Is the SI to blame?

So the chiropractor came out today. She is someone I have not used before. She did spend a lot of time with us and seemed thorough. But also struck me as sort of quack-ish. She was also way too expensive that I won't be able to use her again unless she works some sort of miracle on my horse.

Anyway ... her diagnosis was SI pain/discomfort. That's the sacro-illiac joint, which is buried under a lot of muscle and almost impossible to really adjust. I suspected this, and it's pretty common.

He was also out in C3 of his neck.

Otherwise he showed no pain or displacement anywhere. His back was loose and pain free (yay!) as was his poll. It's just that darn hip/SI area.

Symptoms of SI pain/discomfort: I put my comments about Hampton in red.

• agitation when asked for upward transitions (nope)
• kicking out/cross cantering at the canter (will kick out sometimes if I spur him too hard ... hard to decide if this is just Hamps telling me that my aids are rude, or if he is uncomfortable)
• reluctance to go on the bit (nope)
• bucking in the canter (yes. Sometimes, when I ask him to really collect and back up my leg with the whip, he will buck. Again - being snarky or in pain?)
• Inability to hold a lead in one direction. (no)
• Looking weak in the hind end (yes)
• Horse may shift weight constantly between the two hindlimbs. (no. He actually stands in the crossties very square.)
• Reluctance to stand with one hindlimb flexed, bearing weight on the other limb, or reluctance to allow one or both hindlimbs to be picked up (I'd said yes, although mild).
• Breaking to canter rather than increase hindlimb impulsion (yes! Especially for slow trot - to BIG trot transitions. He would rather canter behind my leg than push off into a big trot).
• Lateral work (e.g., shoulder-in, half-pass) is particularly difficult. Canter is stiff and stilted, often four beat and difficult to maintain. (Lateral work is mostly fine, every once in a while he is a bit resistent to leg yield off my left leg. Canter used to be 4 beat as a 3 and 4 year old. Seems to have grown out of it?)
• Shows a loss of flexibility through the lower back. (Yes. Almost always tight.)
• Can only manage a poor bascule over fences, jumps long, refuses jumps, stops in combinations. (shows none of these. Infact he has a pretty darn good bascule)

Ignore the perching monkey on his back ...



• Has difficulty with cavaletti. (nope)
• An exaggerated sensitivity to palpation over the lower back and sacrum, which may be either a sinking away from the pressure, or tensing and quivering of the muscles (nope)

So what next?

Well, I'm going to keep trying to strengthen that hind end. Hill work, caveletti and we need to start jumping again. This hind end hitch has pretty much vanished last summer. Is it because we were jumping regularly? We haven't jumped at all since December really. Has he lost that strength? At this point I do not feel he needs a long-term break. Both the vet and chiro said it was fine - and good - to keep him in work. Motion is good for the joints. Of course if anything gets worse, I will reconsider.

At some point, I am probably going to have to get his SI joint injected. I'm not sure how much this costs but I am sure it will probably require me saving up quite a bit. Is he sound for lower level dressage? Without a doubt. But he's going to need that issue examined further in order for us to proceed up to third/fourth level. That I have no doubt. He will be 6 in June - is he growing a little bit more? There are so many possibly explanations!

So we'll see how it goes. He is otherwise happy to work, happy to come to me in the field and just a general laid back, happy guy. He shows no signs of pain when you palpate his back or hips. It's just this slight hitch in his gait. He may actually be naturally uneven in his hips (like me! I have one leg longer than the other). Who knows.

Entering horse show mode now. Cue stress, panic and massive organizing and cleaning spree.

I have been quietly standing in the shade

I put shoes on Hampton. All 4.

Slipper sfor Hampton

I 100% support barefoot trimming and trying to keep your horse barefoot. It was going really well with Hampton up until recently. And actually, it's not going BAD right now. Which is one reason I put shoes on. I wanted to do so before he started having problems.

Here is why I put shoes on.

He has started wearing off his hind hooves again. Pretty badly. He did this when he was 3 and 4 and I blamed it on growing, weak hind end, lazy young horse stuff. He did stop doing that last year. Within the past 4 months or so, he has started it again. He was wearing his hind hooves so weird. His toes were worn down like stubs, and he was wearing the outsides off faster than the insides - which would almost get a flare.

