Early Spring in Texas

I know that most of the country is under ice, but we've been having beautiful weather and with the Horse Mistakes book out and the DFWWW Conference done, and looking forward to next year, I've been able to get back in the saddle. I've had wonderful rides, a trail ride yesterday and shooting practice this morning. I'm hopefully going to shoot on Saturday, so I thought I'd better practice at least once!! I won't admit how long it's been ... I will say "much too long".

I'm planning to take BERI for my son and me to compete on and MIREE to 'hang out', so I rode them both this morning and shot a few rounds off each off them. I didn't really expect any trouble, but I was really pleased with both of them and I'm looking forward to shooting with the Texas Smokin Guns, which is having monthly LOCAL shoots. Local is so much easier to do these days, not just arranging to be gone, but do I need to mention the price of gas?

It's been a good week overall. TELPE had follow-up x-rays on Monday, which gave us wonderful news. She partook in a kick-fest in the first week of November which resulted not only in a fractured leg but a severe surface injury. I call it a "surface injury" because it's a mess of a thing that's much more than a cut but nothing else more specific ...

So 16 weeks later, the fracture is healed very nicely, but the surface injury is still giving me grief. It's pretty and pink and small, but still not closed. We've been keeping it wrapped, changing the bandage 3xs weekly this entire time.

There is always a chance, in these cases, of a bit of dead periosteum or a bone chip. (either of which would go necrotic) The wound is not obviously draining, it doesn't smell bad (yes, I sniffed - and so did the vet - both the removed bandage and the wound itself, it's something horsemen do.) and she hasn't been lame, not even the first couple of days. So we *thought* that there probably wasn't a problem brewing, BUT when I had left the bandage off for several hours last Friday, it had swollen up and looked like both a "bandage bow" on the tendon and some bizarre blood filled swelling above the still open cut (which was by that time bleeding). So I called and made Monday's appointment.


You have to understand about TELPE.

Some people say that horses have an insight to God's Plan, know that they have an appointed time to die and spend their lives looking for it. Telpe, we've decided, has heard a whisper that she'll live a long and fruitful life and so has no fear of situations or circumstance.

We've also decided she's fallen in love with my vet and does want she can to get to see him. Early last year, she hung her eyelid on something and ripped a "T" shape in it that required delicate stitching and some relatively long term care with several follow-up visits to her favorite vet. So in the last 16 weeks since all this has been going on with her leg, she's seen him on a regular basis - not only for the leg, but for escaping her stall and getting in the feed barrel. And once she even went so far as to dig in the coals and singe a patch off hair off her leg.

But, for today at least, she's sound and whole ... and hopefully will stay that way for awhile.

writing and riding and writing

Another week gone by and we're on the road again early in the morning to the Bluebonnet Endurance Ride. I'll hopefully have a ride report and some photos next week.

I spent last weekend at the OWFI conference and had a wonderful time. I got a request for a partial from my agent appointment and she graciously spent a few minutes talking with me and offering advice about a couple of other projects I'm working through. I highly recommend this conference. It's two full days of workshops and lectures - I took some good tidbits from every single one I attended. My favorite session was when they put three agents up front and Robyn Conley read aloud. Everyone had the chance to turn in the first few pages of their manuscripts at check-in. Robyn shuffled the stack and started reading. Each agent would raise their hand at the point they would reject the work. When the second one rejected, they'd each take the mike and explain what they liked about the work and what the trigger was that cause them to throw their hand up. - yes, I turned mine in, but it didn't come up in the shuffle before we ran out of time.

But back to the subject of mud - from the Hog Scramble, and probably the Bluebonnet too - it's an excellent way to slow down your hero if you need to create conflict. You'll need to plan ahead with storm clouds, or setup unpredictable weather in your world. Depending on the type of soil, maybe clay (slick mud), blackland (thick and clumpy), or as in the Piney Woods of East Texas, soft and boggy. Not only does the mud greatly increase the horses workload, promoting fatigue, it exponentially increases the chance of injury to the horses' soft tissues, ligaments and tendons.

When a horse travels, especially at speed, they have a rhythm and an energy cycle and exchange. Using this, a horse can actually run past the point of having the strength to stop and live. Mud tends to break that easy rhythm because they're having to tense and brace when each hoof lands and rather than springing back off the ground with returned energy, they're having to wrestle each step out of the muck.

Not just mud, but any kind of terrain. Hills, steep or rolling, or rock, (like at the Heart of the Hills ride earlier this year) will also tend to slow a horse down and raise the chance of injury. Mud or hills, either one, will cause a horse to show tight muscles and soreness in the large muscles of the rump and down the tops of their back legs. A strained, stressed or pulled tendon will express itself in the horse bobbing it's head at the trot, or an unevenness of gait at the canter and when the rider dismounts to check the legs, they may be able to feel some heat in the injured leg. Depending on the severity, the horse may point that toe out, or hold it up so only the tip of the hoof touches the ground. There is a lot of good, easily available, information on the 'net about "bowed tendons" so I won't go into it here although I'll be happy to answer any specific questions if you want to email.