Ill-fated shoes and I am old and weak.

I had the horses trimmed and Shade shod on May 5. That sunday when I went to ride Shade she was missing her RF shoe. My fault I had not done anything about the horse mesh fencing that was curled up at the bottom between their pen and AJs. L came out and nailed it back on on friday and dad nailed some 2-6 boards along the bottom there so it wouldn't happen again.

Yesterday I was riding Shade and thinking, well I have shoes on her, I'll do a short loop this direction and then tie Ole up or something and keep going down the softened gravel road over the hill and back and get in a bit of hill work. And then as we were doing a nice pace alongside the ditch Shade hit a soft deepish spot with the same RF foot and because the foot was stuck momentarily she stepped on the shoe with the back foot and tripped herself but good. Launched me and I thought she was coming on top of me but she scrambled to her feet without squishing me, I love that sweet agile mare. I thought of putting a hoof boot on and sticking with the original plan but she had scalped the back of her heel just a bit so I nixed that idea. I was a little freaked out, thought she had done some more damage there but when I got home and trimmed off the flaps its very shallow. I put on a betadine ointment and wrap to 'make myself feel better' anyway. Wrap was worked up to basically being a bell boot in a few hours so good thing it was not needed. Shade has been moving fine too but I think I'll get the chiro out for her.

Think I'll move up my chiro appt from june 3 as well. I didn't feel bad this morning and I even got the other front shoe off with lots of sweat, but no blood or tears at least. But I was stiffening up pretty good sitting at work so I took some ibuprofen. I decided I am not riding full steam yet anyway and I would have to get L to pull the LF shoe, fire up the forge and take a little off the back of both front shoes, not just re-nail the RF this time if I had her come out at all. So I opted to just skip having any extra nail holes and I'll use hoof boots for any day-trip trail rides on rocky footing to remind myself of how much I prefer having a shod horse when I will be trailering and riding rocky trails instead of just the winter-time riding on our sandy dirt roads.

Saturday was a nice boring riding day. I rode Sadie in the paddock. She thought about having a meltdown for a few seconds, crow-hopped very mildly in place a couple of times after I had been up for about 2 minutes. One QUIT IT and pulling her nose to my knee for a few seconds and she went back to her usual sweet self and we practiced going where I wanted to, did some lopsided figure eights around some old torn rubber feed pans in that paddock at a walk and trot and called it good. She didn't buck when I longed her before mounting but she was zooming at the slightest request to move off --it was a chilly day; so I had planned to skip cantering in the bigger area from the start. Then I tossed the LJ pad on Lady and took her down the road just a few miles and let Ole tag along after having tied him to keep him out of the way while I messed with Sadie.