Making Progress!

TC is now up to 6 minutes of trot total per day, we do 6 x 30 second trot sets in each direction. I've added in some trot poles since he seems to be interested in that and WOW I haven't seen him trot like that in years. I really do think he's feeling better with his shoes set back and the modified trim. He's not entirely excited to go forward at all times, but he's also very much out of shape and rehab is boring. I don't always love the gym but as I get stronger I feel better about it. 

He's also completely stopped lifting his legs and asking for scratches during grooming, which is wild to me. Such a small change can really make a huge difference I guess. And he's MUCH less nippy when we do my basic bodywork stuff. He went through a phase where any time I'd work on anything, he'd really go after me with his teeth. But now he seems to just enjoy it, and you can feel it in the muscles of his back and hindquarters too - they feel much more maleable even 3 weeks after his shoes got set back. There's still more to do but he feels great. 

He was helping with fencing the
other day

Unfortunately since he feels good, he is pretty bored. And now he isn't allowed to have his salt! I'd removed it about 24 hours before his chemistry panel, so it was unsurprising that the only thing that didn't come back normal was his sodium + chloride. We think that he's just really messed with his mineral balance just downing salt and water all day long, so I'm anticipating that there will be some time where he has to adjust. Right now he's taken to eating a wooden post... I'm hoping he's just bored/missing his salt, but if he continues to chew on the post, I'll chat with my vet again since that's not normal for him. 

Add to his lack of salty entertainment, he hates his boring rehab plan since so much of it is walking in the arena. I'm still restricting him from walking down the road, since I want to give him time to recover from the mechanical laminitis. He really hasn't been asking to go down the road, but I'm sure once we get in the arena each day and do our 15 minutes of walking on the longe line before his trot sets, he'd rather be anywhere else. 

I made him work in the misty rain and he hated it

Then we do our trot sets and that's where he seems the most happy. He gave me very happy ears on Monday after his first trot set where he pressed his ears so forward that they were almost facing each other. I'm trying to challenge him with some forward and back and some cavalletti work and I think he likes that a lot. 

But then it's back to walk for the last 15 minutes of the arena work, and sometimes afterwards we walk up in the hills. Anything to get him burning calories and strengthening his body. Soon, we'll be doing more trot work and eventually cantering, which will allow me to shorten his warm up and cool down a bit. And we'll also start trail riding undersaddle hopefully this fall. So it's going to get more interesting!! But it's hard to explain that to him. 

My coworkers all think it's hilarious that I tested my fat horse for horse diabetes and now he's on a fitness plan that he hates. We were at the gym yesterday with our personal trainer and it came up because I found out that he and I use the same interval training app! Now TC knows how I feel at the gym when he pulls out the Tabata timer for core work at the end. 

He needs to be involved in everything

Next week, he gets his new pads and then I'm going to schedule the next round of things I want to torment him with. On the docket are:

1. Nutritionist - even though he doesn't have EMS, I want to make sure that he's on the right track to lose weight with as much roughage as I can get into him. I'm a little worried about ulcers when he's consuming this little hay. I also want to talk to her about the salt obsession and make sure that his minerals are perfectly balanced. 

2. Bodyworker - I think I'm going to start having a local bodyworker come out every month (maybe more frequently to start) to help unwind his back. Although he's actually doing a good job of this himself! I want to probably start this in mid October to give him a week or two on his new shoes/pads. 

3. Joint Injections - I'm debating delaying these a little bit, maybe early November or even waiting until spring. I feel like I'll get more bang for my buck in the spring since that's when he's historically started having problems BUT I also feel like I should do what I can now to get him comfortable so that I can use the winter to put muscle on him. So far he isn't showing any issues being forward on the longe line (outside of what I can categorize as boredom, which is just at the walk), so I might wait until I'm ready to ride him. We'll see, I at least want to get some info from the vet office about the injections since I've decided to do them at a vet office vs at the ranch with my local vet. 

Gotta check everything

Fingers crossed the new shoes + pads next week go well!