Ugh! Update 13…of course!
You may be wondering why I haven’t written in so long, well it’s time, even if it is unlucky 13. When I last wrote, we were thrilled to have Wall-E join our family and were anxiously awaiting spring so we could ride both of them. Well, the winter turned out to be a total nightmare. Last winter when the ring was too hard to ride on, I took Max on trail rides throughout the entire winter. We’d get snow and it would melt and I’d hit the trail. This winter, no go! The snow never melted! It was so icy and dangerous that I didn’t dare ride him or Wall-E. We did take them on a trail ride or two, but nowhere near what I was able to do last year. I really couldn’t wait for spring.
I also had surgery in November and wasn’t able to ride at Sandy Point Stables for a couple of months. During that time, I thought long and hard about the money I was spending there when I had TWO to ride at home and two kids going to college next year. It was very hard, but given the balance I still owed Jay from last year’s shows, the extreme disappointment that I endured at last year’s RI Finals, and the thought that I could work on my own horses with a simple reachable goal of taking them to at least one show in the summer, I decided to stop taking lessons and not show with SPS in 2011. Sooo hard. It is an addiction, after all.
So this horrible winter finally came to an end, the snow and ice finally melted from the ring, and we changed the clocks for daylight savings time. Time to saddle up! I rode Max in the ring and although his head was high at the canter and he was snorting a bit, he seemed to remember a lot of what Nora had been working on with us at the trot. Wall-E, on the other hand, was not the quiet, docile pony that he evidently was last summer. I honestly think that he was a malleable toddler when Nora started riding him and over the winter had grown into a punky, defiant teenager. The first time I took him in the ring, he screamed his head off for Max, bucked, reared, bolted, spooked—you name it, he did it! By the end of the ride he was much better, but no way was I going to put Jamie on him for a while.
Me on Wall-E
I asked my sister to help me with him and she rode him a couple of times while I rode Max. That worked better. Max was going pretty well and Wall-E was doing really well at the trot with my sister. She’s good at teaching horses to bend and to frame up. After one of our rides we took the two of them up the dirt road. The road was covered in golf ball-sized rocks. My sister was very concerned that they would get stone bruises. I didn’t think so because I had ridden Max on the dirt road all last year with no problems. But sure enough, two or three days later, I went to ride Max and he was slightly off. Two days later he was really off. So, figuring it was a stone bruise I gave him a few weeks off and just rode Wall-E. He got better with the screaming and didn’t buck or bolt or spook anymore. I started working on cantering him. He would either go really fast at the canter or trot really fast. Lots of work to do, but he is so darn cute and sweet!!!
Max wasn’t getting any better so I tried bute for a few days and he showed no improvement. Lots of people started saying that maybe an abcess was brewing but I really didn’t think so. No heat, no pulse, no swelling and he wasn’t THAT unsound. Wall-E needed a Potomac booster so I asked the vet to take a look at Max when she came. She started out just feeling his leg but he is so sensitive to anybody touching his legs that she couldn’t tell anything. We jogged him and she flexed him and he was pretty head-bobbing lame at the trot. She started blocking him. No change after she blocked the foot. No change after she blocked the ankle. So she decided to go straight for the high suspensory. He trotted off sound. There was no denying it—it was a high suspensory injury. My heart sank. Nickleby was retired because of a recurring high suspensory issue so I, of course, thought the worst. The vet guessed that he did it running in the field with his play-pony. She said that it was going to require 6-9 months off. In 9 months we’d be back to winter and no daylight savings. We were basically going to lose an entire year. He’s be 15 before I could re-start his training. If it’s hard to teach an old dog new tricks, and this dog wasn’t getting any younger, would I have time to teach him to jump without thinking he had to win the race? The dream of being able to show him as a hunter was looking more and more impossible.
How long can my streak of bad luck keep up? (Remember one of my earlier posts that talks about my luck with horses?) Isn’t there ever going to be a time when NOTHING goes wrong?
