show pics

One of the many reasons I love competing at Loch Moy is their show photogs are always super fast* at posting pics! Erin Gilmore Photography often has same-day uploads, which naturally means I’ve got my favorites selected & added to cart asap!

(*Tho of course nothing can compare to the GRC Photography days when they had a trailer legit onsite and you could buy a thumb drive of every single photo taken of you right then and there for $99…)

boss mare doozy blazin’ around like we didn’t just watch three horses in a row get eliminated on refusals

It’s so funny, tho, how our feelings about and relationship to riding images can shift over time… Or, as the case may be, in no time at all. These photo prints arrived the day after Doozy got hurt and… Ya know. Idk. There are kinda a lot of emotions wrapped up in all that. 

we match the jump!

On one hand, gratitude, obviously. Gratitude for the physical and literal recorded memories of what was, again, a very fulfilling experience a long time in the making with this sweet and sensitive little mare.

On the other hand, tho, naturally it felt pretty bittersweet. Like, yea, it’s taken us a long time to get to this point in our partnership, where finally it feels like we’re clicking along, doing the fun stuff, not too too terribly unreliable or rough around the edges…

ok ok so when it’s late and i’m tired and i’m browsing show pics on my phone and can’t decide between two close shots? eh, what the hell, at $5 each i get ‘em both!

But there’s still so much more to do, improve upon, learn, grow into, all the things. And that had kinda been my initial feeling right after the show, when I first browsed pictures. Like, oh yea — Doozy is jumping better, and I can see signs that this new bit is helping me commit to a more forward posture, altho there’s still more to do there. 

just clockin right on around!

And I was happy with how things were looking with riding around in Charlie’s saddle too — recall I’d been experimenting with it, with the idea of maybe replacing the panels to better fit Doozy. 

 

real talk, if i didn’t buy pics with awkward expressions, i’d have no pics at all!! LOL

Plus, none of the pictures look truly sketchy (if you ignore the weird emoji grimaces I make while huffing and puffing my way around cross country LOL!). Like, if anything, it all looks pretty ho hum and easy for Doozy, with perhaps some areas to improve upon for the rider, right?

look at us, jumpin the blue thing!

That’s obviously a perfectly normal feeling, and maybe even quite a good feeling when the next event is just another 3 or 4 weeks away. With Doozy’s uncertain prognosis, tho, there are maybe slightly less encouraging feelings like, “sheesh if it took us both this long just to look like that, where will a possibly long layup and rehab leave us?”

not the world’s most exciting photo, but proof we did better over the boat house this time around!

That’s horses, tho, amirite? Siiiiigh.

As it is, tho, we remain cautiously optimistic about both the nature of the injury itself, and Doozy’s chances of making a full recovery in hopefully fairly decent time.

not me, drifting right over a fence instead of left!

We had our follow up appointment with the vet last week, during which the vet actually recommended skipping the ultrasound. As you saw from the pictures, the leg was looking quite good as the swelling came down. Plus the mare was not reactive to palpations, AND — more importantly — jogged sound even after flexions. These are all very strong signs that the underlying injury is generally mild.

**not** stepping inside the ditch, thankyouverymuch!

Recommended next steps were to start peeling back layers of treatment — stopping NSAIDs and cold therapies (hosing / boots / etc), and weaning from wraps — and introducing more intentional hand walking. We’re monitoring the leg carefully obviously, but if we can get up to about 20min hand walking without seeing any meaningful negative changes, the hope is to get the mare back into regular turnout. 

hopefully not the last time!

I’m not exactly sure what will come after that — I’m honestly just trying not to overthink or over-plan anything at the moment, bc I basically have zero experience with soft tissue injuries. And let’s be real, with who Doozy is as a person, I can’t just plan ‘nice, low key, quiet rides.’ 

Like, if it doesn’t feel wise to let the horse run or leap around on the leg, then it’s probably not wise to ride at all. Bc… Ya know. She is who she is LOL. 

The vet is optimistic that if we can check off these boxes with carefully returning to normal, all without seeing any negative changes in the leg, then it’s possible the injury was primarily superficial vs structural. We’ll see, right? One step at a time!! Tho, I can assure you, EVERYBODY will be happier when Doozy is back out again lol!

pardon the interruption

Alternate Title 1: Acting As If

***

Alternate Title 2: When Trashcans Attack

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Alternate Title 3: Oh Doozy… :(

pictured: a victim of the consequences of her own actions circumstances beyond her control

Sooo… My dear sweet mare… Ms Mondeuse, Best of Biscuits… We had a little accident last week.

