If it's not one thing, it's another - Dressage Lesson #12

So I went to fetch Axel from the pasture. It's been tough getting him to come in lately so I don't look forward to the fight. I walked up to him and he decided he was going to walk away. Unfortunately for him, he started walking in the direction of the barn. So I managed to more or less chase him up the hill to where I wanted him to go in the first place. Atleast there wasn't a fight this time! I groomed him up and tried to file his feet. It appears I am not quite strong enough to do anything worthwhile with a file. I might have to keep trying but it didn't go very well. It looks like Axel is starting to loose his summer coat now as well. There was a lot of hair flying around when I brushed him this time. Maybe he'll be a black horse again soon.

We worked on some patterns to get him bending around my leg as much as possible. He can't walk a straight line to save his life so we made him weave cones at the walk, half walk/half trot, and trot. I think he enjoyed weaving. We moved onto a circle pattern and we lost him. He just gets stupid when you put him in a circle. We fought through it for a while, weaving the cones around in a circle, and then just doing the circle but it wasn't nearly as successful as the plain line weaving. He's starting to get the picture that if he bends and frames up, even for just a few seconds, that's the end of the lesson. Of course now we make he do it at the trot, he's pretty good at the walk.

I had noticed something on his back legs before the lesson and I remembered to check it out when we untacked him. He's got huge sores/blisters between his back legs where his "thighs" rub together. The assumption is that it's from heat and friction but I called the vet today to make sure. The vet figured they weren't actually blisters but just irritation from a bug bite or something. He suggested cortizone and just keep an eye on it. Though I won't be out there until next Monday and I'm not making Tom put coritzone on my horse's butt all week. Heh. The vet did say he had seen it one other time but in that case it was lymphoma. He didn't think that was this case though. I guess we'll see. They don't seem to bother him too much so hopefully they'll just go away. I have a photo of it but I think I'll spare the public and not link it ;)