His front feet looked good, but he was just a touch short-strided up front. I'd like to see him roll out of his shoulder more.

I know there are excellent barefoot trimmers out there. But I just could not keep waiting around and watching him wear off his back feet so badly. He was becoming more and more unbalanced back there. And with his recently hitch in his hind end, I made the call. Shoes it is. Which now means I will be keeping the bell boot industry in business. *sigh*

He also got a massage today and his massage therapist found a pretty big knot on the right side of his butt (the leg I thought he was off on). For some reason he has been overusing this muscle. She did say his back seemed good and found no other real issues. That was good news. The chiro comes out Thursday (omg SPOILED horse! Ramen noodles for me). We will see what she has to say.

Hamps was pretty good for his first time getting shoes. We made it through the front feet ok, but decided on some mild drugs for the hind feet. Of course we'd all like to avoid drugging our ponies, but I would rather we not fight and risk hurting humans and horses and just give him something to take the edge off.

I'm interested to see how he goes tomorrow.

I love pancakes for breakfast! .. Except, not when I am the pancake.

This morning was cold, gloomy and rainy. But I wanted to work Hampton anyway to keep his muscles moving. He has improved considerably since the other day. A chiro appointment is still needed but he is at least not looking like a gimp anymore.

So ... as usual, I catch him in the field and lead him to the side gate. Another horse is lurking nearby but I don't think anything of it. We pull up to the gate and I turn my back to fiddle with the latch. Hampton is standing behind me waiting patiently like a good boy.

Well, the lurker ATTACKED Hampton, who had no choice but to spin into the fence to get away. Unfortunately for me, I was already by the fence and so I became Hampton's buffer. I got clocked HARD and heard the fence crack as I was smushed up against it.

Well, my right arm and thumb took the biggest hit. Which is a good thing: if I had not put up my arm my CHEST would have hit the fence. I probably would not have liked that.

how I feel right about now.

Anyway of course I bent over to catch my breath and began to wimper in pain. (I am such a wimp ...). My thumb was bleeding and I couldn't move it. After wimpering a little bit more I looked up and Hampton had the most cute, alarmed look on his face. Staring at me. Somehow, my left hand managed to keep a hold of his lead rope. haha! The offending jerk asshole horse was standing at the gate - quite proud of himself for chasing the others off. I stomped in his direction and yelled and he took off the other way. I made sure he was not about to come for a second drive by!

Anyway a photo of my thumb is below. I am shedding blood so don't look if you are easily grossed out. It's not all that bad really, I got pretty lucky. But the damn thing is super swollen and my arm is bruised up, as is my right knee.

I did end up lunging Hampton who looked good today! Very slight hitch in the beginning but he worked out of it. So at least that made the morning a little better. Geez.

Call the bambulance!

Rump shaker. Not really.

I went to lunge Hamper before our ride today since it was a bit chilly. As soon as I asked him to trot, I gasped in horror. He was off.

OF COURSE. Seeing as how the day before I dropped my entry in the mail for our first recognized show.

Now, sometimes he has a tendency to get very slightly hitchy on super cold days. I blame that on a tight back. But today it was ... different. It was worse, and I had a hard time telling which hind leg it was. It did start to get better the longer we went and especially as he began to snort and blow and stretch over his back. I took that as a good sign.

I decided to hop on to see what I felt under saddle. He felt normal at the trot. Normal on both diagonals. Willingly picked up both canter leads. No problems at all. Hmmm.

Finally, I asked him to leg yield to the left (so away from my right leg). AH! Some obvious resistance there. Well at least I had found something. He was happy though, and was willingly forward. After I untacked him, he also was a bit of a dickhead about picking up his hind feet for me to pick out his hooves and otherwise root around for any issues.

It concerned me enough that I grabbed the vet (who was already at the farm) for a lameness exam.

I trotted Hamper back and forth. We flexed him. We palpated his back, hips, stifles, hocks. I lunged him again for the vet without tack. He looked considerably better by now.