The Hill Where It Happened

I had just hopped off after a particularly hot and sticky afternoon dressage school, unbuckled the girth, and slipped off the bridle (reins still around Doozy’s neck, plus neck strap on, obvi), and Doozy was, as she always is, immensely itchy. 

Except, two totally unrelated events occurred in rapid succession. First, Doozy tried to rub her face on a nearby trashcan. BUT THEN, in a totally unrelated circumstance, the trashcan moved and made a noise. And that, as they say, was that. Doozy shied backwards, turned away from me, Lost Her Shit when the ungirthed saddle subsequently slipped off, and got away. 

“the hills, they call to me!” — doozy, on drugs, performing a slightly less dramatic reenactment

For whatever mysterious reasons guiding Doozy’s chaotic impulses, she opted to bolt straight up and over the biggest nearby hill — exploding her bridle into a million pieces (not all of which I was able to find!) along the way. 

She made it all the way to the neighbors before apparently realizing she wasn’t in Kansas anymore, and so naturally turned tail and bolted straight back down the same gigantic hill and back toward the barn yard where we were still just standing there stunned. At which point her inner GPS kicked in and she made the turn she *should* have made in the first place and bee-lined toward her field, where she then waited in sad panicky agitation for me to come rescue her.

pictured: It

Somehow, Doozy kept all four shoes on throughout the ordeal, and had no visible wounds or marks. Plus 3 of her 4 boots were still perfectly in place — one of the hinds had slipped a bit but nothing crazy.

So I checked her over, hosed her off and did my best to help her cool and calm down… Obvi she was extremely agitated and sad after all that… But I hoped that perhaps we escaped any meaningful injury.

anonymous mare has #SomeRegerts
also, shoutout to my farrier who was like, “yea ok but let’s NOT shoe this horse today tho”

Unfortunately, tho, that doesn’t seem to be the case. When I arrived back at the barn about 12hrs later for our regularly scheduled farrier appointment, her left lower forelimb was hot, swollen and sore. I had just shot a text off to my vet when my farrier arrived, and he kinda confirmed my fears that we might be looking at something serious here.

shoutout to anti-inflammatories and antidepressant sedatives too, the real MVPs

He recommended waiting to shoe the horse until after the ultrasound, since her feet look fine and, as he noted, ‘we may want different shoeing based on what we find…’ Oof. 

pictured: as much action as we’re gonna get for the foreseeable future

Fortunately the vet was already scheduled to be at the farm later that afternoon anyway, so I was able to go back out and meet her. She just did a basic exam with palpating the leg, basically just to confirm that it’s possibly a tendon or ligament injury. 

these ice-vibe boots are a nice touch while we hand graze!

Her preference is to wait to ultrasound until the swelling is reduced to improve the quality of imaging. So we’ll do that at the end of this week. And in the meantime, the prescription is to act “As If” we’re dealing with something serious here. 

cold hosing is stronger medicine, imo, but it’s nice to do it all!

So, in other words, complete stall rest — hand grazing only allowed if the horse will behave. A 10 day bute regimen to help with pain relief and inflammation, plus a generous allowance of trazodone, to help with said “behaving.” Cold therapy via cold hosing and ice boots, and standing wraps during the acute phase.

doozy finds this liniment a bit too strong for her large muscle groups especially along her top line, but it’s nice as a diluted brace after cold hosing and under the standing wraps

Based on the initial exam, my vet thinks it’s very unlikely that it’s a worst case scenario rupture — mostly bc the horse is moving around reasonably well, albeit with bute on board.

snoozy doozy <3 <3

In fact she was willing to let me hope that perhaps it’s something like a check ligament injury, vs a less ideal deep digital flexor tendon problem. And, obviously, until we actually scan to find out, it’s entirely possible that there isn’t any significant injury at all and that the characteristic swelling was a fluke, an over reaction of a sensitive red mare! 

seems like no matter what the horsey activity is, there’s always so much stuff involved…

Now I’m a data analyst by profession, I spend a lot of time with statistics… so… ya know… My feeling is like the data in this case, the odds etc, all kinda point in the same direction: that there’s some sort of soft tissue damage. 

