No hunting Saturday :(

Radar and I won't be hunting this Saturday either. He has started limpng again and this time he is treading on his toe, where the hole is, but avoiding putting weight into  his heel. It looks horribly like that abscess tracked in two directions and only the forward one was resolved by the hole that broke open in his sole. The other is going backwards towards his heel, where it will probably pop out over the weekend.  It was a really nasty puncture, whatever it was he trod on.

The  hole at the front is clean and dry, and I plug the deep bit in the middle with cotton wool every day to keep any mud out. I'm not  happy to have anyone trying to cut a hole further back to try to connect with the one that is making him lame now, and he is only slightly lame on it. Neither bute nor antibiotics are a good idea for abscesses in the foot, they can make them take longer to come out. But if it is not resolved by the weekend then I'll have to call a vet.

Poor boy has been on and off  work the last couple of weeks, he doesn't know whether he is coming or going.

There was an extremely strong wind blowing this morning and as I took Ace out onto the arena I asked myself what 'success' would look like today. My answer was that it would look like doing some walk, and maybe some trot, without any explosions, together with keeping him out there slightly longer than he wanted to be out there.

The second was easy, because from the start he was itching to go back to the stable, so that part was achieved in one circuit of the arena :-)   He did skip a couple of times, which of course I was afraid was going to turn into an eruption, but it didn't. He trotted very reluctantly at first, but we finished on good walk/trot/walk on a circle on either rein.

I was pleased with that, and turned them both out.

C