4 shoes are better than one

I've had several entries back-logged, but life is very busy right now, so I'm going to force a media/recap post on you guys instead.

Let's review...

So you know how any time I take a day off to ride Riley he does something stupid -- for example, last time I wanted to go xc schooling mid-week he pretended to colic while Emily was pulling in the driveway with the trailer. A few weeks ago, I took a Thursday off to go xc schooling... I didn't even mention it on here so as not to jinx it. I carefully brought my horse in, checked his shoes and made sure he was comfortable. We had a little time to kill before we were leaving and we all joked around about his evasions. Meanwhile he did this:

Snoozeville, pop: Riley.

That lip.

Groomed, tacked, on the trailer and just down the road to Carousel Park on a gorgeous day. We were set to knock some rust off and give Emily's young horse a lead. Carousel can be a bit challenging for young TBs as you unload next to a pen of white peacocks and have to hack quite a distance (and through a stream crossing (or over a wooden bridge). I was happy to help and Riley is something of a fearless leader in these kinds of situations. Once you get to the main xc field you have to hack up a hill and you come out at a huge wide open field.

So happy... Not for long.

This is usually a good test to see how things will go for the young ones as all that wide open space can be daunting (and it's hilly). So we hacked around a bit to get everyone relaxed. We schooled the water a bit and Riley was feeling wonderful. Trotted and cantered through up and down the bank in and out of the water without a worry. We headed off to find some small jumps to start with and hopped over a small blue box and he was super game! We came back around and I felt him trip, and then the dreaded three-legged walk... That's right, we jumped ONE SINGLE FENCE and he sprung a shoe. In the middle of a field. Really far from the trailers.

What? We jumped the blue thing, now we're done right?

So that was a bust. I hobbled back with him over to the trailers... luckily Carousel is home to the mounted police and an equine therapy center, so they were gracious enough to lend us some farrier tools to get the shoe off. Grrrrr.

I called the farrier and we talked about a game plan moving forward. The shoe fit isn't the issue, it's the way he tracks up behind, so we discussed putting hind shoes on the reduce the break over. Since he's never worn shoes all around, we figured it would be worth trying. True be told, he DOES move differently with full shoes, in both good ways and bad. Let's review how he moves without shoes and with fronts only. A case study:

These span the last 2.5 years and say quite a bit about his movement.

While he's built a bit downhill, he moves really nicely under saddle and it's hard to imagine this when you see him just standing there (or even jogging up).

He started off a little fresh!

But! Under saddle, the break over is improved.

He felt different, to be sure and I'm certain it was a strange adjustment for him. He wasn't moving as nicely as he can, but I was more curious to see how his tracking up would be effected by the hind shoes. And while this experiment was proving to be worthwhile, we found that by fixing one thing, a new problem cropped up. He started forging behind and clipping himself on the inside of his fetlock, which was making him drop his hip. Under saddle it felt very dramatic but hardly noticeable from the ground. At first we thought it was just him getting used to the shoes, but then we realized that since he toes out a bit behind that the shoes accentuated this, and the way he tracks up led to him forging. The feeling while riding him felt so odd, I thought it wise to set up a bodywork appointment to make sure nothing else was going on. Obviously, my horse tripping, slipping, or feeling "out" behind had me thinking the absolute worst (but realistically the lowest common denominator was the shoes, so calm down woman). The vet came out last Monday for Riley's first ever chiro adjustment and he LOVED it. He reacted pretty well to the head and neck work, his left hip was out, and he had back back spasms when she palpated on the top of his hips. His withers were out as well. After she adjusted him, she checked both the saddles I ride in (my jump saddle and Emily's dressage saddle) and that revealed some disturbing things. He reacted really poorly to having my jump saddle only on his back. While it fit him decently enough before, his body has changed quite a bit in the last 2 years and now it rocks pretty significantly front to back. When she palpated his hips, I could see the area just underneath cantle in spasms. She said I could likely use a shimmable pad to make him more comfortable as he gets fit again, but ultimately, that's only going to put more pressure on his withers, so it's not a long-term solution. We gave him a few days off, some robaxin and then Emily rode him long and low a few days later. She said he felt pretty good, but was still tripping behind.

I was able to ride him for the farrier, who wanted me to replicate the tripping a few times so he could see what was happening. He was very surprised to see how different Riley moves under saddle! After trotting around for a while he tripped a couple of times in both directions (maybe 3 times, total) and then we trotted in a straight line away and toward him. We were trying to determine which came first, the tripping/forging or the hip drop. When we checked his fetlocks we saw that he had in fact cut himself from forging so that helped to answer that part of the equation. He said he'd be able to make an adjustment to the shoes to help and we could re-evaluate.

We had a dressage lesson in between the farrier and chiro and while he tripped a little, we got some really nice work out of him.

And as you can see, he's moving even better in the shoes after only a week!

This is me SMILING while sitting the trot -- and his trot isn't all compressed from me bouncing around:)

And that brings us up to this weekend, where he was lunged and ridden and felt moderately better. Still some forging/tripping, but over all feeling really straight and steady.

He was exceptionally balanced on the lunge and I got some lovely stretching out of him (just what the doctor ordered) where he proceeded to trot around with his nose on the ground. Sunday we had a little Easter ride, and I had some of the best canter work ever (at least tracking left!!!) where I'm certain I was grinning like a damn fool.

This is my Easter bunny.

After a little argument about politely cantering to the right, we got it together and we finished with some nice stretchy trot in both directions. I was really beaming despite whatever weird issue is going on because he's just growing up in leaps and bounds. I know it seems like a small thing, but being able to hold proper contact at the WALK seems like such a big deal to me. It's a gait we've always struggled with because he much preferred to just bop around and flap his lip. I've finally started holding him accountable at the walk, asking for a march and keeping my reins at the proper length so that I can actually push him into the contact. Sometimes it seems like we have SO much work to do, but I think it's important to reflect on the small wins, even if there are so many ????? ahead of us.

One foot in front of the other.

*Thanks for entertaining this haphazard entry, I just didn't want to get any more behind!