2011 – Rock & Roll – 11-2-11 – INDOOR ARENA TRAINING/TURNOUT ROLLING
11/2/11: I was very concerned about Rock last night when we brought him in from the dressage arena for feeding. Not only was he tracking with the left hind behind the right front, but now the right hind foot was turned to the outside and had very shaky balance. This is the leg with the fracture, but it had never been as rickety and unstable. He was having muscle spasms in the area just in front of the flank from the spine to the lower flank. I suspected because of the time it was done and what happened thereafter, that the A-stim that was done on Rock’s hips has actually significantly aggravated integrated muscle performance in the left hip area and has adversely affected his proprioception. This was validated by his workout today. When he came into the tack barn his hips listed to the right and his front end alignment was to the left. He allowed me to manipulate his body back into a balanced stance several times before we left the building. We treated his feet with thrush buster again for the white line problem.
Rock did attempt to right himself while he was turned out in the dressage arena. There were tracks he made in the sand in the hourglass pattern on one side and then he just cut straight across the arena and the PVC poles had been moved as he tracked along the edges of them instead of straight through the middle. It is clear to me that he was trying to do what he had been doing with me. This was probably because he knew he always felt good when his workout was done.
The custom boots (which were very late in arriving) actually made things worse when we put them on, so I took them off for the workout and he seemed more comfortable almost immediately. I only did one pass through the hourglass in each direction with five times over the 4 PVC ground rails and he only hit one rail once. After the first stop and square up, he began to square himself up properly and corrected the listing to the right by moving his front end himself.
With the way he was acting, I believe the A-stim may have done some good on the atrophied musculature in the fractured hip, but probably did mess up the firing of the muscle groups in the healthy hip. Rock was doing noticeably better after his workout and I believe I will need to do this workout 2-3 times a week to bring him back into correct balance. Even the front feet gave him less problems as the workout progressed. Afterwards, he did roll in the dry sand and seemed to have much more overall strength to get down and back up again. He is no longer falling over onto his left side and doesn’t rock back and forth on his knees to get back up.