4 days post accident, clearly comfortable for weight bearing, swelling much reduced (yes the right leg is totally bent here, i know it’s a weird angle). we’ll ultrasound 5 days from now.

So we’re just gonna continue operating under that assumption. In this type of circumstance, the risks associated with a false negative can be far worse than a false positive. Meaning, the worst that can come from being overly conservative is unnecessary stall rest, vs possibly letting a small injury get suddenly much worse without sufficient precaution. 

The leg is looking good as the swelling reduces, tho, so I’m taking an optimistic view.

in a strange twist of fate, her best friesian friend is also stall bound with a significant soft tissue injury… makes for nice company while hand grazing!

The stall rest is also obviously not ideal, and something I’ve honestly always dreaded for Doozy. But she’s actually coping very nicely with the trazodone! At least so far. I think we helped her by loading her up on a dose before she even knew she was on stall rest — before she even had a chance to get upset. 

and they can see each other from their stalls <3 <3

The trick, I think, will be in keeping her eating it long term. It’s clearly not the tastiest stuff, ya know? So far, so good, tho, and we’ll explore options if/when she goes off her feed.

poor princess, please just keep eating your sedatives <3

I’m obviously pretty upset and sad, tho, even as I try to stay optimistic long term. Naturally I wish I would have done literally anything differently to avoid the accident in the first place. 

meanwhile, us while we wait for the scan.

Things just have a way of escalating beyond all expectation with horses tho —  especially horses like Doozy. Even in the best of times, to think we’re ever really “in control” of a situation is kinda delusional. Ugh. Mare. It really did NOT have the be this way!

So… yea. Cross your fingers for us — that the mare keeps eating her drugs, and that the ultrasound looks better than expected. In the meantime, if you need us, we’ll be in the wash stall cold hosing…

it can only good happen

Happy Friday, y’all! It’s been a quiet week around here. Not… uh, entirely intentionally, tho. I managed to mysteriously tweak an abductor, or at least, that’s what I think it is?

have continued to ride occasionally in the little paddock, sometimes with friends!

Some years ago, pre-Charles but post-Isabel, I was trying to keep my riding momentum going thru sheer willpower alone, and fell off a *bunch* of horses along the way. One of which was former coach Dan’s 2* horse Lion, easily the most schooled horse I’ve ever jumped. 

have sometimes been relegated to the big indoor, tho — also sometimes with friends!

The result was a significant strain on the adductor (I think), and it was omg so awful. Lifting the leg was a challenge, sleeping was a nightmare — as a somewhat restless sleeper, I learned through this injury that there is apparently a muscle that works to hold your limbs horizontal when you roll from side to side. And this injury made that legit excruciating. 

and who can resist a bounce just sitting there like that?

What I’ve got going on right now feels like the same general area of muscling, but maybe the opposite job. Stairs are fine, standing around is fine, but every now and again — esp in a moment of rotation on the leg, or swinging the leg away from the body — oof. Nobody likes that. 

had another lesson at fmf. doozy thought this pole arrangement was 100% natural and normal, good girl

Thankfully tho this go round seems to just be some sort of random tweak. Like, I don’t even really know what caused it, just that I woke up fine one day, then throughout the day became progressively more sore, and by evening all my attempts to power through it failed me and I was legit not even able to post the trot. 

continuing to jump actual jumps in these lessons, hurray!
for the curious — that’s trot poles to a one stride grid of X’s, i forgot to ask the distance

Which… Was a bummer. As I previously mentioned, I made a hyper-personalized version of my new exciting ‘recorded ride guide’ fixation specifically for practicing the Starter test. I call it hyper-personalized bc it’s literally based off the timing of our videos of riding this test, and the coaching I need ‘in the moment.’ 

I’m very excited to give this recording a trial run too, and even measured out a practice court in our small indoor, which it turns out is exactly 30x40m, perfect!!

at home, trying to match the drama of the skies

Riding to the recordings continues to go well. I remember once hearing advice on how to make a decision on whether to move on from a horse or not — they said after every ride for a month, you should mark you calendar with either a Green checkmark, or a Red X. Then, at the end of the month, review.

was another great session using our new ride guides!

