Made It Through the Day

Nice Weather Again

When I went out to feed this morning, Toby was limping really badly. When I got him in the barn, I saw he had lost that front shoe again. I had to lock him in the stall for the morning while I went to church. This is getting frustrating.

I did manage to sing in church this morning, though it was a little dicey. I really had to concentrate on my vocal technique to get my voice to work. The high notes were fine, but my lower register required some careful thought, breath control, and focus to get the notes out right. Fortunately the anthem was not vocally difficult, and stayed essentially within a comfortable range of notes. Whew!!

I was going to go out with the choir gang for lunch, but when I got into my car, I realized I'd left my wallet in the truck after I'd gone for alfalfa cubes yesterday. Not having any money was not the problem, but driving without my driver's license was. I opted to go home instead and had more of my chicken soup. Would have been nice to go out to eat, but...oh, well.

After lunch, I suddenly felt really tired. Might have been the cold medication. I lay down and took a nap.

When I woke up, the kitties were telling me it was time for them to eat. I fed them, and headed out to the Boys.

I saddled up Tucker for a short school. Three cheers!! He gave me the right lead with a minimum of fuss after I corrected him for a bit of a threatening kick out. Once he knew I was determined, he took the lead and cantered on just fine. I didn't demand much more than forward and on the bit. The left lead was fine too. I did several sessions of trot work and finished up with two figure eights at the canter, trotting on the center line to change the lead.

Now I am mindful that Tucker is on two grams of bute at day right now, so that is contributing to easing his hock issues. He will get his third injection of Adequan a bit later tonight. I will taper off the Bute in another day or so, down to once a day. Hopefully, the Adequan will have started to do its job by then. Guess we'll just have to wait and see.

After I rode Tucker, I saddled up Chance. I planned on riding the property to see if I could find Toby's missing shoe. I started to head out and suddenly, Tucker whinnied and started galloping straight towards us. I bailed off Chance, and once safely on the ground, led both horses back into the barn and locked Tucker in his stall. Then I tried again.

Chance did not want to walk the pasture without a lot of persuasion. Then I realized there were all kinds of flying insects teeming up out of the grass. They were either gnats or mosquitoes and Chance was very upset about them. At least that explains why neither he nor Tucker were out grazing.

I finally ended up riding him in the arena. Accomplishments?? He put his head down in the canter on both leads!!! This was a major break through. He relaxed into both leads and started reaching down to the bit. Fantastic. We're still not solid about it, but the improvement is obvious.

After I finished up with Chance, I soaked Toby's foot, gave his stall a good cleaning, and then wrapped his hoof with icthamol, vetwrap and duct tape. Hope it stays on this time. I can't feel any heat or a significant pulse in his foot, but he is quite sore without his shoe.

Don't know what's going on with the shoeing situation. Toby rarely, if ever loses shoes.

Hope we get it sorted out and he is OK.