Friday, May 13, 2011

Of abscesses and trail rides

Abscesses: poor Indy turned up dead lame yesterday with an abscess.  Luckily the vet was able to find it pretty fast, but the poor guy looked pretty miserable today.  This is actually good news because he's been doing this weird hopping thing in the short ends over the last few weeks and we were worried it was more serious - hopefully it was abscess-related only.  So he was obviously out of commission today.

Trail rides: actually more like a country road ride, but same idea.  Rode Radar up and down the road today for something different.  It was actually good because I hurt my foot taking a walk yesterday (seriously, only I will do that!) and it was a light ride.  For as much as some of Radar's qualities in the arena are sometimes frustrating (such as being rather sluggish and dead to the aids) those qualities make him a great trail horse for a chicken rider like me.  You have to love it when a huge truck comes by and you spend more time making sure the pony doesn't sneak some grass than concerned about the truck!  This convinced me that I think Radar will be my first foray into Briones in about 4 years this year.  Hopefully there will be room for me in the trailers when I'm still inspired!

Pony funny of the day:
Poor Radar is not the brightest pony in the world, to say the least.  I was coming around the back of the run out for his stall, and went ahead and put an apple into his stall.  He didn't move an inch.  I could not get his attention at all (meanwhile the horse next to him is throwing a fit at said lonely apple).  So I give up, go around the barn, retrieve apple from the floor, show it to him, and place it in his feed bucket.  He STILL doesn't move an inch.  We try not to hand feed in general, but as my instructor is watching this all go down she determines that I should just give the poor pony his apple by hand.  Pony gets apple right in front of his face, eats, is happy.  Who said ponies were so smart?

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