A few thoughts

Well I thought it was about time I chimed in as Kerry has been doing all the hard work of keeping this blog going lately...

I thought I'd try and find the (some, any…) positives in the situation - it's so easy to focus on what’s still not good that you lose sight of what might have improved. Kerry posted in week eightish that Lottie was quite sore particularly on the right fore. About this time Lottie had a brief interaction with Dibble (an unfamiliar gelding), walking her carefully along the concrete without boots she stopped to say hello, they did the usual nostril-to-nostril heavy breathing and then Lottie squealed, reared up and landed heavily on her sore feet! Didn’t seem affected at all… I think it was about at that point that I began to wonder just how bad they were… A positive? Sort of…

As Kerry has recounted we had the physio last week. She asked Kerry to take Lottie into the sand school and trot her up. I followed on a minute later to hear the physio say ‘she looks very lame on the right hind’ (oh sh*t), then ‘can you do it again and this time make her trot fast’… ‘OK she’s fine she just couldn’t be bothered to trot properly the fist time’ (Ah)

So we can now say for certainty that at walk and trot in the sand school Lottie is 100% sound, when we first had her shoes off she couldn’t walk comfortably even on sand. A positive!

Although it sounds like we are 1 step up from horse-abusers by making her walk to the field without boots in fact she manages quite well apart from the last few feet of quite sharp gravel. When we first had her shoes off she couldn’t manage to walk on even a slightly gritty surface. A positive!

As a by-product of all the foot-washing, foot-balming, foot-picking-up-and-staring-at Kerry can do practically anything with Lottie’s feet. A positive!

Jazz is doing pretty well. She isn’t entirely comfortable walking on gravel but she has stopped wincing when she treads on small sharp stones and now just winces when she treads on big sharp ones. She seems pretty sound at walk and trot on the concrete and is completely sound at walk, trot, canter and gallop on grass even when ridden. Another positive!

All in all – I think it’s going as well as can be expected… :-)