Annoyed with myself

I am home sick today. I was supposed to see music therapy clients and instead I have been visiting the porcelain God on a regular basis. I think maybe I'm done, but I feel weak and tired. I do NOT want to go out of town, and I'm really happy that I"m only going as far as Cat's friend, Susan's tonight. She will be here in a bit and we're going to load her truck and then go pick up my horses...well, Jackie's horses, for the Bigfoot Boogie. It will be Jena's and Maggie's first ride. They are very excited. I'm going to ride Skipper, Jackie's foxtrotter. Maggie is going to ride Brody, one of her Quarter Horses. I had toyed with taking Freeley, but he's still on antibiotic and therefore not legal to compete...besides, he still has the cut on his leg.

I'm really angry with myself today. I got talked into shoeing Freeley's front feet. He has some rotation and per the vet, he recommended shoeing him to get it healed. HE thinks it won't be long term, but that I should give it a chance to get better. I wasn't going to shoe b/c I don't like shoes. Today the farrier came and I guess he and Jackie got to talking and they called me and said they thought he needed shoes. Here I am home sick and I just didn't have the energy to argue. I let them shoe him. Now I'm just sick that I let them talk me into doing something I don't really agree with. But it's done. I'll see if he's anymore comfortable this way, but I just can't see that I've made the right choice and I'm irritated with myself.

I get tripped up b/c I know people who shoe and don't shoe and they all have valid points. I think that it might help him to wear shoes, but I don't want to be thought of us unenlightened. I get that shoeing long term is bad for the horses. I get that barefoot is best. But sometimes I'm not sure that barefoot is best. But I can't KNOW for sure. I only have the vet telling me what to do on one end and the barefoot advocates telling me what to do on the other end. I end up confused and stressed out in the middle.

To Shoe or Not to Shoe

I got bad news from the vet today. Deli is having a recurrence of EPM. WE can treat her with medicine that won't hurt her foal, but she's likely to never be a good riding horse for what we want to do again. I'm hoping to send her to my friend Eric's in MO to be a broodmare, get light "company" riding and live the life of leisure. Of course, these are my plans, neither endorsed nor declined at this time by my friend Eric. I have my fingers crossed that he'll take her.

I have to find my kid a horse she can ride. I can't bear for her to finally be 10 years old and not be able to compete. We have waited for this so long. I have a lead on another horse...just have to wait and see how this whole thing pans out. ON one hand I feel like a major heel plotting out my next horse, but OTOH, I know that I can't board a horse forever that can't be ridden...or can't ever be ridden in my sport. I knew that some day I would have to face this, but I didn't expect it to be now, and I didn't expect it to be Deli.

Which brings me to Freeley...I showed him to the vet too. He's lame b/c of his gash and it's infected despite my best attempts to keep it clean. This vet said no wrapping, so I unwrapped it. He watched Freeley move and I figured we'd do some chiropractic work on him. WRONG! He's lame in both of his front feet...which is why he looks reasonably sound most of the time and why speeding him up actually fixes him temporarily. They xrayed his feet and he has rotation from a past founder in his front. It's very slight, only 2 degrees, so he thinks that he's fixable. However, he wants me to shoe the horse with corrective shoes to fix it. All my barefooting instincts tell me this is the wrong answer. I don't know what the right answer is, but I'm not convinced that shoes is the right answer. OTOH, I know the vet says it's a good idea. I know that no one will agree on this...both sides will say they are right and as a consumer, I honestly don't know what the right answer is.

How much can I cram into one day?

Well, today, the answer is a lot.

It looked like it was going to rain today, but the weather was all ok. We went to the barn and visited the horses. I had to trim Deli's feet as she's going to the CTR with me this w/e. I trim her every 3-4 weeks depending on how much riding she's getting. It's hard work, but I get the satisfaction of doing it myself and I save $75 ($25x 3 horses) every 6 weeks or so. I have been trimming for a few years and I have never been overly confident of my skills, but recently, I have begun to be more confident and I find that I really like the way their feet look so I keep at it. It takes me about an hour to do one of my horses and I typically can't do more than one horse a day. When I'm on schedule, I trim one horse per week on a 3 week rotating basis...Usually though, i'm not so on with it, and I end up thinking "shoot, there's a ride in four days and I have to trim her feet" I dn't have any particular trimming style. My friend, Betsy, who taught me to trim uses the Pete Ramey and Jamie Jackson trimming method and I just have followed what she's taught me.

Today marked the beginning of riding camp at the barn also. I am not doing the camp myself, though I do teach lessons at New Ground Farms. A lady named Nicole is doing the camp. She has four kids each week and it looked like the kids were really enjoying themselves. I did one camp last summer, but I didn't feel like being tied up all summer. So when Jackie said that Nicole was going to do a camp, I was relieved. This leaves me free to teach my students as well as rounding up more students on my own, but I'm not tied down to being at the barn all day every day all summer. Some other folks showed up wanting horses for their grand kids to ride, but I had to run, so Natalie, Jackie's daughter took over doing it. We helped them get ready. They used Joe Bear and Deli, who are great lesson horses.

I had promised Maggie we'd go swimming next so we ran off to the Maverick to swim. We only had a half hour, but it was fun to hang out in the pool. We had the whole place to ourselves. Maggie is still having trouble with her bubble blowing, so we spent a lot of time bobbing and blowing bubbles and I started to show her the different strokes and kicks. She needs a kick board so she can practice her strokes, but she has never really been interested in swimming correctly and now she is, so that was a nice surprise.

The day ended with us at Flint doing massage for a couple hours.

Tomorrow I told Maggie that I'd take her to the park to go biking. Then she's going to a friend's and I'll have a couple hours to myself before I go a music therapy assessment.