all quiet on the western front

Charlie never ceases to amaze me. Really truly, he is a one of a kind horse. Just incredible. Lol.

You all remember: last winter my beloved brontosaurus found a 4" roofing nail with his seemingly magnetic hooves. While he very fortunately avoided serious injury to any of the many delicate structures inside the hoof, he still ended up abscessing quite pitifully 5 days later.

erry day

So when he punctured that very same hoof yet again a couple weeks ago (this time on a piece of godforsaken mulch... ugh... #neverforget), I kinda had something like a "5 day countdown" going on in my mind. Like, if he was still fine after 5 days, we were probably in the clear, right?

Haha. Hahahahaha. Wrong.

when yo horse so lame you don't even need a video or gif....

Bc apparently, while on the seventh day Charlie rested.... On the eighth day that sucker FINALLY abscessed. Ugh.

Like it was undogly hot out and Charlie had just had the day prior off after our baller hunter pace.... so all I wanted to do was groom him and tell him he was pretty and go wander around the woods a little bit... But he seemed a little funny stepping out of the cross ties toward the mounting block (which is literally three steps away). And then was definitely funny stepping away from the mounting block. Sigh....

this was..... a fail.

I guess the idea that Charlie would pass up such a ripe opportunity to abscess really was too good to be true. Oh well. As it turned out, the weather was brutally hot all week anyway so I mostly just spent my time with him trying to cool him off and get him comfortable. 

This included some soaking and some treatment of the hoof.... tho my grand idea for using soaking bags instead of a bucket was a MAJOR fail. These things might be great for like, white lightning or whatever when what you're really working with is gas. But for trying to fully submerge a hoof, esp when the area of interest is in the heel? Yea, nope. Did not work. Will not try again lol.

"wow shit sucks tho!" - charlie, probably

Anyway the abscess meant that we missed our much anticipated clinic with Ralph Hill, but you already knew that. And honestly I had already started reconciling myself to that fate from the moment I pulled the mulch dagger out of Charlie's frog. It felt like a foregone conclusion from the very start.

Oh well, that's just kinda how it goes with this horse sometimes. And meanwhile, Charlie got to spend some quality time in a barn yard paddock when he was too sore to make the trek out to the big pasture. Poor guy. Tho to be honest, while sometimes I wish he would toughen up, it's nice to know he will 100% tell me when he doesn't feel well or doesn't want to go into the big field. Considering he loves his turnout, it means something when he's like, "Yea, no thanks!"

somebody call peta, this horse is clearly neglected!

Luckily tho, he's been steadily improving. Last time we had this whole snafu, Charlie managed to take off the shoe of his other supporting hind limb. Which only exacerbated his overall discomfort from compensating for the punctured hoof, and he ended up abscessing in that other hind too. 

This time around, Charlie got his feet done actually the very next day after the Mulch Incident. So all his shoes have been on nice and tight, and his support limbs have been able to stand up to the task of compensation. Phew! So a week later, instead of dealing with a worsening situation as other hooves succumbed... instead, now Charlie seems pretty much back to normal.

in fairness, i *did* buy him for his fabio-worthy locks.... careful what you wish for!

Like I'll never not be paranoid tho. Obvi. The weather has been wreaking havoc on all the horses. We went from brutally oppressive heat to inches upon inches upon inches of rain literally overnight. And all the horses have their winter coats beginning to fluff up. The combined effect of all this being: Skin. Funk. Every. Where. Ugh.

So the skin funk, combined with Charlie being sore and not moving, combined with heat during the day time hours he spends stalled.... All this means that when I see him in the evenings, I do not love the look of his legs. I mean realistically I know it's pretty hard to blow all four suspensories all at once when it's 99* out and the horses aren't doing shit else except stamping flies. But like, you know what I'm talking about haha.

"Fascinating." - charlie, probably

Luckily tho, the horse has been pretty consistently sound the last couple of days so I finally climbed back aboard for our first few rides. Mostly just walking on the buckle. Wandering around the dressage arena, picking our track one stride at a time, aiming for a leaf here, a hoof print there. Not sticking to any predetermined patterns while also being very precise in exactly where I want Charlie to put his feet.

he's a dapper dude

It's a nice simple exercise bc it keeps the horse and rider engaged with each other. And also keeps the horse shockingly well in front of my leg, since I'm telling him literally every single step where to go, he gets really keyed in.

But it's also simultaneously really relaxing. And Charlie likes to stretch down like a friggin bloodhound as we go. I did a little bit of trot in the same manner our first ride back and he honestly felt like a million bucks. Charlie is not a horse that will stretch like that if he doesn't feel good, so that's always a really positive sign.

but hey, at least it's football season, amirite??

And the next ride we even did a little bit of canter, plus just a little smidge of work actually on the bit instead of on the buckle. And Charlie felt good. So ya know. Hopefully the Mulchpocolypse saga of 2018 is finally behind us.

Just in time for another week of extreme rain. Tho I'm not complaining about in the slightest - our neighbors to the south will have so much more to contend with, so all I'm hoping for is that everyone stays safe through the impending storm. And in the meantime, Charlie and I will probably just be lyin a little bit low.