And I never forgot that advice, not because I’m wondering about moving on from Doozy or whatever, but bc it was such a simplistic and honest framing. Yes or no? Good or bad? Were you happy with that, or no? And ever since, I’ve sought to find ways to ensure that we’re always having more ‘Green Checks’ than ‘Red X’s,’ if you know what I mean.

“ma’am, pls to see that sky of impending doom, tho?? let’s gtfo pls!” — doozy, 100%

These recorded ride guides are 3 for 3 on Green Checks, tho. And not bc Doozy remembered to take her princess pills, either. In fact, on our last ride (before *my* mysterious lameness), Doozy was actually a bit of a hot mess. 

A new horse had arrived and the new barn mate was (extremely reasonably) rolling trunks into the barn while we walked up to the ring and Doozy legit flagged her fucking tail omfg, mare. She’s such a funny horse, she HUMS when she’s losing it, and I was like, c’mon pls just cope? Pls??

turns out the little indoor is exactly 40m in length! i had a whole plan to video our test practice, but alas, was too crippled to ride.* will try again next week!
(*probably should have taken the hint when putting on boots proved too painful lol)

AND SHE TOTALLY DID!! Like, not right away, tho she clearly was trying — bless her. There were definitely a few moments in the ride when I could have gotten baited into following her down into the doom loop of chaos. But… The recording was there, with its steady unfeeling AI Brit accent with literally no intonation whatsoever, to just keep us going. 

And holy shit balls — it was GREAT!! Including that new little inserted canter / trot snowman transitions exercise I wrote about last time, it was legit exactly what I wanted it to be, yay!

It was undoubtedly victory snatched from the jaws of defeat. Rather than being an ‘expensive’ or ‘costly’ sort of ride, we both walked away feeling a big deposit in the trust bank.

lol i forgot to feed the meter after getting on, sweet mare **reminded** me

Doozy is so uniquely challenging for me. I love the shit out of her — she is an extremely good girl. I’ve said from Day 1, and I’ll say it again today: She colors inside the lines. 

And it’s exciting to see her schooling improve over time. I’m proud of our progress together. But, ya know. The same challenges are still there, right? 

hilariously, this ring is WAY less spooky when it’s filled with literal wagons of hay. silly me, i thought the wagons would be a problem!

She’s probably the ‘slowest boil’ of all the horses I’ve ever got going before…. Tho, real talk. My last season with Charlie —where we were comfortably ensconced at a ‘cruising altitude’ with no upward pressure — was without a doubt a highlight of our time together <3

And I’m trying to keep that lesson from him — perhaps one of the most important that he ever taught me — front and center. It’s so exciting to develop new tools to help keep me and Doozy moving in the right direction. And it’s exciting to feel so excited about a ride, that I’m actually disappointed to have to wait a couple days LOL… 

But ya know. C’est la vie! Tho brace yo’selves bc in a couple days time (hopefully) you should expect a post (w/video!) on actually practicing that test along to the new guide. Much excitement haha. In the meantime, TGIF, ya’ll!

going nuclear

Ya know that thing they say about “Pride goeth before a fall”?? That whole moral platitude about how overly proud or boastful people are more likely to make mistakes / suffer consequences??

swamp critter, queen of scurf
(semi-related: omg look at that grass, it’s JULY, people — and still growing! the scurf is #worthit if that’s the tradeoff!)

WELL haha. Have I got a *shocking* update for you all. 

toasty biscuit still sweltering at 6pm

Literally the *same day* I humble hopeful bragged about keeping Doozy’s notoriously nasty summer skin funk at bay with regular rinses of diluted apple cider vinegar… That very same evening I arrived at the barn to see the mare coated in mud, sweat, and hives. UGH!

arrrghhhhhh!!!
(last wednesday, for those keeping score at home)

Maybe “hives” isn’t the exact right term, idk. The internet loves to tell me that “hives” are technically some sort of allergic reaction, whereas what we often refer to as “rainrot” is usually a bacterial skin infection or dermatitis, characterized by crusty scabs that leave bald spots behind. 

bleh poor mare 

In my experience, tho, the earliest stages of rainrot present as hive-like swellings that are sometimes itchy, tho often painful. Or sometimes a weird mix of both. Maybe there’s a different name for the puffy bumpies, but ugh my heart sank when I saw them on Doozy. 

dialed it up a notch to eleven: switched from diluted apple cider vinegar to diluted chlorhexidine

Charlie was certainly not immune to his fair share of delicate thin-skinned thoroughbred ailments, but his cases were always so easily managed that I usually gave myself a day or two of denial that the hives would really result in another outbreak. 

