Bicycles don't ride cars!

Zippy has been Dippy today! If he'd been a normal three year old there would have been huge ructions. As it is, he was jogging, sticking out his nose, gawping everywhere and he had decided today that cars were frightening things - particularly when they have a bicycle standing up on the roof :-0 But he never did anything really stupid. Having said that, you wouldn't have wanted anyone remotely nervous on his back, he was certainly jumpy. He even had three attempts at canter on the road. I took him as far as Jazz's bogey bridge, and he is the third horse to have found it seriously frightening - first Tetley, then Jazz, and now Zip. But he behaved a lot better than either of those two, both of whom tried to take me home. He stuttered and tottered, but he passed the chevron sign for the corner, and crossed the oh-so-frightening bridge with not much persuasion at all, just a squeeze of the legs to go forward, with the reins held outwards on either side to stop him suddenly diving left or right. It was our longest ride to date and he did cough a little toward the end, but nothing like as deep as he has coughed before. I haven't seen food down his nose for a couple of weeks now, either.


Jazz does not cough at all and seems to have no side effects from the operation at all. Even the wound has hair growing over it. And he is lovely and laid back - obviously well, happy, and bumbling around the bit of field he's been allowed. It makes me wonder if some of the 1 in 4 tieback operations that don't work properly are because people ride too soon. I had to follow the surgeon round to get him to explain to me what the rest period is actually for. And it's not for Jazz to feel well again, which he clearly does already - it's to give the cartilage time to harden off so it's secure and won't pull free. That isn't written anywhere in the release notes I've got. If I hadn't got him to explain it to me, then the temptation just to get on and ride such an obviously fit and well horse would be enormous. I wonder how many people do just that, and spoil the operation? Yet again, I am so pleased that we timed a holiday to prevent me from getting over-tempted to ride him.


C.