2011 – Rock & Roll – 11-14-11 – OUTDOOR ARENA TRAINING

11/14/11: Roll’s feet are doing much better and he now has a nice “cup” to the bottom of his feet! Roll had a fairly good workout after being off for 3 weeks. At the start, he must have smelled the mules from the north barn because he offered to stretch down for the first time and continued with his head down for almost two full rotations. He just bobbed up for a few steps and then was back down again. He was a little sluggish once he got moving, but not too bad. At least he wasn’t making me push him all the way around. He is taking more responsibility for his own body these days. He did five walk and five trot both ways and the last stop was square.

Rock was sore on all fours today and not really settling on any of his legs. He was shifting his weight around and walking, though difficult, looked okay. I noticed that the left hind is tracking straighter behind the left front than it was last week. He let us take care of the bottoms of all his feet except the left hind. He tried, but just couldn’t hold it up long enough to get the jack stand under it, so we did not do it. Because of the soreness behind, we decided to put heat on the left hip again and he did seem to enjoy that. Then we hot packed the left front forearm and he began to lock up his knee on that side, then bend it slightly and lock up again. He stood still behind for the duration. He did do a turn on the forehand to the right VERY SLOWLY at the hitch rail when I asked. He did okay in his workout, but knocked rails with the left hind over the PVC poles. The last couple rounds over the poles he improved. To help balance his body better, we tried a shoulder in along the wall both directions and Rock was able to do a few steps each way which I found to be extraordinary considering he had no idea what I wanted from him. We did drift away from the way, but he did maintain the shoulder in position while traveling forward. Then we went back to the tack barn and we iced his front feet for 15 minutes which he also enjoyed after he figured out what we were doing. Again, he locked the knee on his left front ass well as the right front which stayed that way throughout. Rock is improving however  slowly!