Elisse alone

Yesterday I decided that it was about time Elisse learned to be a Big Girl and do things on her own without Billy holding her hand hoof.  I’ve put this off until now, cos I’m a big sook.  She was soooooo attached to Kody that I was reluctant to separate them, and she does her nut if Billy is taken away from the paddock, even when she still has Sunny in with her.  So I’ve been slack about taking her to the stables out of sight of the others cos I wasn’t sure if there would be tantrums.

But yesterday I decided to just do it, tantrums or no tantrums.  And it turned out to be no tantrums.  She yelled a couple of times and was fairly boggle-eyed, but she is boggle-eyed up at the stables anyway so was really only slightly more fidgety than normal (ie not very much, just a bit tense).  YAY!  I put her in one of the boxes for an hour and she was gawking but not stressing, and I gave her a bit of a groom.  She did one spook on the way back but was otherwise a little angel, went through the gate nicely into the paddock and waited calmly while I let her go, then high-tailed it the second she was free.  I couldn’t have asked for better really, I don’t know why I waited so long to do it!

So from now on, all handling will be done on her own at the stables and she can just get used to it and relax   She is looking great actually, has slimmed down a bit on the winter grass and is looking ready to ride again.  YAY!!!!!

We have stables!

Long time no post!  Well there hasn’t been much happening here to post about.  Elisse’s bandage is finally off, and her leg is looking good but still thicker than the other hind leg.  I’ll have to remember to take some pics.

The exciting news is that my dad finally finished the loose boxes in the shed that he built 8 or 9 years ago.  It has 3 vehicle bays on one end of the shed, and 2 loose boxes and a tack room at the other end.  The tack room was built years ago but the boxes never were, because that space was always used for storage.  Outside of the stable doors is a covered concrete area so for years I’ve used that area and looked wistfully at the stable doors which opened onto a boat and piles of lumber and assorted bits and pieces. 

But no more!  Because the boxes have now been finished and they are waaaay cooooool!  He’s done a really good job with them, they are solid and awesome.  Billy particularly likes them, I think he’d be happy to stay inside on winter nights if I could be bothered with all that extra work.

 

Elisse walked in quite happily on Monday night for her first stable experience, although she was a little fidgety.  She isn’t really google-eyed, thats just her white eye on the off-side.

 

The half door in front of them is a sacrifice door of thick ply, which can be easily replaced if damaged by pawing or kicking.  I thought this was a great idea to save the main stable doors from damage.

At the back of each box is an internal door into the shed, giving quick and easy access to the tack room just behind the boxes.  This shot is looking over Elisse’s back to the tackroom behind.  How lucky am I!!!!

Wound Update – pics

 These pics are from yesterday.   The front-on pic shows quite a lot of healing (despite the blurriness)

 

 

Billy the Doofus

This is my dimwit boy, having pushed his way under the rope into the arena then yelling at me that he was stuck in there and couldn’t get out!

Wound update 17 March

So last night I changed the dressing, and this is what it looked like before I washed off the slime:

This is how it looked after washing, the bleeding is from the proud flesh solution – which is working! yay!

I’m really pleased with how it is looking.  The proud flesh at the top of the wound is just about back to the level it should be, check out the front view:

Poor Elisse, while her leg is healing nicely she is having other problems – her pink nose is very sore and itchy and a mass of crusty scabs!  Its not sunburn – she’s been out all summer without nose protection and she never got burnt, and last week (when this appeared) it was overcast and rainy!   I’m thinking that maybe the wound has left her a little run-down and vulnerable to other problems, and that may this is a bacterial or fungal infection?  My friend at work thinks it could be photosensitivity due to toxins in grasses.  Whatever it is, it hurts!  I’ve been putting wound cream all over it, which she doesn’t like but she tries hard to stand still for me.

Slime!

No pic today but I’m pleased to report that the proud flesh solution appears to be working – yay! 

I guess as the excess tissue breaks down it becomes stinky grey/yellow slime, cos when I took the bandage off yesterday a large amount of gloop was released which then oozed down her leg – yuck!  After I’d washed it all off, her wound was bleeding a little but is otherwise looking pretty good.  I painted on some more proud flesh solution with a wee paint brush – I hope I didn’t put too much on! 

It will be interesting to see what the wound looks like when I next change the dressing (other than slimy of course).  The wound does appear to be starting to shrink though, which is great!  Its gonna be a long, long, process though.

Wound update

I took this pic on Sunday evening when I changed the dressing. Its got quite a bit of proud flesh again *frowns*.  The bandage had slipped a little and the top of the wound was exposed, so it is a bit drier than the lower part of the wound.

On Sunday I painted some proud flesh solution on with a cotton bud which was a pain, but I’ve just found a little art paintbrush so will use that next time, and I sure hope it works! 

This is how she looks most of the time – I like pink!  You can see the bandage bulges over the wound site, cos of the proud flesh and swelling.  bugger.

Classical Riding

So, last Saturday I had an Amazing Wow Eye-opening sort of day, when I audited at a classical dressage clinic run by Eleena Kennedy.

I haven’t really read much about classical before, I thought it was for people who wanted to do high school dressage and I don’t presume to think I will ever be that good.  I mean, I’ve been riding for 20 years and my position still sucks.  But Jo has told me about classical riding as she has been to quite a few clinics and is really enjoying doing classical work, and I knew classical riders do a lot of inhand stuff.  So when Elisse got injured I thought it might be a good idea to do some inhand work with her (cos she is perfectly sound) so I went along to this clinic to learn some inhand techniques.

