I CLIPPED MY OWN PONY!! Never done that before. Feeling mostly very pleased, although if you look at these photos side by side you’ll see the clip is not actually the same height and if you could see under the mane you’d see it went totally different at the top. But you can’t see under the mane and no-one can see both sides at once so I COUNT THAT AS A WIN :laugh:

He was good about the clip. It’s on the second time he’s ever been done, and last time we only did a bid (well, someone else did it) so I was very pleased with him. He stood eating hay happily for about an hour but then started to get stressed which is why I didn’t even the sides up. It looks fine and he’s much less sweaty being worked :db:

He’s continuing to go well under saddle. We’ve got ‘forward’ sort of mostly now and I’ve spent the past two weeks trying to reinstall ‘halt’ with a certain amount of success. (Forward *then* stop? Seriously? But you just said forward?? Make your mind up women!! is a frequent conversation topic) He’s beginning to settle in his mouth a little so I’m guessing we’ll get nicely settled *just* before he needs more vet work done but for the moment he’s happy in his mouth, showing no signs of pain there and going well under saddle. And did I mention I clipped him myself…? 😉

Quick update to say as of yesterday Dino has been with us two years! Here’s the first photo of us together, taken the day after he arrived:

He’s going really well at the moment and we had a really good lesson yesterday, even though it was raining. Love my baby horse! <3

So it’s round and round we go 🙁

Took him back to the vet school on Wednesday to have a repeat CT scan to see if the fragments we left in (or in fact could see on the CT but couldn’t find in the hole!) were causing any problems but we were hoping this would be the end of it. Those fragments are fine. Not moved, not got bigger, not causing problems. He has, however, magicked up some new ones! :wall: The vet has no idea where these have come from, they’re not on the previous scan and said he could have a bit of a poke around or we could take him home and bring him back in 4-6 months for *another* CT scan so this is what I decided to do. He’s going really well at the moment and it would be nice to just be able to ride for bit!! So we’re back again in a wait, scan, probably then surgery to remove the bits and then another scan… I’m glad he’s with us as I can actually afford to give him all this treatment (not easily but I can do it) – I’m not sure that Jayne would have been able to if she hadn’t sold him – but I really wish this would stop!!! It was one tooth!!!

He seems fine in himself though – he was yawning when he came back from the RVC which is what he does when he’s uncomfortable but it stopped after a day and I think it might just have been because we’d taken him back to the RVC? I had a good poke about and he didn’t mind me poking at the gum line so I think it’s fine. We watch. We wait. We make sure we pay off the credit card from the last lot of treatment swiftly…!

The Good news is that he’s lost about 50 kg and is now 580.5 kg!! That was the target I had in mind for him, although he could lose a touch more but we won’t be working quite so hard on that now. He looks really good :wub:

We had a bit of fun free-schooling over jumps on Thursday – some video over here (bit dark, sorry!) https://www.flickr.com/photos/silkyraven/15444865375/