Day 11: Fixed Shoe and a Good Day

The farrier came today and reset Tom's left front shoe. Lauren noticed on Saturday that he had bent that shoe. It wasn't at all loose, but somehow he mangaed to pull the heel of the inside shoe about 3/4" away from his hoof! I chose to keep working him. Our ring has good footing, and I thought if nothing else maybe he'd bend it back.

Anyway, that got fixed and while John was doing that I took a picture of Tom's very round butt to compare with a photo I took 2.5 years ago:

Tom's butt today 11/15/10

June 26, 2008

Apparently, this is what 1 cup of oil a day for 5 weeks has done! His grain has been REDUCED by 5 qts. a day to just 3 qts. In June of '08 he was grazing all day on fairly lush green grass. for the last 2 months, he has had little grass in his pasture to nibble on. I dare say he was even hippier than this  last winter, although I didn't take a picture of it. I remember commenting to my farrier that he was looking like a cow, with those jutting hip bones. Not today! This is all so weird to me. Why has he put on so much weight when I have reduced his grain so much? Is it all coming from the oil? I figure he gets about 2000 calories from oil- that doesn't seem like that much, considering his size. And he's working now. he had a week off while his stitches healed from the biospy, but I have been pretty religious about exercising him for the past 2 weeks.

Today I rode him without lunging first. I was cold from standing around with the farrier, and it had started to rain, so I didn't want to get my saddle wet lunging him. I walked him for 10 minutes before asking for trot. The first 3 to 5 minutes of trot were cranky, but then he got going and we had a really good ride. He hates it when I push with my lower leg. If I make a really conscious effort to keep my lower leg from nagging, he's much more forward. Is this an EPSM symptom? He hates being groomed; hates having a blanket put on. Is he just super-sensitive on his sides? So many questions...