I was so depressed that night that I went to bed at around 7pm. I had posted the news on Facebook and the next day I got a bunch of really nice messages with stories of horses that had high suspensory injuries and were back to jumping and competing. The vet did say that a front suspensory injury is a lot less severe than a hind one and has a pretty good prognosis. My friend called me and told me about her mare that had a platelet procedure done and was already back to work after only a few months. There is hope.
The next day I rode the pony. My daughter wanted to see how he was progressing and if she felt comfortable, she wanted to try riding him. Right off the bat he freaked out on the crossties and then stood on his hind legs and walked around like a circus pony when I tried to get on him. He’s not a bad boy, he’s just a baby that gets confused. Once I was on him, he was very good. Jamie felt comfortable enough to get on him and trot around and she did really well. She fits him perfectly and he looked really good.
Jamie on Wall-E
But she did admit she was slightly nervous on him and wasn’t ready to canter him. I know that he needs to be ridden as close to daily as possible. I just can’t do it with the crazy schedule that I keep with work, my kids, my websites, and working at horse shows. My boys have karate and baseball and cub scouts—it gets overwhelming! My sister said she could ride him occasionally but really not more than once or twice a week. I am torn now. I love him. Max ADORES him, but if I can’t ride Max for a whole year and I’m not riding at Sandy Point, I’m not sure that I want to be riding a very green pony as my only ride. I was looking forward to playing with him as a side project to Max—not my only project. My calves barely touch his sides. And at some point, his owners are going to want me to pay for him or they will need to sell him. He was an investment for them. I don’t have the money right now and with Max’ vet bills, my next few judging jobs will be paying for those, so I see no time when I’ll ever be able to save enough money to pay for him.
Enter the wild card. My mother’s boyfriend Barry, who lives in Florida, has a 5 year-old quarter horse that he wants to find a good home for. ”Rusher” is a chestnut with 4 white legs. Barry told me that he was finer built than the quarter horses he prefers and may be better suited to go English over Western. Barry had a bad fall from him (on what he explained was a freak explosion that the horse had never shown any signs of doing before) and wasn’t going to be riding him anymore. I happened to be in Florida on business when my mother was down there visiting Barry, so they picked me up and I spent a couple of days with them. I got to ride the QH. He was really cute and sweet. He had been gelded late so he has that cresty neck with big eyes and a huge forelock falling down his face. I really liked how he was in the field when I walked up to him and he has chrome that can’t be beat!
"Rusher"
Chrome!
But it was nearly 95 degrees when I rode him so it’s hard to tell how he would be on a windy, cold day. I was also using a Western saddle and bit so it was really difficult to judge how he would be as an English horse.
Riding Rusher in 95 Degree Heat
Barry offered to give him to me for free and even offered to ship him to RI for me. So would he be better than a green pony for me to ride? I’ve never had a QH before or would even consider one because I’m such a hunter/TB fan, but would his temperament be a welcome change of pace? Wouldn’t it be nice to have a horse with sturdy bones and strong, hard feet? Wouldn’t it be easier to deal with a horse that you could light a firecracker under and he wouldn’t do anything? Wouldn’t it be nice to have a horse that I could let a friend ride on a trail with me while I rode Max? Max is almost 15 and has had a physically stressful career, he will be retired long before this QH will have to retire. Can I gamble on a horse that is such a question mark as far as whether or not he can even jump? And what would I do with him if he doesn’t work out? The market is so tough right now to sell a horse or even to find a home for a free one! Or should I just get a boarder and go back to showing with SPS? I wish I could afford 3 at home, but I cannot. So many questions! I have to do some serious thinking.
Back to Max. The vet came today to do an ultrasound. The news was better than expected. He clearly has an injury to his suspensory, but she saw nothing major, not even a lot of swelling. She felt that platelet therapy or shockwave therapy wasn’t warranted. She thinks that we should immediately start his rehab with 10 minutes of walking as many days as we can, adding 5 minutes each week. Then in 60 days we will have her come back out and see how he is doing. She said it would be more like 4 to 6 months than 6 to 9 months. Good news for a change!
There’s still so much to think about….
