Just waved goodbye.

No, not waving goodbye to Tia or Tetley, but to Claire, who has been to visit and had a little ride on them. Tetley was as sound as a bell and I grinned from ear to ear when Claire told me that she wouldn't believe that there was anything wrong with him if she hadn't already been reading the blog. I tried to show her the lumps on his hocks, and on one side they have disappeared completely. On the worse side they are still there but they are rounding off instead of being sharp and lumpy. And anyway, who cares, he's SOUND :-)!!!

We even got him to do a little piaffe, and in fact I couldn't stop him. He was showing off, I was showing off, and every time I tried to halt to get off he just piaffed. He is such a character!

Tia isn't quite sound. Her legs were right down when she came in last night and it isn't the jumping. It seems to be an injury that she arrived with. When I tried her out she was unblemished. When I picked her up she had a couple of little marks on a back leg where she seemed to have caught it in something (they went round the side, and didn't look like a kick). There was a small wound which I picked the scab off and kept clean with peroxide until it had healed. All there was to show for it was a small lump on the very front of her cannon. But after 6 weeks since she did it, it is hot this morning, and the lump is bigger, and there is a tiny pocket of fluid that you can feel just above the mark where the hole was. It's pretty certain that there is infection in there. The last thing I want is to have her given antibiotics and seal whatever is in there in for the long term. So I took Claire's suggestion to poultice it to try to get it to break open of its own accord and drain. I shall of course be keeping my eyes on it very closely, and if there is any danger of the infection spreading then I will get a vet to look at it.

She was only very slightly off, so we did ride her, mostly only at walk. And it wore off the more we did too. It was really nice to be able to see her move with another rider on. I have only seen her when I tried her and at that point she was locked in her back and her shoulders. I have worked and worked on freeing the back and shoulders, as you know, and I could see the change that it's made to her paces. She did give Claire some of her classic "sewing machine" trot though, so she was able to experience what Tia had originally been like.

It's a great day here today. Windy, but clear and bright. I'm off to enjoy some more of it.

C.