Well there has been no entry to the blog because once again we have been resting Solo.
It seemed that as soon as he was going really well and lots of fun to ride, he broke himself. He is sound to trot up but when you ride him, he still doesn’t feel strong or ‘right’. I don’t know how to explain it better than that. My gut feeling is that when he slipped and strained his leg, he also pulled and stretched the big gluteus muscles and the muscles over his back. I am unable to pinpoint exactly where the change is, but I know it’s not right when I am on his back and I have learned over the years to listen to my ‘feel’ when it is telling me something.
I have had the vet look at him and he couldn’t find anything. I am going to have him come and look at Solo’s back later this week to give me some more input. The end result of all this time off may be that Solo will stay home with me over the winter and not go to Florida. We have had his paperwork done ready to leave this month but I am not sure he is going to go.
One of the other reasons I wondered if it could be his back, is that he has lost a lot of weight over his back. He has been a big round butterball all year with a huge, bulging, well developed back. All of a sudden he has a spine poking through and the musculature behind his wither and under the saddle seems to have melted away. He also has some white hairs coming through on his back where the saddle sits on either side of the wither. I thought I had fixed the saddle issues but these white hairs look like they are the result of too much pressure or weight pressing in one area. Ugh!
I suppose this sort of thing is just as much a part of producing and preparing a competition horse as anything else (it happens to us all at one time or another), but it’s not the stuff of blogs! LOL
