On my way to work with Touch Diamond / Bravo / Name T.B.A. I started feeling sickly. When I pulled up to the gate of the property, I decided I had to go find a gas station or something to take care of it. I went about a mile down the road and there was no gas station or anything at the freeway like I had hoped there would be, so I turned around and came almost half way back to the house before I found one. By this time I was terribly ill feeling.
Once I made it to the horse for the day I was feeling better, but we were now at the peak of the heat of the day.
When I arrived, Cowboy and Touch Diamond / Bravo / Name T.B.A. were both out in the "yard" area practicing their function as lawn mowers / multi-processors. I took some photos while he was loose for further reference.
A reasonably good conformation photo from the near side. You can also see evidence of almost all the "issues" he has. One must remember this guy is a rescue. We are working with several unknowns when addressing his plights, and they do and will take some investigation as well as inference.
I checked his leg and the swelling had not gone up from working at a walk, so I took a few more pictures of him as reference photos of injuries and hoof issues. In fact, the swelling is almost not visible so I didn't photograph that.
He has some kind of "flakiness" and white around all of his coronet bands.
He has a "skinned" patch on the front part of his gaskin (which I would like to get the hair to grow back on, just because it is a bit unsightly),
and then a scrape (that is healing - it was open and fresh when he got here on the 18th.)
He has an old injury on his front off heel bulb that causes his hoof to grow damaged
and other than that, everything is fine.
Looking at this list it looks like he's in poor shape by sheer numbers, but all but one of these things I feel is superficial, and I hope to get them handled in short order. I don't think (judging from the fact his hoof grows with a crack where the injury is at the heel bulb) that particular issue with the hoof can be affected, but I will discuss with the farrier if that is the case when he comes.
I also think some of his toe out condition could be because of being long in the toe, because he walks normally and only shows this when he is standing for any period. When you halt him, he stops pretty straight (considering I don't think he has been conditioned to do so.)
After taking the photos, I caught him (never a difficult task), and lead him to the arena. Once in there, I worked him at liberty on the voice commands of walk, trot, woah, and easy. He did really well, especially considering the rescue said they didn't think he knew anything of it when they tried him out (of course, he was under saddle then too, which can make a difference.) He was reasonably calm, with only a couple outbursts of running / loping / bucking. They were mainly because he was confused about how to relieve the pressure. I wish I had done some video of it, but I didn't expect him to do so well. I will work on this again on Monday 7/26 and take video.
Basically, all I wanted him to do was react properly to the voice commands. I wasn't concerned with keeping him consistently moving. I also wanted him to learn the proper reaction to my hand signals (blocking his path and opening his path etc.) All of this was done without a lead rope or halter. Once he had stepped up to a trot I let him go where he wanted to relieve the pressure, and we worked only in about 1/4 of the arena. I also asked him to walk on command which he did exceptionally well, and I tried to get him to do circles (still needs a bit of work).
Without having any physical connection to him, he did marvelously!
We worked on this for about 20-30 minutes. By the end of the session, he was just beginning to break a sweat, but not frothing anywhere. I caught him (again very easily which was nice to see that he didn't take this session as a reason to keep running away every time I came near him), and lead him back to the yard again where I managed to rinse him down and let him stand in the shade to cool. Once his temperature had settled, I released him back to the ground and he quietly walked away and found a happy patch to munch on.
At this point I just got my drink to cool down myself, and sat down near him and let him graze without being worked, haltered, or "stressed". It is very important to me to teach him that just because I am there he isn't going to be prevented from eating, or worked, but when I want him to work he needs to focus in and work. So far we seem to have been accomplishing this well.
I left about 10 minutes later with the intent to come back, but later in the day I was still feeling nasty, so I stayed home.
Here at the end, I am posting a better "rear" and "rear 3/4" view to show he does stand / walk with his leg straighter (though I realize he isn't perfect) when he hasn't been standing a while. It's a bit like someone standing contraposto when they are standing a long time talking or waiting.
(And yes, he left a little present for me just before I took both pictures.)
Until our paths converge again -
Happy Tails!
Lucy Roberts
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