Pico shouted for Dino when I bought him (Dino) back into his box today. Dino was pissed off about a bunch of things and didn’t really want to talk to him which was a bit sad. I was going to write a proper update but it’s a bit of a brain dump. Sorry :-[
I’m feeling a bit unsettled about things at the moment. This past few weeks seem to have been pretty hard. The weather has left the schools unusable for weeks at a time and the indoor school booked up. It’s also meant Dino has mud fever. Again. I got a good look at it today and it’s horrendous…what I thought was just one side of the near hind cannon bone is actually both sides. It’s obviously really painful as he won’t let me near it! Which means it’s not being treated properly 😥 Poor baby. He tries really hard not to kick me but he can’t help himself. It’s also on the off hind, and he won’t let me close enough to see how bad that is. When I’m up on Wednesday morning I’m going to have to enlist a member of yard staff to help hold him and try and get the scabs off and some cream on but that’s going to be horrible 🙁
All of this, with the snow and being in and me doing extra days after he incapacitated M *and* he’s got all silly about the particular girth we’ve been using as it’s obviously uncomfortable in some way so he doesn’t like having it tightened means I’ve mostly been lunging him, sometimes in side reins and working in hand. Whilst this is a perfectly reasonable way of working a baby horse it feels like we’re going backwards. I feel miles away from where we were around Christmas and early Jan before the previous bout of mud fever set in 🙁 He’s been very reluctant about going ‘back’ and since the Unfortunate Event (which was while he was no going out due to mud fever – he’s get *stoopid* when he can’t go out) he’s very unhappy about the reins being tight and has been more silly about going ‘back’. I know this will come back eventually but it makes it hard to balance him ‘cos he won’t get his butt under himself. And he was doing ‘back’ really well just at the start of January after being silly about it initially so it feels like an important achievement we’ve just lost….
Anyway, today I stuck him on the lunge in the indoor as I have been avoiding riding him in this girth whilst I source a different one of his preferred make and style (No, no, they’re not spoiled at all….) and he was having a quiet, low energy sort of day as opposed to yesterday’s galloping around like a loon day… So we did that for a bit and then I walked him back to his box and thought ‘F**k it. I’m going to ride my damned horse’ and tacked him up (much to his annoyance – he could not believe I was tacking him up *after* he’d already been lunged!! ‘Dinner comes now, no :cc_confused:’) and then went back to the school and he was *awesome* :D. No back, didn’t argue with him, but a few steps of haunches in, half a step of shoulder-in, some reasonable circles and a lovely trot with his head down and low for a bit.
So I’m feeling a bit better and I know we have all the time in the world and things will be better in a few weeks when spring gets its behind in gear but, you know, things just seem a bit hard right now with the slightly nagging worry about Pico and now this mud fever being worse than I thought. Horses!! Who’d bloody have them!!
Anyway. We can never have too many cute Dino pics! My current favourite :wub:
