Far too hot.

I don't want to complain about this late flash of summer weather, but really Radar and I could have done without it being sunny and over 20c ! We got very hot, very sweaty and very tired. It wasn't a tough hunt, thankfully, because we couldn't have done any more than we did. No big hedges, just lots of small timber and 3 small hedges. There was an 8 ft gap cut in one hedge, half  of it about 3ft high and half of it about 4ft 6ins high. I pointed him at the higher side and expected him to duck to the right for the lower bit, but he didn't bother, so that was a nice hedge :-)   We finished in a stubble field jumping one of those 500kg heston bales of straw - 4ftx4ftx8ft -  that couldn't be loaded to be taken away because its strings had stretched and it had turned into a crescent shape. It made a great jump!


Ace has been slightly lame on his near fore. I think that it is laminitis because I turned them out full time when I thought it was safe, but he is so sensitive that I think I did it too early. On Tuesday I had thought he was lame but it went so quickly that I thought I must have imagined it. On Wednesday I trotted him up before loading him to check he was OK, and he looks fine on the videos and he was fine on the rubble carpark. He had the day off on Thursday and on Friday he was definitely lame.

I am pretty sure that it is very early laminitis because he had a hot foot and I think the lameness was coming from his foot. A bruise or an abscess would not normally wear off with exercise, but very early lami will once the work  pumps the blood out of the foot and reduces the swelling of the laminae.  So could a soft tissue injury wear off with work, but it's almost certainly in his foot and soft tissue injury in the foot would normally be a lot worse on corners and he is not.


Because I am pretty sure that it is laminitis, and because if it is laminitis he needs to work to keep his blood sugar levels right, I worked him in walk where he seemed to have no problems. After 20 minutes of walking he was sound. I kept him in for the day with only a pick of haylage, and soaked some haylage overnight for today. Today he was less lame, and the heat had gone out of his foot, and it also wore off again. So I did a fairly full session before Radar and I went hunting and left him in again with haylage soaked to get all the sugar out.  If I am right then he should be a lot better tomorrow, and that will be a lesson to me that he is just far too susceptible to laminitis to take the slightest risk with 24/7 turnout. We were pretty sure that it was why he was "cheap" when we bought him, so I am not concerned except that I made a silly mistake turning him out full time too early.

Fingers crossed.

C