Lucky for me (but not for the riders) a storm front had come through in the wee hours of Saturday morning and it was a horrible day.  So the entire morning was spent indoors discussing theory and watching videos.  And I learned so much!  It turns out, that when classical people talk about achieving “lightness” they don’t just mean a willing horse who is not resisting, they mean lightness of aids too – ie using your legs and seat and hands as lightly as possible.   Now it sounds stupid, but I’ve heard of “lightness” before and never twigged that it meant the rider being light too *massive blush*.   And I’m fascinated with the whole idea of this overall lightness. 

I mean Billy is willing and always has been, he tries really hard to please.  And he doesn’t generally resist or get hard on the hands or anything like that.  And yet the only way I know who to ride him, and the only way he knows how to go, is by the use of a lot of leg and seat.  Otherwise he just doesn’t move.  For years I’ve had instructors tell me to keep my leg on, use more leg, use more inside leg etc, which is why its not all that much fun to ride him when I’m unfit.

But I’ve often thought (and discussed with friends) that it would be great if you could just cue the horse to move forward but not have to keep nagging at him with your legs.  Well it turns out that classical dressage is all about this sort of thing.  How did I not know this before?  I feel like I’ve been walking around with blinkers on.

On the Saturday afternoon the rain cleared and we all went outside while the other people at the clinic did some inhand work in the arena.  Which was very very interesting - one of the horses was learning piaffe, it was so cool!  And then a couple of the riders hopped on board and oh my they looked strange!  They were riding with ridiculously long stirrups and their toes pointed down and very straight knees and I thought perhaps they were mad so I bombarded Eleena with dozens of annoying questions.  But it turns out that they were learning to relax their legs, cos if they gripped or tensed up then they’d lose their stirrups.  Its harder than riding without stirrups cos you can still grip without stirrups.   Now while their legs looked strange to me, the riders’ upper bodies looked great, nice and straight and tall and not tipping forward like I am inclined to do.  I want to ride like that!  So now I am determined to re-learn how to sit.  My “riding muscles” are non-existant anyway, so if I am going to have to get used to sitting on a horse again I might as well do it properly!

I love my pony!!!

Last night it was blowing a howling gale and rainy to boot, but I needed to change Elisse’s bandage.  The horses were huddled together in a gully, trying to get out of the wind – rather unsuccessfully because the wind was blowing up the valley and it was only marginally less windy in the gully than it was up the hill.  I decided against taking Elisse the rather circuitous route up the hill to the pens, when it wasn’t any nicer up there, so figured I’d just deal with the bandage where she was.

I lugged an autumn cover down to her (as well as my first aid supplies) and I was glad I did because her “shower proof” summersheet was wet through and she was shivering.  She was standing rather conveniently next to a fence line, so I just put her halter on and looped the lead around a post a couple of times.  She was a bit boggle-eyed at first, but didn’t fidget when I changed her cover, despite the wind making it flap around quite a lot.  Then I dealt with her leg – with no sedazine and on the side of a hill!  I was on the uphill side so it was a little awkward, but Elisse was a star.  She only lifted her leg once when I cut the bandage off and once when I put the new bandage on, but only very slowly and in a this feels weird and I don’t know what to do with my leg kindof way.

But other than that and the shivering, she didn’t move a muscle!  I was very pleased with her, for being such a good girl in what was shaping up to be a small storm   Here’s hoping my bandage is tight enough this time and that it will stay put for a few days – the last couple of times I’ve bandaged her I obviously didn’t do it tight enough and it slipped down.

No gory photos to show in this post

Because the last few times I’ve changed Elisse’s bandage I forgot to take any pics.  Oops!

Well the first time we (me and Adam) had to change her bandage it was a rainy and windy Friday evening and she was a bit stressed tied up next to the shed, with the rain on the roof above and the lights on, neither of which she had experienced before.  We got the dressing off but just could not get her to stand still for us to put a new bandage on, and she got more stressed the more we tried, until she was just shaking like a leaf.  So we ended up calling out the vet to come and sedate her so that we could bandage her – great, more vet fees!

He gave us some Sedazine so the next time we changed the bandage she was chilled out – it helped that the weather was good so we could do it in the pen next to the paddock, where she is a lot more comfortable.  By then I’d done some bandaging practice too, wrapping up all her legs and waving about pretend gamgee and generally getting her used to the idea of us faffing about around her legs.

Then on Monday I got the vet to come out again and cut off the proud flesh which is forming over the entire wound – yuck!  Now that was very gory and bloody, would have made some lovely photos for the blog, except that I forgot to take any.   We had to put a pressure bandage on it for a while, and then put on a new dressing but it bled out through the bandage even then.  Poor girl, it attracted the flies somewhat but at least they couldn’t get at the wound.

Last night I gave her some sedazine and changed the bandage again (all by myself this time!), because it was crusty with dried blood.  She was such a good calm girl it was super quick and easy, so I think I won’t bother with the sedazine again unless she really needs it.  phew!  I’d originally had visions of having to get her sedated each time which would have been very expensive indeed!  The vet had suggested some proud flesh fluid to deal with any recurrence of the problem, and I happened to find some old stuff in the tack room last night so I used that.

So hopefully all will be straightforward from here on in, the wound is still enormous but is looking healthy, so thats all good.