Another Ride and a Vet Visit

The vet came out and gave Hoss his semi-annual exam and treatment. He got his teeth done and the swelling on his lower left eyelid taken care of. It turned out to be a cyst accompanied by a blocked up tear duct. There is nothing quite so especially gross as watching pus squirt out of my horse's eye. Fortunately he doesn't seem particularly bothered by it. The vet was going to leave me Bute, but forgot. I thought I was going to have to head out and pick some up, but after observing Hoss for a while, I realized he doesn't seem to be suffering any discomfort at all. I was fortunate to have some eye ointment on hand, and even more fortunate to find that Hoss is very good about letting me apply it. I bought him a riding fly mask on the theory that a quarter inch slice in one's eyelid can't be the most comfortable thing, and should be protected as much as possible.

I had originally planned to ride that afternoon, but after the eye thing, I decided to put it off until Saturday. So on Saturday morning I loaded up the dogs and the horse and we went back to Hollenbeck Canyon. I was still feeling like I needed to be doing reasonably short rides for my sake as well as Hoss's. It was pretty clear after our last ride that he's lost a little condition, too.

Riding in the same place over and over makes it hard to come up with original material. We both know the trail so well, it doesn't seem that interesting to us. It becomes a matter of focusing on what we did.

I decided it was time to start pushing Hoss just a bit more than I had on our previous ride. It's time to step it up in preparation for the Descanso Endurance ride on June 18. On this ride, I started expecting a bit more of the speed work we typically do at Hollenbeck. He was sandbagging me a bit, just telling me he couldn't do it. I pushed him a few strides farther than he wanted to go before I'd let him drop back down to a walk.

On the big uphill, he cantered halfway up and petered out. I let him fall back to a walk, and we walked all the way back around to the flat area. Once on the flat, I pushed him into a canter. It was time to start breezing again. Boy, did I ever have to push him! He really wanted to just fall back to at least a trot, a walk if he could get away with it. I just kept pushing, pushing, pushing, keeping him going in a canter until we reached the end of the area. After that, I let him walk the rest of the way back to the trailer.

It was a good ride, and two days later, I was still sore from pushing him so hard, but it was a good sore!

A week later, we went back to ride at Hollenbeck again. This time, Hoss started to show more interest in going faster. I was able to get him to canter all the way up the hill, and he cantered reasonably willingly over the entire flat area. At least I didn't have to push him as hard as I had to the previous week. But he sure dropped out of the canter quickly enough when I asked him to.



I feel like we're back on track now. The last couple of rides, my shoulder really didn't give me any grief.

Physical therapy is going well. My regular physical therapist is not the least concerned about me going ahead and riding, unlike the gal I had a couple of weeks ago, who seemed to think riding my horse was akin to riding a powder keg while smoking. I saw this therapist, not my regular, after my first ride back. She asked how I was doing, and I told her I'd been doing great until I tried to chase a goat off the porch with a stick. I told her I rode and cleaned on Saturday, and felt great on Sunday until trying to discipline the goat. I tell you what, she hung on to the housecleaning and horse riding as if those were the only possible source of any soreness I was feeling. Did I ever get the lecture! Didn't matter that I told her I felt fine until I went after the goat. In her mind, she knew better than I did what was going on. I was relieved a few days later when my regular therapist was back, and she was completely unconcerned by my activities. If I have to go back and see that other lady, she and I are gonna go around. A lot! This week we started on strengthening exercises. My range still isn't great, but it's acceptable at this point. I didn't have perfect range before the surgery, so expecting it to suddenly become perfect now is a little unrealistic. My physical therapist wants it to be perfect, and I keep having to remind her just how long I went from the initial injury to the surgery. That affects how quickly I get range back, and really how much I ultimately will be able to get back. I'm not hung up on perfect. I'm hung up on satisfactory. If I can't raise my arm all the way up above my head, it's not the end of the world. I think the physical therapist is beginning to accept that perfect is probably not possible.