Here in Northeast Ohio

I haven’t blogged lately, because I have been overwhelmed with life.  I won’t go into it, here, but it has just been a tough time.  I don’t know if it will get better, either.

To add to my problems, over the weekend, Cole became lame.  As far as I could tell, it was either a heel bruise or an abscess in the heel area.  I have had a lot of experience with abscesses from my times with Mingo (chronic abscess for years—with 2 operations that still didn’t fix it) so I can be relieved that it may only be an abscess, but I can be terrified, too.  I know how bad an abscess could be.  Ironically, it happened 2 years from Mingo’s death day—almost to the day.  It’s like he just wanted to make sure we wouldn’t forget about him—like I ever could.

Anyway, I treated it as such with soaking in Epsons.  Cole did great with a soaking boot.  The soaking helped.  Each day, it has gotten a little better.  Last night, you would never know there was a problem—except that hoof was warm.  After leading him, I soaked him, again.  The farrier is coming out, tonight, so he can take a look at it.  I will wait a while before riding him.  As you can imagine, he is just full of himself.

I have been riding Cruiser, of course.  The weather has been cool, and he has become quite hyper.  Last night, he was awful.  My boyfriend snuck out of the barn before my sister and I were tacked up.  We thought he was going to wait for us in the driveway, but he started down the trail.  Cruise was determined that he would catch up with him—and he was hardly controllable.  I couldn’t keep him at a walk—he kept going into his gait. Ranger can’t walk that fast, so he was prancing and fighting to trot.  We had to turn them away from the direction Starry was going, pass up home, turn around and pass up home again.  That’s when Ranger started to pout because he thought he was going home.  He slowed down to a walk, and my sister was able to click good behavior.  That worked with him, but I had to keep stopping Cruise so Range could catch up. 

Finally we found Starry on his way home.  We insisted my boyfriend turn around and go with us, and he did.  He snuck off because he thought he would be in the way.  We told him to never do that again.  The horses were fine on the way home.  The geriatric ride turned out to be a pretty fast one—considering we didn’t do any trotting or cantering.