Day 9: Looking Good!

Tom at 5. This is what we do when we're upset!

Tom was great today! I lunged him for 15 minutes and noticed that he's moving really well; much better than he was prior to the layoff for the biopsy. My daughter Lauren hadn't seen him go since mid October and she commented on how much better he looked too.

When I got on I did about 10 minutes of walking with some shoulder in and a little bit of walk half pass here and there. Moved on to trot and it took a few minutes for him to readjust to me being up there, but then he settled into a really nice, forward, swinging trot. To the right is harder- he wants to lock in his neck, but once he relaxes it gets much better. Maybe he's anticipating pain?

It was unusually warm today (60s) and I haven't clipped him yet, so I had to keep interspersing walk breaks to keep him from getting too sweaty. After 20 minutes on him I asked for canter and he was VERY good. Forward, willing and he didn't drop out of it to trot. I really think a lot of this is going to be that he has to regain confidence that his body will be OK. After the canter I cooled him out with a nice walk down the road with Lauren on her horse, Twist. Thomas has always been difficult on the road and I have rarely taken him on trails. He has been nervous and timid and out of the blue he will stop and refuse to go forward, sometimes backing into ditches or traffic or other unpleasant places. Back in October I had one day where it took a long time to get him at all loosened up in the ring, but I thought I'd reward him by walking him out down the road. On the way back he bucked and bolted for no apparent reason. When I got him back under control he was tight and VERY anxious the whole way home with another bolting incident right before we got to the barn. Could it be that the nervous behavior was pain-related? It would be so nice to be rid of that!