The Repurposed Horse

Spring's vet appointment at the University was scheduled for this past Monday.  The Monday before, I was involved in a pasture accident while working a feed shift at the barn - a storm came up out of nowhere and the horse I was trying to bring in lost his mind and landed on the middle of my foot.  I've been in an air cast ever since, though I got clearance from my doctor to start weaning off of it. at least I got to use my ice boots for something useful? Bright and early this past Monday morning I met my friend E at the therapeutic riding center to pick up a trailer.  Because Spring had been so adamant about not getting on E's trailer the last time we tried to load her, we thought that KG's more open, stock-style trailer might be more inviting for the mare and less of a headache for us.  We headed to CEC and began the process of attempting to get my horse to load. At this point I noticed that she had thrown a front shoe sometime between Saturday and Monday....

One of the barn moms (KM) took some lovely photographs of Leo and me a while back. She reached out to me this week to ask if I'd be interested in doing a quick shoot with Spring so that she could test out her new camera, and I happily accepted. Spring was a trooper for a good 15 minutes before she got bored with us, but KM was able to get some beautiful shots! I want to get this one framed I'm so happy with the way Spring is looking right now - she has decent muscle tone despite her very light work schedule, her weight is good, her coat is ridiculously shiny, and she's (finally) completely shed out.  Monday I am calling the University to go ahead and schedule a lameness workup with Dr. Keegan, and a friend has already offered to haul. I do love this horse.

As I briefly mentioned in my last post, things with Spring haven't been the best lately.  After an incident about two months ago with another rider, her behavior under saddle has gradually gotten worse - to the point that during our last ride she reared three times when asked to go forward (after a perfectly normal warm up).  Trainer A, who had been giving us private lessons for the past few months, no longer felt comfortable with the situation until we figured something out because she has not had much experience with horses that rear (totally understandable!) and Trainer K is approximately 8.9 months pregnant.  Also, after getting off and then getting back on to quickly w/t/c and reinforce to the mare that rearing =/= getting out of work, I'm not particularly comfortable with the idea of riding her right now.  Spring's back palpated sore after that last ride, but she wasn't lame.  The chiro came out this week, and said that aside from a very tight back ...