The vet pronounced him sound. Passed the flexions. NO REACTION at all to palpating his back or hips. No swelling on his legs or any other obvious problems. This sort of baffled me as I maybe would not have pronounced him SOUND at this point. He's not exactly lame, but he is hitchy and off.

The Hamper gets what the Hamper wants.
Massage? Coming right up!

The conclusion is that Hampton needs the chiro ASAP. My gut feeling says his hips and or sacrum is out again. Possibly other things. That appointment, plus a massage for His Highness, will happen ASAP. In the meantime, lots of stretchy work for him and we will back off on collected work. It never hurts to just work on stretching and suppleness anyway. I feel like I should keep his muscles moving.

So much for those new tall boots I had my eye on! :/

Now entering FLCH.

FLCH - Flying lead change hell.

It's time for us to start flying changes. I have purposely not taught changes to Hampton because I really wanted professional help/instruction through this process. Also, he needed a better counter canter. That's established now. So all the pieces are there. I have help. And Hampton is ready.

I could have taught the changes the "hunter jumper way" but I didn't want to lay that foundation on him thinking it may make it more difficult to get the jump and tempis later on.

We made an attempt at them on Saturday (my instructor has also encouraged me to start them).
I will say that it was a big hot mess. Kicking out. Legs flying every where. Cussing. Laughing. But hey at the end we did get 1 clean change. It wasn't pretty but it was clean. You have to start somewhere!

I may try them using a pole next time to help him understand what I want.

It's also time to start shopping for this:

Warning: This post is ridiculously precious!

The barn manager/owner has 2 mares in foal this season to Harley (the cremello WB stallion I have blogged about in the past). One of those mares, Sprite, finally decided to foal last night around 2 a.m. She was TWO WEEKS overdue, had been waxed for days, looked miserable and had started to develop edema around her belly. About time, mare!

It's a colt! He is pretty big and super adorable, as all foals are.

But this video ... is just ... too cute for words. Turn up your volume.

And more photos of the little squirt:

Fresh outta the oven!

Back in the Day: Night Out

Top hat. No helmet. Shame on me in 2002.

Night Out - or Bart - was not a horse my family owned. I was a catch-rider of sorts for him in the summer of 2002 while I was still at college. Bart is a big (by Morgan standards, 16.1) black gelding who had had a solid start at a hunter. By that I mean he did not start out as a park saddle horse and then started wearing hunter tack, as is common in the Morgan breed.

I have video of us showing at the Morgan World Championships in Oklahoma City. It is by far my favorite area to ride in. You have to trot down this long tunnel under a sign that says "Gateway of Champions." The tunnel is dark and spooky and makes for some interesting rides into the show ring. Once you hit the ring, you are almost blinded by the light ... (revved up like a deuce, 
another runner in the night).

I loved it!

Despite the fact that his owner is sort of a loon, we did well. She made sure to tell me that the last time she showed him in OKC, he did nothing but buck. Thanks, lady.

Here is video of the World Champion Amateur hunter pleasure class. It started out with close to 50 entries and they divided us into 2 heats. Unfortunately, I was in the second heat. Which meant that while I was THRILLED to get a call back into the final, we didn't get to rest at all. It was exhausting for both me and poor Bart who was not fit at all.

I had no horse left by the second canter. Poor Bart. He tried but he was so tired.

I was also pooped!

Pretty boy

(My little sister was the one video-ing ... so ... it stinks. haha. Later in the class she actually loses me and can't find me with the camera. I think there were 22 horses in the ring at the time!)

I'm pretty proud of this because not only did I show IN A SNAFFLE on a horse with very light plate shoes, but we actually got a first place vote from one of the judges! Sadly, the other 2 judges didn't put us on the card but what can you do. In today's Morgan hunter classes, it's rare to find a horse in a snaffle. And rare to find one without weighted shoes and long toes. It's sad, really. Not a one would make it over a fence.

After this season, Bart was sold. His new trainer put weighted shoes on him and put him in a double bridle and proceeded to dominate Morgan hunter pleasure for several years. He was a nice horse and a good boy. I was happy to be part of his younger years - and win with him without resorting to riding him like a park horse. :)