MY HEARTS RULING MY HEAD!

LittleD

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5 March 2009
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Hello, I could use a little advice here please, 3 months ago my horse came in lame with a check ligament injury, box rest was recomended with bute and then a scan a week later to assess the severity of the injury. After another few weeks rest with walking in hand, Vet decided he was now 99.9% sound and could go out in a small paddock for a couple of hours a day, I left him in a little longer than this while sorting our electric fencing etc and then turned him out slightly sedated for the first couple of days then let him out for a couple of hours without sedation and this was fine until we had really bad frosts at night making the road to the field icy and the field itself hard and pretty much "grassless", I am therefore keeping him back in his stable, he is walked out for half an hour in the indoor school and is very lightly lunged without the lunge line, letting him throw a bit of trot if and when he feels like it, he can be ridden now and the vet recommended walk building up to a little trot work. The help I need here is that my heart is ruling my head, first of all I feel really cruel keeping him in but after a recent injury and all this ice I'm scared he will do himself more damage and the second thing is I feel mean keeping him in and then expecting him to be ridden - it's like he has no fun just box rest and tacked up what do you all think if our situation, sorry to ramble but it's giving me sleepless night worrying about him, by the way he has access to ad-lib haylage and a couple of bowls of chaff and fruit and veg a day and there are a couple of other horses in the same block on box rest, thanks in advance.
 
Having a horse with an injury is bad enough, when they have to be on box rest it's worse and in this weather it's a nightmare!!! Don't be too hard on yourself, you are doing the best you can under the circumstances. If you can keep walking in hand/lunging more than once a day that should help him a lot.
 
i think he's safer living in if he's probably going to hurt himself...

you say that he only gets out to be ridden, but why??! if you can ride him, you obviously have somewhere safe, could he not go out there for a while? and when you ride him, do you have to ride him all the time. why not play some of the parelli games or do some groundwork- it'll all keep him interested because it's not all the same and will be good for your bond to.. you sound like you really care from how you're not sleeping

i hope everything sorts itself out soon, GOOD LUCK!!!
 
Thank you all for the replies, I feel a BIT better about all this now. Other than the paddock I set up, which is now icy, I only have the indoor school to ride in so this is our SAFE place! He doesn't like being left in there on his own and it's not much fun anyway - no better than the stable and at least he's got the company of other horses in the stable block! I like the idea of the Parelli games - I'll look some up on the internet and we'll have a go, he's so out of work mode at the moment that riding is a challenge so I will be going slowly anyway! Thanks again for the help
 
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