4.22 miles under an hour!

Today was a chilly day. It never really got above the mid 50s. Thank goodness I had a jacket in my car....  All of the horses were staying in because the vet was coming today so I made sure to lunge Gwyn first.

Working well....

Weeeee!

Working well again

I wanted to get back out into the fields again and leave the ring work be for now. I'll be a bit more restricted to ring work once we move so I don't want to sour Gwyn on it. My goal was to push myself physically and try and get in more miles in the same amount of time. This means more trotting and cantering and hitting the perimeter of each field at least twice.

Gwyn was pretty good. I'm also noticing an improvement in myself, which is encouraging with all the exercise I've been doing out of the saddle. My focus in the canter work was to make sure I could rate her back with half halts from the seat and have less a hand gallop and more of a true canter. It worked today!  We only had a couple minor spooks and nothing I fell off due to. 

I've noticed I'm way weaker on my right side and I tend to sit more heavily on my left foot. This needs to change for Gwyn's sake as well as for mine. 

It was a pleasant day.

When I got back Gwyn was hardly sweating and the vet had finally arrived. She was going to be working on a lot of horses so I went and picked up Kaylee from school, grabbed her jacket and some lunch, gas for the car, and headed back to the barn with the toddler in tow.

Gwyn greets Kaylee

I had the vet give Gwyn her spring shots, specifically Potomac Horse Fever and rabies. We discussed Gwyn's ever present red eye and she proposed an interesting cause. Long ago Gwyn was bitten by a rattle snake and while there was no noticeable long term internal damage that I could ever determine, it seems like the nerves that control her eye lid were negatively affected. Her lower lid droops and doesn't keep the eye properly covered. The upper eye lid cannot close fully and her blinks are odd. The vet even demonstrated for me and sure enough, I can't believe I didn't see it before.

The solution at this point is to give her some artificial tears and see how that changes things. It may be what she needs! I'm also going to be getting a super fancy fly mask for turnout that has 95% UV blockage. I hope those things can provide some relief. I'm so paranoid about uveitis with her being part appaloosa that I really want her eyes to be in the best health they can be. 

Kaylee watches the vet tech clean the dental tools.

Then we went outside to put Gwyn away and explored the birds nest in the arena. Hurray for science!