Some Coordination Required

I adore my Fiona horse...yep I do!  I do however look at her and think, there is no way on earth that  I would want to run on you right now.  She seems to have no real idea where her feet are most of the time!

Yesterday I saddled both Fiona and Tari and headed up the hill for a little work out.  Both of the girls were a little whiny about the heat.... I felt for them I was sweating just sitting in the saddle.  We walked up the hill and turned around at the culvert which at a walk is about 45 minutes.  On our way there Fiona tripped about 300 hundred times. 

She was walking with a horsey smile on her face, her head swinging from side to side looking at everything with great interest...not like it was the boogie man, but like it may be something to play with.  All of her looking made it hard for her to keep track of those long legs and big feet.

We managed to circumnavigate several trees and even a mud puddle without much problem, but then across the road there was a tree that seemed to have teeth.  I have no real idea what happened, but she ended hooking her right from boot on the tree.  Her foot came up and the tree came up too.  The thing held on.  I dropped her lead and she picked up her foot again and the tree slapped her in the belly.  She set her foot down, rocked back onto her haunches and hopped, luckily her left hind hit the tree and pulled the boot apart and freed up her leg.  It wasn't quite that simple, it was sort of ugly actually...but that's the gist of what happened.

Once her foot was free of the boot and tree she stopped, looked back at it then looked at me like, WTF?!   I hopped off Tari and grabbed her up.  I picked up the torn off boot and and removed the left front.  I checked her over and decided to ride on.  She didn't take a lame step the rest of the ride...  Unfortunately, she didn't get the idea that she needed to pay attention to her feet either.  Oh, well!

She and Tari were a little hesitant to cross that tree a second time, but they both did and we made it home without further incident.  If anyone else rides in these boots, have you had any "oopses"?  I know they were on right, and I am committed to continuing to riding in them.  The Vet suggested that she always wear support boots due to her tendon injury on the hind and I have read that your horse should have boots on all 4 because its important/helpful to their balance.

I cannot tell you how happy I am that she did not panic and go letting her eyes roll back into the back of her head...one side of the road was straight up and the other straight down.  Having her blow and roll down the hill would not have been good.  I could just imagine myself hacking her out of the saddle with my semi dull pocket knife...Chad is going to sharpen it for me tomorrow...still fat lot of good that would have done me earlier!  She may be a bitch some days and other days she just blows me away with the "smart" stuff she does.

Fiona Rocks!

These shadows do not...oh, well that's what you get for taking pictures this late in the day!  ( :