gimme an "O"! gimme an "M"! gimme an "E"!

And .... a few more letters too, and what do you get?? Omeprazole!! Yay!!

Actually, honestly, I'm not totally convinced Charlie is that ulcery. He's a surprisingly ... not ulcery kinda horse. Especially compared to Isabel. I like it!

all that gear.... patiently waiting to get dusted off. eventually!!

But he did just spend a significant period of time on stall rest, during which he was occasionally a ball of anxiety and stress. And he has lately been noticeably grouchy sour and touchy. So.... This is a box we can check off in helping Charlie feel his absolute best.

Therefore the horse started a month long course of omeprazole (am I the only one who playfully pronounces it as "oh-mee-prah-zoh-lee"????) and will hopefully come out the other end feeling like he's got guts of iron.

While I'm not convinced that tummy troubles are behind Charlie's recent spate of sourness, it definitely feels like something is buggin him.

so eager to return to adventures!

The likeliest culprit is that ever sluggish right hind leg. And the likeliest remedy is... plain old strength building. Which, naturally, is exactly what Charlie would rather not, thankyouverymuch. But them's the breaks, I guess.

We kinda went through this whole song and dance of tiptoeing around his resistance to being driven forward (esp when it's a little uncomfortable) last fall and winter when he was fresh off the track. Complete with every variation of professional medical advice. So I feel like I understand him and his emotional and physical needs a lot better this time around. Hopefully, lol.

soon enough tho, soon enough

In the meantime tho, it's back to doing all those little things to hopefully keep Charlie feeling his best even when he's gotta go through the rigors of building muscle the old fashioned way.

First up: he finally got to see his favorite massage therapist again last night! It's been a little while bc obvi he was on stall rest, and then she was out of commission from a mounted archery related incident (she's, uh, kinda a badass). But everybody is back in business now, so Charlie got his favorite flavor of TLC: a nice long massage.

old pic but his face is too freakin funny lol. that magical mix of "stranger danger" and "but plz don't stop!"

It was useful for me too bc I got to let off some steam about being convinced we'll have to inject everything from the eyeballs down asap just to get him healthy, starting naturally with the mother of all injections, the SI. To which the massage therapist gave me a look then deftly demonstrated Charlie's absolute lack of any reaction whatsoever to being palpated through his SI. So.... thanks lady for saving me a couple hundred right there!

Of course there are plenty other ways to try solving my rehabbing horse's lack of fitness with money (as opposed to, ya know, fitness training lol). So perhaps he'll see his chiro-acupuncture practitioner sometime in the near future too. Maybe next month? We'll see haha.

throwback to his last chiro appt. might be due for another soon!

And in the meantime.... things continue to be fairly quiet around here. The vet said Charlie could start some low jumping sometime in the next week or so. Which for our purposes will probably be some combination of "play time" for long suffering Charles, and ground pole / cavaletti type grids or gymnastics to help rebuild his hind end. Always walking that fine line between enough work to engage the muscles but not so much as to make him excessively sore.

In other words, we're basically on the event horse version of a "couch to 5K" fitness plan, except we've got like three months to make it happen. Thank god for the off season, right?

Do you have stuff you like to do for your horse to help them feel their best while coming back into work and going through the arduous process of rebuilding strength?