lot of feed changes recently! The vet did say Oats looked thinner, but man I was like, you should have seen him two weeks ago! He is looking much better now.

Look at this handsome dude! Photo by Daytona.

I had to cancel my Tues lesson because of the teeth appt, but that was ok because he had a beginner trying him out for a potential lease on Wed! The lease isn’t going ahead for some good/obvious reasons. The young rider is just too inexperienced in horse handling. Had a good seat for w/t but did struggle to keep Oats from coming in off the track to the middle and had a bit of a tough time getting him to trot. Was not comfortable bridling or haltering or handling in and out of the paddock, so while I did offer them to think about June, I did have my concerns. The family did too, and thankfully decided not to. It is actually great when it’s mutual- they seemed like lovely people, Oats is just not the right horse at the right time for their rider.

And then Thurs I had my dressage lesson and it did go pretty well, THOUGH Oats brought out his threaten-buck when we were asking for straighter at the canter. He did NOT like that, ha. We schooled over a few xpoles and he was kind of tricky! Fighting me a little more, ha. Ended on a reasonably good note though.

Friday Oats had off, which was good because my busy week didn’t end there- I had a physiotherapy appointment at ReBalance. I had been a patient there- on the sports medicine side- for my subluxating patellar like a million years ago, haha. I liked the experience, so I wanted to go back to the physio side to try and get some answers for my chronic MTSS frustration. And wow, they put me through my paces!! Balance exercises, ‘kayaking’ with a big slosh tube, and the weirdest of all, a blood pressure cuff that goes on your leg and squeezes the blood out of it, creating a lactic acid sensation in your leg- it was SO weird and uncomfortable. You can barely push the leg press (and it is EASY). Ick! So odd!

But my right leg felt really good after, so maybe it’s gross but it works??

Saturday I had my make-up jump lesson (see, busy busy!) and I was kind of annoyed at ol’ Oaty…He was sluggish, slacking off and I guess just feeling warm and snoozy. It was warmer than it had been all week! I had my spurs on but he was reacting very poorly to them (balking, bucking, sucked back, rude) and I knew I wasn’t going to use them appropriately, so I took them off. Right answer! He perked up over the small fences and before I knew it, we had a nice little time 🙂

Sunday I was pretty determined to not get into a canter fight with Oats, so what do I do? Immediately get in a canter fight with him. Sheeeeeesh. I should know better than that by now! At first I even had a pretty nice left canter, but then I asked for more, and then right for straightness, and it…fell apart and turned into a fighting match. Yick. No thanks!

We cooled out in the outdoors, which was nice, sunny and hot. Oats got a long graze after and I cleaned his tack. Fingers crossed for a smooth week, and that my legs and feet start healing for once!!

Discipline

To my extreme frustration, my leg is totally fucked. Like…I can tell the delamination has started and that was something I SO wanted to avoid. I started having trouble walking this week 😦 and it hurts going up the stairs, going down the stairs, and riding. YAY.

All that shockwave and strengthening exercises? Five WEEKS of them? Did shit all.

So I’m headed back down the road to having 6 months off. Yay me.

On that note, I’m stopping any attempt at running for a week, no more walk-jogs, nothing. If I can’t walk anymore, it’s gotten so much worse than how it started. 😦 Funny I have to have the discipline to NOT do anything???

And history repeats itself

Well, it wouldn’t be a pandemic year without more disaster, right? To cope with many of the stressors I picked up during this weird and terrible time, I started running more at lunch. Like, a lot more. In normal times, I’d run about 5 days a week, and I went to 7 with the odd day off here and there. Fine right? Yep no prob.

And then I started adding in 1 day of hills, and 1 day of speed work (gradually over the past 6 months) and everything was great! I bumped up my daily run amount and kept the intensity. All was going well until…Tuesday. I ran the hills, and it was extremely tough due to 5 days of severe windstorms this week. I finished a bit short, and must have aggravated my stress fracture from 2019, because when I ran on Wednesday, my calf felt tight and then on Thur? BOOM. No go. Limping. 😦

Yeah really don’t want to go through this again. Damn

So, that’s where I am right now. Forced time off and time to re-evaluate my injury protocl. And of course after two weeks of miserable weather, it’s sunny and not too cold out. Eff my life! Wah wah. I know I did this to myself, but I also know that I probably can’t make myself stop, either.

Post-Shockwave. Eight sessions on this bad boy. REALLY don’t want to experience that pain again. 😦

So who knows what the future holds for my bad leg AND the hot spot on the bone is the same stress fracture spot as in 2019 (got them in both legs last time, fun fun…). EFF. 😦 Can’t catch a break eh? At least Oaty was golden last night. Three weeks to go!

Skip to the good part

Wow, so…Last post I read myself I was not doing great. Trouble with Oats, my leg was just feeling horrible thanks to shockwave treatments, and I was struggling.

Still here. Now with bonus both legs! fuuuck

And how are things now? In a way, better. But not that much better?

I went to horse camping (and it was awesome! Much-needed, and I am going to post about that separately, I have been travelling for work and crazy busy lately). I went straight from horse camping to a work deployment for 8 days in the Interior B.C., and got back last Tuesday, had Wednesday off to do laundry, ride Oats, get groceries and get settled, and then was immediately back to getting shockwave treatment on Thursday morning, and then to work.

Hiking with a colleague after work up Marriage Mountain.

Fun fun eh?

Work has been busy, and the shockwave continues to be a pain. I injured my left leg during my deployment and now am enjoying the experience of having both legs laid up. Yay?!! Not gonna lie, I was pissed when it happened. WTF is going on? So, I am now having shockwave on both legs. It’s as much fun as you can figure. UGH. FML.

How cool is this??

My deployment was really cool though. So many neat and unique experiences! LONNG days holy shit, 12 hour days easily. I was exhausted! And no real opportunities to workout, unless you give the shed the firefighters work out of more credit…Hahahah.

I even rode on a helicopter! It was so cool.

The ‘gym’

The food was good, my per diem sucked so hard, I was hungry all of the time, and I worked with some truly fun, committed and driven folks. It was hot, I was in a strange environment (working in a trailer, hah), and our water had arsenic in it!

They had a lovely winery.

It was a great way for me to ‘step away’ from the insane angst that I was feeling the prior weeks. I still vacillate greatly from ‘ok I can handle this’ and ‘i have a plan’ to ‘WHY AM I STILL FUCKING INJURED AND PAYING A SHIT TON OF MONEY TO BE INJURED’…every day. It’s frustrating, expensive, painful and on I can go on and on and on…

They grew heirloom tomatoes too! 

But being away really helped me to not bring that insane useless frustration I feel each day to my horse, Mr. Oats. He needs me to be a better person with him, not an angry or upset one. So I could come home and enjoy riding my horse again!  Yay! I felt like a wet noodle riding, but I had so much fun, and riding him feels like I am riding on a cloud…AH… That’s a great feeling 🙂 He takes care of me.

It was so beautiful.