We have two feet of snow outside, it's never above freezing, my old car is crusted in salt and it's too cold to go shopping for a new one. UGH.
Also, Apollo apparently loves our vets because he gouged his head open Friday evening.
I ponytailed his forelock out of the way. It's about 2" long and deep. He has a few stitches in it (PURPLE stitches, so at least they're his color?) So far it's healing really well. It's nice and flat, not hot, not swollen, not oozing. We've been riding without a browband, and I hot compress it every evening (he doesn't think that we need to compress it--our only saving grace is feeding him copious amounts of animal crackers.) That's followed with a thin layer of Neosporin. I'm pretty excited that the vet only had to drug him once--despite his spindly stature, this horse requires a double dose of sedatives for ANYTHING. His one major downfall, I suppose.
On a more positive note, he has been DEAD QUIET to ride. Today I got on, and we walked off and I was sure he was sick. He LUMBERED. This horse doesn't lumber, he must have a fever! Sickness! Infection! Nope, he's just doing great on the TC Senior and I'm riding a lot better. I've been practicing sitting further up/back every day, and it's hard but I'm doing it. Today we even started trotting to the left--we always started to the right as it was his good direction and we'd ease into the "bad" direction after a little warmup. We did a walk to trot to canter transition to the left (usually we trot right, canter right, trot a half turn, canter left.) He was a little goosey and scooty, his stride was kind of quick, but he did okay. My reins were also WAY too long (I ended up riding with my hands almost in my lap) so part of the problem was me.
I had my mom to get on him to walk around as a little confidence building exercise for him. I want him to be comfortable with someone who isn't me on his back. I think it'll make him an overall more confident horse. He was a little nervous at first (since I bought him, he's had someone else on him four times.) He was anxious and wanted to jig, but he ended very well with a nice swinging walk across the arena.
I also went shopping for my VERY FIRST EMERGENCY KIT!! I've never gotten to assemble my own first aid kit before, and as dorky as it sounds, I was so excited to raid the travel section of Walmart. A lot of people get to do this as kids, but I'm behind the game because I didn't show much at all when I was little (I chose not to.) I just need to order some horse-specific things from SmartPak and my kit is READY :D!
I was pretty pumped--I got a bright purple flash light in the camping section, and he has a set of purple and gray towels/wash clothes. I decided to expand our colors to purple and gray because I'm going to wear my new Drayer Physical Therapy shirt for XC (it's a medium charcoal/heather gray color.) I can't wait!! I just have a few more things I need--tan full seat Piper breeches, bridle bag, possibly a stall guard (going to ask around to see if I really need one....)
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