I didn't forget about the blog I just haven't had a lot to blog about lately due to this:
That would be Buck's hoof in a diaper/duct tape boot because of an ABSCESS!!! Last Friday morning when I went out to feed him he walked up to me so "head bobbing" lame he was basically on three legs. I cleaned out his hooves (I thought maybe he pulled a shoe or something) and found a hole deep enough I could stick the end of the hoof pick into it. Needless to say for the last week I've been doing this to his hoof every day.
Now there's nothing coming out of the hole anymore and he seems completely sound again. Tomorrow I think I'm gonna ride him and see how he does, hopefully he stays sound and I don't see the abscess come bursting out of his coronary band.
Makes my pony a very lazy man. Plus, I think it made him stiff since he was having a hard time getting going today. I might need to remember, at a minimum, to get him out of the paddock and hand walk him or something if I'm going to give him a few days off from now on.
Look how vigilant he is LOL!
Despite the obvious stiffness (possible soreness, must keep watch over him for the next few days) he did seem to work out of it and was EXTREMELY well behaved. I think the long "trail rides" from the trailer to the jumping arena last weekend helped expose him to the great outdoors even more then I had in the past. Today he was like riding an experienced trail horse. Again, it could just be because he was some what off today but he really seemed to be enjoying himself. It makes me think it would be a good idea to go on more trail rides with him every once in a while, which definitely wouldn't hurt my feelings one bit!
MOOOOOOOOOO!!!! I'm not really sure what this is about...
The only problem I seem to be having as of late is getting the left lead on the first time around. Definitely could be my fault though since I feel like I'm some what off balance in that direction. To get him to take the correct lead to the left I have to almost completely lose contact with him and let him figure it out on his own, which leads me to think it's something I'm doing wrong but I can't put my finger on it. Any suggestions???
Doing what he does best!
Don't know what it's been like for the rest of the states (or other countries for that matter) but we've had lots of rain recently. In fact, it's rained almost every day since last Saturday. Been kind of nice since I really thought everything was going to die, but it's a little rough getting the entire summer's worth of rain in a week! Upside, the grass is green again and as you can see above, Buck is VERY happy about this!
I went to Queeny Park yesterday for their Mini Event. For those of you who are not from Missouri, Queeny Park is this giant county park in St. Louis which also has an amazing cross country venue. After being back in lessons for a short while I decided it was time to see what Buck was capable of. He'd been jumping like a champ at home and in lessons and really seemed to love it.
It has been raining here basically non-stop since Friday morning and Sunday there was no change until about noon. The dressage arenas were set up on the top of a hill in a field so the middle of the arena was a little more crowned then the edges and grass + mud made the arena slick as heck! Our dressage test went terribly, not so much because myself or Buck did anything majorly wrong, but mostly because he was slipping and sliding all over the place which in turn made him want to be a little... "playful" (judges words not mine lol!) Here's the video (my mom took it so excuse the lack of the entire right side of the arena!):
After Dressage we went to check out the cross country and stadium jumping since my stadium jumping time wasn't for another hour and a half. I should have known this was not going to end well but the rain had stopped and I really wanted to check it out since I had never been to Queeny Park before. My stadium jumping time was 1:52 and when we got done watching others do the course and "walking" the cross country (we could only check out the jumps not actually walk jump to jump) it was about 1. We took a golf cart back to the trailer because it was a half hour walk to the jumping courses from the parking lot (didn't realize this until it was too late). I tacked up and started the trek back to the stadium jumping arena. I was LATE! My trainer had beaten me up there and asked the people at the ring what they were on (because there was no announcer down where the trailers were parked) and they told her they were still on my division. However, when I got up there (about 5 minutes after her) they informed us they had been waiting on my for 20 minutes and moved on to the next division! Honestly, I think they're times were messed up because no one was going in the order they were suppose to and multiple people had scratched because of the weather. Unfortunately we were eliminated because of this *insert sad face here*.
Since I was eliminated I didn't really know what to do, Buck was kind of acting like a fool because people were jumping all around him in the warm up and I just wanted to get away from there. The lady at the stadium ring said if I got to the start box on time (my cross country was at 2:08 and it was 2:05) I would be able to run through the course if I wanted to. I decided some cross country schooling is better than none so we hurried over, made it with about 30 seconds to spare. I also made the executive decision to canter between the jumps and trot them just because I wanted him to listen to me, when he gallops he gets a little out of control (thus the riding cross country in a kimberwick). I'm posting this as well, at the beginning it's very far away because my mom couldn't zoom in anymore, but you get the idea. It was a great course and if I had not already been eliminated it would have been a blast to gallop!
So that was our fun weekend with a mini event and I can't WAIT to go out again. Plus, lesson learned on paying attention to the right times. My trainer placed 1st and 4th in her division on two 4 year old Trakehners from New Spring Farm so all in all I think it was a good day.
