It Hasn't Been Easy

It hasn't been easy, and I knew it wouldn't be... I just didn't think it'd be this hard. Spyder seems to be recovering physically, but mentally, he's in a different place. We did have some bumps with being crazy when starting to pick up the trot again (at 2 minutes total), and I've since gotten it to 10. He was fine for most of 5 minutes, but with ten, he's a different horse.

I was being brave after him sitting for so long and decided to trot out of the round pen since we need to trot straight. The rearing, bucking, ears back, crabby horse is back. Most times, he's fine, but others, he's a mess. Is this a phase or is this my new horse? The three most recent trips to the farm have been failures. Third to the last was a rear when a horse came in from being ridden - rear, spook, rear, shuffle, fire breathing dragon. The other girl had to dismount and Spyder refused to listen - back to the round pen for the rest of the walking. The second to the last ride, same story. It was a HUGE rear and shuffling backwards to face and back away from the direction a horse walked out of the barn to get ridden. Awesome. Are we afraid of horses now? I rode through it and moved to the round pen to cool out before going to the same location and making him stand still and behave before untacking. Funny thing about this is there is a canopy that is down that flaps and waves in the wind like a sheet on a clothes line - he's fine with that, but not horses?

Last hand walk (this Wednesday) was me asking him to move, and he didn't want to go. I pushed him to go forward, and he decided to turn and try to bite me. I threw my hands up and yelled to scare him off, and he turned away from me throwing his butt closer to me and trotting away. Wow, great attitude when I've been rehabbing you for a year and sacrificing so much of my life to make sure I get out there every day to help you get better. What do I do with this horse? I need to get up to 20-25 minutes of trot before we go back for another ultrasound, and quire frankly, it's been torture for both of us.

I e-mailed the doctor that was working with him at New Bolton, and she never got back to me. Figures. He needs to get back out in the field and on 24/7 turnout like he was prior to all of this. Maybe if he can harass the horses, he can get it out of his system by the time I get there to ride. It's hard to discipline a horse that can't be pushed to canter and let out the bucks/rears for fear that he'll hurt himself and we'll have to start over.