Really? Again Axel?

Cody was actually fairly mud-less last night. Hairy and dusty, yes, but very little caked on mud. I grabbed him first since I planned to ride a bit. It's hard to get back in the habit once you start slacking. It's just so easy to groom and throw them back into the pasture. Anyway Cody was feeling a bit frisky so we did quite a bit of lunging first. Changing directions and backing up and all that. Once I got on he seemed fairly calm and actually spent a lot of time licking and chewing. We stuck to the walk for the most part and worked on some neck reining, circles, and serpentines. We managed a couple really nice turns on the forehand and almost got a side pass but not quite. I keep trying to work more going to the left since that seems to be his stiff side but it requires a lot of fighting to get both our bodies cooperating. We did manage to make it through all this work with almost no sweating and it was in the 50s so it was nice to not have to blanket after riding quite yet.

Axel was another story. I wasn't going to do anything with him last night until I brought Cody out and noticed his belly was swollen again. Ug. So I brought him in to check it out and see if I could get it to go down by lunging. So he walked in both directions for about 10 minutes total and there was no change. I should have gotten on and ridden but it was getting late at that point. I just keep going back to the round bale. How is the round bale causing this? It's a different hay supplier than last year but it's the same hay field he's been eating off all summer just in big rounds instead of small squares. It's not even first cutting. My first few thoughts are to do a powerpac, take him off the round bale for a couple weeks and see what happens, try antihistimines, and actually ride him and see if any of that works. I actually don't think it'd be allergies, how would that last all winter? Right now I'm thinking we'll pull the round bales for two weeks and I'll try and get him more exercise then add the round bale back in and see if keeping the exercise up helps. Unless the vet comes up with something else. It probably wouldn't hurt to do a powerpac anyway since I don't keep up on deworming too well but they are kind of spendy so we'll see what the vet thinks of that.