3 Lessons - Many Rides!

Thursday - Private @ 2:00 with Kim.
Dakota in the indoor - w/t/c.
We're retraining him from the ground up, basically. FORWARD, FORWARD, FORWARD!

Friday - Private @ 2:30 with Kim.
Dakota in the big arena, ended in the indoor - w/t/c.
Same. But better.

Saturday - Group @ 10 with Kim.
RODE RIO! I was the first one to EVER ride him out back... ever. And he was pretty much perfect! He just needs some balance and bending and he'll be so totally awesome. So, obviously, w/t/c/j.
Then I rode Dakota in the indoor. w/t/c. Same as Thurs/Fri, but he was TOTALLY on his butt for at least THREE STRIDES at the canter in each direction instead of like... one stride.
Then I rode Rio again... in the indoor. w/t/c/j.

Last 3 Rides

Yesterday, I rode Dakota in a lesson!
w/t/c/j - we did gridwork! However, since its the first time I've jumped him, and I probably did it a few days too soon, we just did small crossrails. I stopped when Kim raised the X's or changed them to straights.

Monday, I rode Dakota in the new indoor for the second time!
w/t/c - BAREBACK!

Saturday, I lunged and rode Dakota in the new indoor for the first time! =]
Lunged: w/t/c
Rode: w/t/c
[He's been galloping around when he's turned out, so he's stayed in some semblance of shape.]

PTL - Good Vet Report!

PRAISE THE LORD!
Huge praise report. =]

Huge huge huge. Turns out... right when we got there [after the assistant guy ran Dakota up and down the driveway so Dr. White could watch how he went] the doc took some farrier's tongs [dunno the technical name for them. They're metal pliers with flat surfaces, and he pressed them on either side of Dakota's hoof] and found that my baby was sore in the HOOF! Although, he did say that the calcium deposit looked like it had been pretty bad before it healed over.

ANYWAY.. He took a thermograph, and saw that there was tons of heat in a certain spot at the bottom of the hoof. Which means there was more blood in there than there usually is. So, He took an x-ray of the calcium deposit as well [that was cool, you could see the bone and the calcium. Some of it was attached to the bone, where doc said it was prolly infected at some point, but then there was just floating calcium. pretty awesome. Sorry, sidetracked. ^_^] and saw there was no problem there. Then he took an x-ray of the bottom of the hoof and it was AWESOME again. haha. You could see little think lines going from the outside of the hoof to the inside. Doc said those were where blood vessels were. We saw the x-ray of a normal hoof, where the lines were about 1 cm wide. Then we looked back at Dakota's hoof, and his blood vessels were dilated to about 3 cm wide. So... BRUISING!

We got a formaldahyde/iodine hoof paint to put on the sole of his hoof for 6 days straight, then 3 x a week for a few weeks after that. We also got bute [painkiller in the form of a gel that you pretty much shove in their mouth using a syringe - fun, I know] to give him 2 grams daily for 6 days.