I Broke My Horse

Yesterday I took Killian for a little jaunt around the arena, he did really well once I established that we were not going to go to the fence and make goo goo eyes at the Princess.   Then I rode him out, grabbed little miss Sassafras, put her boots on and we the three of us headed down the road.  

She is such a funny horse to pony.  If we are in the arena she drags behind and you are constantly having to tell her to pick it up a bit.  If you are heading out, she is leading the way, and if you see cows....hold on tight because she is making beeline for them.  I suspect she wants to bite them on the butt.   Then when you head towards home she starts pulling back because she is not ready to go home.  She is quite the explorer.  I love that about her.

She seems to be over her nervousness of vehicles passing by. Did not even give them a second glance this time.  However did not have any rude honkers this time, or semis.   Our road is dirt so we trotted down the road and I watched for any limping.  There was none!!!!!!

I was so so very excited!  We trotted down the road and my imaginations was filled with visions of riding my little cutting horse, penning a cow, people cheering at how awesome she was.....blah blah blah!

When we hit pavement we walked but tried to keep the pace steady.  It was pretty darn hot out so I settled for just going around the block. When we had the room we trotted on the dirt on the sides of the road, if not then we walked.

3/4 of the way home we were skirting a big dirt lot, just walking.  Killian had picked up the pace a little, because he knew we were almost home. Sassy of course was slowing down. I felt her stumble behind me and then she really started dragging on the lead rope.

I turned around to tell her to come on, and almost threw up. There she was hobbling on 3 legs.  I jumped off and checked her boots to see if she had gotten a rock in them when she stumbled. There was nothing.

I got her back to the dirt road, and tried moving her around to see what the problem was.  It was her left front, and she was not willing to put much weight on it at all. This is not an internal hoof issue I don't think.  I took her down a little past the house hoping that maybe I could move her out of it.  But it didn't work.  So we hobbled home.

I checked for heat or swelling, could find nothing. She seemed to do a little better with out the boots, which doesn't make any sense either.   I was going to hose her left leg down, but at that moment the guys had broken a water line, and all my water was shut off so I used some water out of her tub and put some on her just in case. Then I got Killian untacked and dumped another bucket over him because he was super hot and sweaty.  (He actually burned some calories!)

I came in and got some ice to ice her leg with, but once I got out there found I had no clue where I should ice simply because there was no heat or swelling. So I just sort of moved it up and down her leg.  I also gave her a dose of Banamine. She was standing there with her left leg propped forward, and while she would put weight on it to move herself around, it never lasted long.

TC came up with a pretty good idea. He suggested to use our laser thermometer to check different parts of her body to see if I could pinpoint any hot spots.   Her feet were 102, her legs were both at about 99-100, her knee was the same.  Moving up to her shoulder she varied from 98-104.  It was much too fluctuant to count anything as accurate.   So much for great ideas.  This is one of those times when thermal imaging probably would have been handy.

TC told me this morning that last night she seemed to be doing much better.  I am headed out now to see for myself.  I just cannot figure out what is going on with this horse, this was not her normal foot sore issues. This was an injury but all we were doing was walking, and why is there no heat?  If it is going to be like this for the rest of her life, I don't really have big hopes for her future.

I guess if I am going to break one of my horses, its best that it is the one that was already broken.  But it sure did take all those happy visions I was having just 15 minutes earlier and shatter them into a million little pieces.