2010.01.15 Injury Pictures
January 17th, 2010
Have not commented much lately. Busy with other things.
Since last update, Rody sustained a minor injury. Looked bad, but we got it fixed up well.
Here are some before and after …
GRAND Flash Album Gallery
Skins for GRAND FlAGallery
developed by CodEasily.com - Flash Templates, WordPress Themes and WordPress plugins
The Flash Player and a browser with Javascript support are needed..
The history of this injury …
She jumped the fence (a 5 foot tall fence = “grand prix” 1.5 meters = that is the highest they jump in the olympics, world cup, etc)
and got in with the ‘rough stock’ – she wanted go make friends with Nicky the B&W Pinto gelding.
She must have stepped sideways real fast
and it was a little muddy
and her right rear hoof nicked her left rear (as pictured below).
steve called me, told me he would put some bag balm on it for me.
i said “NO! Don’t put bag balm on her, don’t touch her! I will be right over.”
It was swollen twice the size it should have been …
Horse, Nicked Leg Wound, Close-up image
and I thought it needed stitches
the hide was split all the way through the skin, to the soft tissue
steve, rob etc. said they didn’t think she needed stitches
but I called the vet anyway.
The vet was leaving for two weeks in two days, to go overseas
she said she could squeeze rody in early the next morning, for a few minutes
I knew she couldn’t do the sutures until the inflamation receded a little
so it wouldn’t do any good to have doc bridges come out in a few hours
so decided that I would wait until the next day, to see whether we needed to get her a “backup vet”
gave her some bute (phenylbutenol, a pain killer + anti-inflammatory)
washed it off real good
applied some three-in-one antiseptic cream (I use the kind for humans, it works great for horses, too!)
wrapped it up with some vet wraps
(all I could get were pink ones, below is the first one. please note: she did not want to stand real still for me, hence it was a little sloppy looking wrap job, but the next day on they all looked professional)
Anyway, every time she stepped sideways, it would re-open the wound.
So I had to keep the warp on her whenever she was outside in the “boot sucking mud”
you see, when the footing is too deep/soggy/sucky,
then she moves her hooves so quickly that:
> when one hoof gets stuck in the mud, just like when you are walking in real “boot sucking mud” – your boot/shoe does not lift as fast as you are used to it lifting
> well, Rody would already have another hoof coming into the same spot, for her next step, and the other hoof was still stuck in the mud when the new hoof came into the same spot.
I am pretty sure that something like this is what aggravated her feet/hooves up in Mt. Vernon (did you see the footing in their arena? It looked like 8-10 inches of sawdust, and it was dusty as hell, = they probably dampened it a lot with water to keep the wood-dust down, = she would come off one of the jumps in their tiny arena and would have to make an immediate hard left turn. But the “boot sucking” wet sawdust footing did not allow her to get her front left hoof out of the way fast enough, + her hoof could not rotate in the deep/wet bedding = it was always under duress, and the inflammation never receded).
anyway, every day I would clean it out, put new anti-septic ointment on her, use non-sticking sterile gause on top of that, wrap it in the pretty pink vet wrap, and then put either: (a) a “gallop boot” / knee boot over it, or (b) after a couple of weeks we switched to polo wraps (and she looked real good in some polo wraps).
Here is the first vet wrap job (image at right) >>>
(click to enlarge Rody's nicked leg injury, with Pink Vet Wrap)
i repeated that every day, for about 4 weeks,
finally, the wound was all closed up, and she was not re-opening it,
so I began leaving the vet wraps/polo wraps/knee boots off of her a couple of weeks ago.
she has developed a fairly hard bony callous on the spot, but the hide/skin has closed up with no noticeable scar (you can see a tiny area where the haircoat has not yet fully grown back – if you look real close, and know where to look – but it may take a while for it to completely disappear)
anyway, she is all better now,
and she is now following my lead implicitly.
i taught her to “follow the lead rope” when I don’t even have a lead rope or halter on her!
i just hold out my hand like it has a lead, and she follows my hand around (how cool is that, huh?)
am teaching her to come to my hand – as though I had a 50-foot lead rope on her – from halfway across the paddock or the arena.
I just turn my back to her, and hold out my hand like I am holding her on a lead,
and she comes right up to my right behind my right shoulder, and follows my invisible lead …
it will take a while to get it perfect, right now she is doing it whenever i am lunging her:
I stop and turn my back on her
hold the lunge line out in my right hand, and begin taking up the slack
she keeps coming up to the slackline, until she is right behind me.
the secret, of course, is to NEVER look back at her!
the way a horse thinks: “I will follow a leader. If the person keeps looking back at me, then they must not be the leader, so I won’t follow them, I will look around for a leader”
that is why it is so important to do it in this order:
1) win her HOOVES: get control of the horse’s hooves. to a horse, whoever controls her hooves controls her.
2) win her MIND: do not be confused and/or “give an uncertain signal” = do not give in to her, and stay with asking her to do something until she does it (Rody – like many high-bred horses – will challenge you to see if you really are the person in charge, but this is because she needs to know that the person in charge knows what they are doing and she can trust them)
… slowly, after taking control of her hooves, and then gaining her trust and willingness to follow
then she will start giving you what she can do,
and it sends chills up my spine, when she does it.
4) eventually, the goal is to win her HEART,
gain her respect and complete confidence and trust
and she will do anything
I was taking “lessons” for a couple months (until it became too cold a few weeks ago).
the second to last lesson (before it got too cold at night, and we called them off for a while)
I got Rody into a gathered, “medium trot” (which is faster than all the other horses’s fast canter, almost gallop-speed)
and got her to turn only on my knee (no rein)
and rode her in figure-8’s and circles
getting tighter and tighter
until finally we were cutting tight little perfect circles: 10 feet in diameter (about the size of a jump ball circle on a basketball court)
and she maintained her gait PERFECTLY!
never missed a beat, never slowed or sped up,
until finally I had to stop because i was getting dizzy.
Ashley: there aren’t many horses that can do what she can do with her hooves
a couple of weeks ago
I have taken to lunging her for a few minutes, to warm up her old thigtness (from when she would not stretch out her front left hoof, and the muscles became bound up);
after a few minutes, I would remove her lead and let her run up and down the arena, to show off and to get some full-speed burnouts
anyway:
she would run from one end of the arena to the other,
stop and look at me for a few seconds
then take off at a gallop towards the other end
stop and turn and walk a few paces towards me to make sure I was watching her
then explode to the other end
over and over
this once:
she was at a full-speed gallop right up to the end of the arena
she – one leading seamlessly into the other – a combined:
hard slide-stop
at “blink-of-an-eye” speed she completed it as a stop-turn in place (it looked like the spun around on a wheel)
and lunged towards the other end of the arena at a full-gallop on the very first step!
Ashley: she left a foot and a half deep divot in the arena, where she:
(slide-stopped) + (stop-turned) + (lunged-at-gallop)
all in the same single movement.
there aint’ a whole lot of horses that can do those types of things,
(and NONE of Maryanne’s horses can come even close)
oh well, she is all fine now
regards,
mark
