Crossed fingers may have worked...

After the Ice Tight and bandaging her leg looks pretty normal again now and her tendon down the back leg feels nice and hard all along its length. She's also sound on it, no short stepping or dragging.

Please keep your fingers crossed for Lutine!

What a worry. We had another attack of the Swelly Nellies by the time I came home on Saturday afternoon. I gave her some homeopathic Apis Mel and some Lymph Blend in her food and by Sunday morning it was still fat in the lower cannon and pastern and sore too but she wasn't lame on it. Carried on with the Apis and by Sunday afternoon it had stabilised so I decided to take her for a walk to get the circulation going. By the time I came back the swelling had reduced considerably but it became apparent that there was a swelling to the back of the leg in the tendon area............. AAAAAAGGGHHH!!!!!! It's not a large swelling but it's sore and it's distinctly in the area of the middle of the superficial flexor tendon. I've put cold gel wrap on it under a bandage, given more lymph blend, diuretic herbs and MSM plus continued on the Apis. So I will have another look at it at the end of the afternoon and maybe get the vet out tomorrow.

I'm really hoping it's just some swelling from her regular lymphangitis problem and not a ruddy tendon injury.

You've no idea how blinking fed up I'm feeling. :-(

Happy Birthday, Lola!!

Happy Birthday to Lutine, who is 9 years old today. I'm not in France at the moment but I will ask my husband to give her some treats this evening by way of celebration (I don't think he'll stretch to singing her 'happy birthday' though!)

One small stride of canter.....

....a giant leap for Lutine.

OK, corny I know. We had a little ride in the field today and Miss L was quite lively as usual. She does get a little anxious about being away from her friends in the paddocks and of course, they call to her while we're riding in the field and get excited themselves. We were trying to do relaxed walk but it's better, at least initially, to try and match her energy and do some trots and then see if you can bring her back down as she settles. As we did a bit of trotting up the slope and across the diagonal of the field, I sat twice to change the trot diagonal and that moment of sitting had Lutine mistake it as an aid for canter! We only did a stride or so (and heck, it felt like there's quite a nice canter waiting to be discovered!) before we dropped back to trot. But still, it was good of her to offer. I take it as a sign that she must be feeling OK about the riding. And we got the nice relaxed walk shortly after, where I could feel both her hips swinging and her lumbar area unlocking. Felt good.