Thursday, April 21, 2011

Riding, bonding, hematoma

Wow. It's been crazy busy for me, and I have little hope that will change. Last weekend I was out of town at a model horse show (it went awesome) and now I'm kind of catching up on all the stuff that didn't get done while I *gasp* went away for THREE WHOLE DAYS.

I just have time for a quick update today. I feel bad that I haven't been updating this blog at all; I've just been pulled in different directions. Basically, all is well with the Sofa. Quite good, in fact. My rides have been somewhat infrequent, and I've been doing lighter rides as she's still off in her front end, but we've been getting outside and enjoying ourselves. We got some snow again, so we rode in the snow last time. I haven't been doing much in the way of dressage, just a little work on flexion and submission.

I feel like she has really matured in our under saddle work. She's just listening so much better, and we really have a dialogue going much of the time. It's very nice to feel like I've made an improvement happen.

The vet came out to do shots a week ago and he examined her weird chest swelling and drew fluid. I wasn't able to be there when he came out, but I talked with him the following day. According to him, it was a hematoma due to some sort of trauma. I told him about how she ran into the barn wall like two years ago, and he said this was a new injury (really, Sofa?). He showed me the fluid that is in there (it looks like watered down blood, basically) and said that it should heal up on its own, but if it got bigger he would need to lance it. I asked him what we should do if it stayed the same size (since it had been relatively the same size for two weeks) and he said if it didn't go down in a week to have him out to do something about it. It didn't go down, and we asked him to come out when he was out of farm calls, which was yesterday. I wasn't able to be there again, but apparently he said it was healing fine and didn't need to be cut open. Maybe it went down, or something. I haven't seen her (or it) since Monday, so I will be interested to see what it looks like now.

Recently Sofie's been quite the love, which is somewhat surprising but really nice. She looks happy to see me and be around me, and she's just been a total sweetheart. I recently discovered that she will follow me around the arena. She will walk and trot right with me, which is absolutely adorable (and probably somewhat unsafe, but who cares). She just sticks right by me and does whatever I do. It's really sweet. The only issues are my not being in shape (a little trotting and I'm about ready to die) and one night when I played with her and then brought her into the aisle, she was so into following me that she lost her ability to "stay". So when I went behind her to get something, she turned right around to stay with me. We had to work a little on "staying" again after that. She's really smart, and I think if I don't overdo the following, she'll retain her ability to stay. I must balance all her many talents!

I had the opportunity to hang with her in her stall, and she seemed really content. I hadn't seen her in her stall this year when she wasn't having a bad heat cycle, so it was nice to see that she's still happy when she's confined. She just seems really happy right now. I'm not sure why, but I'm happy that she's happy.

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