I'm a bad owner!

Caol Ila

Caol Ila

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:(

I was on a hack today and towards the end of it, I thought my horse started to maybe feel a little bit off. Not obviously lame, just a slight uneveness in the walk. Or maybe not. Maybe I'm just imagining it, or I'm like the kid in "The Sixth Sense" ("I see lame horses... everywhere..."). I think about it and it feels okay, or not, so I ask for a little trot, hoping for more conclusive evidence, and trot feels okay, or maybe it doesn't. We finish up the ride and I get off and lead her around for a minute, looking at her as best I can while leading. No one else is around, other than someone having a lesson and I didn't want to interrupt lesson with, "Hey does my horse look lame," and the mother of the person having the lesson, sitting in her car, and probably not experienced enough to spot subtle gait abnormalities. Horse looks fine while being lead. I take her to her stall, unbridle, and then look at her feet. And there, in the left front, is a rock firmly wedged between the shoe and the frog. I pry the rock out, unsaddle, groom, and feel really, really guilty.

Then I start worrying about the horse having a stone bruise, as we had walked along the road for about half a kilometer with the rock in her foot. I take her out of her stall and lead her around and then, I figure that as I felt something was wrong from the saddle earlier, doing so would be better than trying to figure it out from leading position at the horse's head. I clip a lead to either side of the halter and hop on bareback (with a helmet, of course!). The mum in the car must have thought I'd gone mental, as she saw me lead the fully tacked up horse into the barn, only to come out about ten minutes later, get on bareback with a halter, and walk and trot up and down the carpark for about a minute. Horse felt fine in all gaits, much better than she felt on that last stretch of the hack. I poke at hoof with hoof pick and it all seems fine. The horse has pretty hard feet.

I hope she's fine. I wish I'd jumped off and looked at her feet the moment I thought I was hallucinating that she might be off. Because I wasn't hallucinating. :/
 
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(((Vibes))) hoping that everything is well with Caol Ila's horse's hooves.

You just have to remember that you did the best you could then and there, in hindsight it can be easy to know what you should have done, but at least you did notice that something didn't feel right, and you did pay attention to if she would give you any clearer sign of that you wasn't just imagining an uneveness. Had she only felt a little bit more uneven, you would have known that it wasn't your imagination and acted differently, but as it was, she didn't and you rode home.

Remember that you also could have done much worse, for instance, be glad that you finally found the offending stone today, think about how you would have felt had you not found it until tomorrow.

 
Thanks guys.

The YO turns the horses out between 8 and 9, so if she were obviously lame, I would have heard from him by now. No news is good news.

She's picked up the odd rock before, but became quite dramatically lame so I jumped off immediately. Not the "is she or isn't she" thing. Now I know, if I start thinking, "I don't think this horse is quite right," I should listen to that feeling.
 
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