Sorta the “maybe I’m just imagining things!” attitude lol. 

scrub a dub, princess!

That’s probably where I went wrong with Doozy last summer tho, and by the time I realized we had a problem, WE HAD A PROBLEM. 

So I’m determined to take every available opportunity to try to stop this thing in its tracks before we get back to the “basically moss growing across her entire top line” situation again.

thursday (the next day): telltale little scabs with small chunks of hair

So I’ve since replaced our apple cider vinegar rinses with chlorhexidine — a relatively gentle but still fully effective antiseptic that is often used as a scrub for vets ahead of delicate procedures like joint injections. 

I forget when I first started buying it by the gallon — but it was years ago for Charlie, with one of his various horrific wounds, and my vet suggested it was a gentler (read: less painful) cleansing solution for flushing than whatever I had been using (iodine maybe?).

little lumpy crusties are slicked over with MTG, and nearly invisible to the camera

It may be gentle, but it can be VERY drying — so it’s worth testing on a small, less-sensitive spot on your horse if you wanted to try something similar. And apparently there are medicated shampoos that are formulated with chlorhex too, but, eh. I’ve tested this on Doozy (who has insanely oily skin, probably the root of all her problems right there) and she doesn’t seem to have any negative reactions whatsoever. 

you can sorta see in the right angle, tho — she likes to cultivate her gardens of funk right at the height where she’s slowest to dry

So we did the chlorhex bath on that first day, then the second day was shockingly mild weather and Doozy wasn’t sweaty or clammy or anything by the time I got there, and it was her day off, so we skipped bathing entirely and just did a shit ton of currying, then a light gloss of MTG over basically the entire back half of the horse. 

and while we’re on the subject of cultivating gardens of funk: the entire tack room looks like this, every day. this hackamore has been cleaned more in the last two weeks than maybe the entire last year, holy mother of mold!

Again, in my limited experience, these skin outbreaks seem to be most common in times when the horse is going through a coat change. And at least in our area, most horses go through a shedding cycle right around the solstices. 

Maybe something about all that dead hair sitting around on the skin creates the perfect environment for a funk explosion? Idk, but I spent a long while with the rubber curry getting as much off as I could. 

the struggle is real, but turns out giving a post-ride spritz with this stuff has really helped the helmet stay fresh!

MTG is also one of those products that folks seem to have love/hate feelings about, and maybe horses too. I’m firmly in the “love” category, tho. Like, I test it on horses first bc I’ve heard that some can have stronger reactions (tho I’ve personally never seen that myself). And I don’t “scrub” with it — more of a ‘deep massage’ style application. 

and since i was taking pictures in the tack room already, here’s the myler comfort snaffle for anyone curious

I also avoid applying it when I’m going to put something on top — like a blanket or bandage, it’s an ‘open air’ sort of tincture imo, and I try to not mix it with other topical applications in at least the same 24hr period. That might be overkill, ymmv. 

Oooh, and also maybe consider time of day and UV index too — don’t accidentally deep fry your horse by slicking them in oil then turning out at 1pm in the summer sun!

maybe she’s born with it, maybe it’s maybelline chlorhexidine

Anyway, tho, that’s kinda where we stand as of right now. We’ve done 3-4 chlorhex rinses since last Wednesday, and one big gloss of MTG on all the main hotspots. And??? Well. Again, I’m hopeful that we got in front of it. Ask me again in two weeks, tho, and we’ll know the truth LOL.

I know that skin funk is one of those things where everybody has their own sworn favorite remedies. The above is (obviously) my go-to approach, tho for an established case I generally don’t hesitate to escalate directly to prescription grade stuff, typically the Animax / Dermalone / Panalog ointment (a mix of steroids and topical antibiotics).

It’s always interesting to see what everyone else does, tho — are there any Listerine lovers out there? Or Desitin slingers? Let me know what you swear by, especially if you’ve had tricky (read: Chestnut) cases before LOL!