So I sort of forgot about updating the blog when things were going well (there was a pony to ride, after all) and then didn't feel like it once stuff started going badly, so yeah.
Here's a brief summary of how things have gone...
Oct and the 1st half of November went great. We started to work on getting Lyric more balanced and using his back-end rather than dumping all the weight onto his front end. Then he started getting resistant at the trot. As in, I'd ask for a trot and we'd end up stopped all together. I let myself believe it could be a training issue for awhile (probably too long), but got the vet out right before Christmas to do hock injections.
When I returned in January after visiting family for Christmas, Lyric was thrilled with his new hocks. He did beautiful transitions, started doing some baby lateral work (spiraling in/out, quarter turns on haunches at the walk or "square turns"), but by the end of the month he was starting to balk again. Just a little at first, but it got progressively worse until around the beginning of Feb I just gave up trying to ride him. He'd started balking at the walk, so something was clearly off.
We haven't really found a likely source of the problem yet. We tried a bute test (2 g morning/night for 3 days, 1 g morning night for 3 days) and saw no change. My trainer thought he might be selenium deficient, which can cause a general muscle soreness. So he's on a Se supplement and he did look somewhat better on Saturday when I lunged him for a little while. He also got a chiropractic adjustment on Wed. He only had 3 vertebrae out, and the chiro said that they shouldn't be out enough to have caused the problems. I'm hoping to get on later this week (we got rain and snow yesterday, so I think the ring may need a few days to recover!) and see if he's progressed any.
Meanwhile I've been given some general instructions as far as body work stuff goes (basically, poke his muscles). He's tight/sore on the left rear side. Whether that's a consequence of the life-long right front funky foot, muscle soreness from increased ability to use his hocks, or some sort of scar tissue problem, I don't know. I'm still hoping that this will all just magically go away and I'll have my cooperative pony back. So far all I know is he is/was sore in his left lumbar region and doesn't respond to bute (so it's probably not bones/hocks).
Horses sure were a lot simpler back when I was a teenager. You fed them, put shoes (or not) on them, and cleaned their stalls.
