He had about 10 days off in all, which shouldn't have affected him too much, and prior to the break he had been going very well. I had planned to start jumping him again properly after the holiday but when I brought him back into work instead of feeling up for it and full of energy he seemed to feel a little flat and lazy.
We had barely any grass left in the paddock he'd been in all Summer so I suspected he may just be lacking energy and perhaps needed a bit of a boost with some higher energy food. He just has a light balancer through the Summer but I usually find he needs a bit more in the Winter months so I popped to the local feed shop and picked up a bag of competition mix to give him a bit more fizz.
I have gradually been introducing this over the last few weeks and while there has been a small improvement I still know something isn't right.
He doesn't look or feel lame but he is just lacking power and impulsion, and it seems to be in particular at the Trot, his Canter is actually very good and if I only rode him in Canter all the time I wouldn't notice anything was really different. This is the total opposite from when he was suffering from Kissing Spine and he couldn't Canter! In fact my friend watched me riding him in Canter last week and thought it was the best she'd ever seen him go. I was doing an exercise where I rode him over 2 poles at opposite ends of the ménage counting the strides in between then adjusting the canter to take a stride out or add a stride in. He was really adjustable and did the exercise the best he ever has, starting out with 7 strides then shortening to 8 and even 9 before opening up to get 6. He even managed some flying changes for me. In contrast his trot is very fixed, I cannot adjust the tempo or stride length and he is very on his forehand. It's strange!
I also clipped him out last week as he was getting pretty hairy and becoming very sweaty when being ridden but this didn't make any difference in his performance either. Another thing I noticed when I clipped him was he was sensitive to the clippers over his back, particularly where the back of the saddle sits. Since his surgery I have not fully clipped him until this year, always opting to leave the hair long over his back, but I decided this time to just take it all off so I don't know if he would have reacted the same before or not but his reaction did worry me.
I said not too long ago, when he was feeling good, that if I ever found myself having to kick him along when out hacking I would know there was something wrong and sadly this is where we are at the moment. He is better out of the ménage but by no means as forward as he usually is. He is doing everything I am asking him to do but he's just not got the sparkle and energy he had previously and when I ask for more energy either nothing or very little happens, he just continues at the same sluggish pace or picks up for a couple of stride before backing off again.
With all this in mind I decided I needed to have him checked out but battled between calling the vet, McTimoney practitioner, Physio or saddler first! I finally decided as he is not obviously lame I would get his back and saddle checked first and go from there. Unfortunately after waiting and waiting for our usual saddler to get back to me I found out she has had a bad accident falling from her horse and is unavailable for the foreseeable future so I needed to find an alterative.
Luckily for us our McTimoney Practitioner is also a qualified saddle fitter so we can kill 2 birds with 1 stone and get his back and saddle checked at the same time, which we are doing later this week. If this has no effect on his performance then a vet visit will be booked.
We do know he had some arthritic changes in his hocks, diagnosed back in 2014 when he was diagnosed with KS, so perhaps we need to investigate this further and he may need the hocks medicating. If he is not using his hind end properly because of pain in his hocks this could soon lead to problems elsewhere and could be the cause of the soreness in his back. On the other hand the soreness in his back could be stopping him from using his hind end effectively. Either way I just hope we can soon get him back to being full of beans like he was before the break.
Hoping to have a bit more of a positive update for you later this week, until then I will continue to work him with some gentle hacking to keep him ticking over. He also got a bath this weekend and was pulled and trimmed and looking smart for once!
In the mean time I have been able to keep jumping on my best friend's fab pony Jay and recently took him arena eventing for the first time where we jumped a confident but fairly steady double clear to come 2nd which we were all chuffed to bits with as it was our first attempt at solid fences. We also went to a trail blazers show jumping competition and jumped our biggest class to date jumping a fab, fast and confident round just rolling a pole on the smallest fence on the course! So no qualifying round this time but we will try again soon!
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