What's Up with Riot?

With TC at the ranch, I've been able to hang out with Rico a lot, which has been so fun! I've taken him on walks and groomed him a lot, as well as doing some of the pillar work with him. I'm trying not to push that on him because 1) he's generally fine physically and 2) I've made it my mission in his retirement to not make him do anything and a lot of the time the only thing he wants to do when I come in to do pillar work is to do his tricks and get treats, so that's what we do. 

Most of my interactions with Riot involve pulling
the pony away from him lol

Sometimes I feel bad for Riot because he's last on my pecking order for attention. I've kind of heard my parents talking about how Riot isn't doing all that well lately, but with how insane work has been, I've been kind of letting them deal with it. From what I gather from having conversations and glancing at him occasionally, he's just been a little foot sore. 

Earlier this week though, my mom asked me to help her by looking at him. He'd been standing very oddly for a while and it was getting worse. They put shoes back on him to try to give him some more support (he goes barefoot for the winter when the ground is soft but he's always needed them back on in the spring and it's tough to figure out the timing for that). But then when he wasn't better, the vet recommended injecting his right hock, which they did. He's also been wormed, been tested for allergies, and had his blood run (all fairly normal and we removed anything he was mildly sensitive to). 

The farrier came out on Wednesday morning and said that he was very uncomfortable getting his trim behind. My mom mentioned that Celeste was coming soon, and the farrier said that bodywork would be great for him. In the mean time, my mom asked me if I could look at him and to please get him on Celeste's calendar. I said sure! 

Riots bizarre mountain goat posture

My evaluation, as someone who is NOT a bodyworker and not even CLOSE to being one is that he's pretty compromised and there's very likely some pain involved. I don't know horses who stand like that for funzies. Typically horses stand like this when they have heel pain, he doesn't respond to hoof testers, but that is still an option. 

I palpated him and it was pretty apparent that his lumbar area was really rough. This top photo honestly doesn't show how bad it was, but there's basically no muscle there and his glute sticks up in an odd manner. It was very tight. His shoulder was also super tight. Surprisingly, his chest is fairly wide and his underneck wasn't as rigid as I expected it to be. 

From there, I used my massager all over his body, focusing on his shoulders and his lumbar area in the same way I did daily for TC when he was early on in his pillar work. Riot definitely thought that was wonderful and wiggled his nose as a thank you. 

Next, I started pillar one and found that he was very willing to do so. I alternated between pillar one and having him do a belly lift and then a butt tuck. We did that for a while until his back didn't look so bad. Then I started pillar two and he started to stand more normally. 

After some pillar work

I decided to do TC's PT exercises to see if Riot would let me. He let me take his left hind across his body and even seemed to relax into it with some licking and chewing. His right hind though? Not so much. Same with the front leg exercises. He let me stretch his right front all the way out comfortably, but didn't like it when I took his left front out. So, clearly something is going on with that diagonal pair of left front to right hind.

My mom came out to ask me how things were going and what I thought. I told her that I thought we should treat for encysted worms and for hind gut ulcers just in case. Both of those can cause major pain in the hind end. 

We are then putting him on a low dose of prevocox to see if we can at least stop the degradation. I'll be working on him whenever I'm down there and Kate is coming out this morning to look at him too (since she *actually* has lots of bodywork experience). 

And he sees Celeste in the next couple of weeks! My dad is going to be there so that he can learn how to do the pillars with Riot and hopefully we can get him feeling good. My dad really would like to ride him and Riot loves to go out and do things.