Undeserving

I haven't gushed/freaked out about Rico lately on this blog.

Recently Rico was rushed down to the hospital again, this time for neck pain and a bad reaction to his WNV vaccine. He was breathing hard and unwilling to move his neck.

Last summer, Rico was sort of kind of diagnosed with neck arthritis. The vet turned chiro came out and said that she was super confident that he had neck arthritis, since most dressage horses at his age have it. She worked on him and from then on, I didn't do any dressage with him. It was really hard for him to bend his neck right. We still trail rode and all that, and Rico seemed fine as long as you didn't make him bend his neck right.

Right was always hard for us, now it makes sense

When we went to the hospital, they took blood and also did neck x-rays. The vet found what she thought was pretty significant arthritis, and they sent it off for a second opinion.

We got the results back on Monday and damn. Rico has pretty serious arthritis in almost all neck joints, the lowest one being the worst and then getting better from there. He also has remodeling by his poll and a few bone chips floating around in his nuchal ligament. I knew that last bit, let me explain.

Rico lived in a stall around in 2007 that had this small concrete window. He also used to be a bit head shy. At one point, I came to the barn and noticed that he had a huge lump behind his left ear. It wouldn't go away. Like for months. We took him down for an x-ray and found bone spurs and bone chips floating around in there, indicative of him cracking his head quite hard on that concrete, probably when someone went to pet him. I ended up stopping dressage for two years to let him recover. The vet wasn't sure how much range of motion he'd have and whether he'd do dressage again.

We jumped for 2 years instead

Spoiler alert, he came back to dressage. He seemed okay with the work, always a little resistant, but that was always his way.

I can't believe this horse. It's unlikely that the last couple years of leisurely wandering around his paddock made his neck arthritis so bad. He's had it for a long time, and he's had the bone chips for ten years now.

And he made it to Grand Prix. He did it for me. He was probably not the most comfortable in the last years of his dressage life, but he put everything he could into our partnership. Obviously if he had been in pain, I would have stopped. But he never told me no (he said whyyyyy do I haaave to quite a lot though).

Just another one of the reasons why I absolutely never deserved to have a horse as good as Rico.

Despite neck arthritis and a few bone chips floating through his
neck- we still got 7s on the piaffe

I'm not sure what the future looks like for him. The vet said that if we can't manage his pain with a daily quarter tab of prevocox, we'll have to do neck injections in almost all of his joints if we ever want him to be rideable again.

It makes me sad that I can't enjoy his retirement by wandering about on the trails without such measures, but he gave me so much for so long even when he wasn't feeling 100%, so I have no right to ask any more of him. Either way he'll be happy in his pasture and healthy, and that's all I want for him.

I'd love to do this again on him but we have so
many good memories, I'm okay with just reliving
those through this blog