Current Music Mood: Jewel - Foolish Games. - “This is my heart bleeding before you, this is me on my knees.”

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Today was pretty eventful…. I could prolly fill up 3 pages worth of stuff for a 4 hour part of my day, so I will try and make this as brief as possible, to spare the agony of reading a 100 line post.

I took a half day in the middle of the workday to go help out with the farrier and the vet. We did Fall shots today, which meant that every horse we had needed to be caught, held and stuck. Plus, Fernando was there to also re-look at Cook.

So the farrier part was un-eventful. Loren was entertaining as usual. He said that Miss doesn’t need back shoes as of right now. So that’s good.

I did a first! Basically he had to trim Belle, our baby. I held her. I was a lil nervous cause I had heard that the first time didn’t go so well. (Babies tend to freak out at new things). So the ultra-cool part was that Belle was a lil star. She leaned all her weight on me but that was ok. She has to figure out how to balance on 3 legs.

Then Fernando came. Jen, Mere, Kat and I all pitched in to help Fernando get everyone’s shots done. He said our horses were very well behaved. I guess he has seen all sorts of bad bahavior. We do have pretty well-behaved horses. Only 1 horse didn’t want her shot and only 1 horse didn’t want to be haltered (cause he figured he was getting a shot). Out of 15ish, that’s not bad at all.

OK - now the Cook recap. Let me set the stage. It .. of course… was raining. Sigh. So I tacked up Cook and we went down to the ring. It was sort of like a scene out of a movie ….some race horse movie. Here I am, wet, with Cook… water dripping from the brim of my helmet. I have an audience of Fernando, Mere, Kat and Jen all standing outside the ring, watching Cook go. It just seemed oddly familiar.
I asked her to canter and it showed. She doesn’t want to go forward. She does this pop-up, hop thingy. Free lunged her. She did exhibit it there too. She also raced around, looking every bit the Thoroughbred she is. Man, can that horse run.

Anyways, Fernando does believe there is pain somewhere (obviously) but we can’t pinpoint it without a bone scan. (Because her x rays are clean and her flexions are good, a bone scan would be the only can that would show inflammation). Only place they do the bone scan is NC State where she would have to stay overnight. For non-horse people… that costs alot of $$. Horsey people know about the vet school, and therefore shudder in fear of that vet bill. So I have to talk to Mere privately, talk to my inner circle, do some research on the web and then decide what to do.

If the bone scan showed something, then we could inject her … or not… problem is there is no promise it would fix anything. It’s sort of poking around, hoping you get the right area. It’s also a question of… how far do I want to make her ridable for my own benefit? She is not in pain being a regular horse. It’s riding her at the canter where she shows lameness.

I don’t know. Fernando mentioned the “B” word - Broodmare. I used to be completely, completely opposed to that - I was NOT breeding Cook. But being around our farm babies and going through FIVE, wow!, with Mere now… I’m more open to that. I have learned a ton, ton, ton under Mere and so now it doesn’t seem so far fetched. I didn’t think I had the knowledge to raise a baby but eh, I do. What I don’t know, I can learn.

All the things that are going through my mind right now….

Again, I do love this. Cook raced around and around the ring, breathing heavily, a lil spazzed out. When Fernando saw enough, I just called to her, went up to her and put the reins back on. She comes right back to me.

I love you, girl. We will figure out what to do.