VCBH: Honesty

This week L. Williams from Viva Carlos asks us to "fess up" to our biggest horse care mistakes.  Seeing as I have plenty, I figured I'd pick the most recent one, which actually happened/is still happening this week.

A little background.

I am not a hypochondriac at all.  Like, not even close. I'm known to self diagnose and treat all of my ailments (unless it's really bad... it usually isn't) and therefore take the same sort of approach with Mollie.  I've always been very laid back, am known to "wait and see" before acting, etc.  This is not to say that I neglect my horse... just that I make sure whatever is going on isn't something I can fix before calling the vet out.

Therefore, when I lunged Mollie on Wednesday of last week and she started out a little ouchy up front, I thought nothing of it for a few reasons.
1)  I hadn't used her BoT hock boots before lunging
2) It had rained that day so she had been inside, therefore prone to being stiff
3) She has much less of a "warm up" on the lunge than she does under saddle
4) For the last few years Mollie has become accustomed to being ridden rather collected, in some semblance of self carriage, and not carrying weight on her sensitive front legs.  When plopped on the lunge line she just kinda tools around on her front end so that doesn't help anything.

She eventually seemed to work out of it, there was no heat or swelling, so I threw her back in her stall and thought nothing of it.

This weekend rolled around and Mollie was an absolute tool about being ridden so clearly did not appear to be in any sort of discomfort.  Teleporting across an arena sideways isn't exactly a red flag for "I'm kinda lame".

Therefore I was kinda surprised (maybe I shouldn't have been) when I went to ride Mollie on Tuesday of this week and she was noticably lame up front.  I'm notoriously bad at figuring out if it's left or right sided, so I'm just going to go with "up front", seeing as we're fessing up.  While I could kind of "ride her" sound she definitely wasn't sound when left to her own devices.

So what did I do to take care of my poor ouchy pony?

Not a damn thing.

Now before you go calling the equine DCYF, I'm going to try to justify this.

1)  I didn't BoT her before this ride, yet again.
2) There was no sign of heat/swelling/squishiness/ouchiness anywhere visible on her legs
3) I did see what looks to be a bruise on the outside of her front right hoof... I've never really seen a hoof bruise in this location before, and obviously I neglected to take a picture (this is a post about sucking as a horse mom, remember?) but I noticed it none the less.

Seeing as there was nothing glaring that could have been making her sore, I chose to do nothing.  Because really, what would the vet want me to do besides give her a few days off to wait and see?  So that's exactly what I'm doing.  I could poultice, or soak, etc. but there's nothing that indicates she actually needs any of those things.  I'll be back to the barn on Saturday and will hopefully have a better idea of what's going on.

Or maybe she'll be magically better, because you know, that's what all neglectful moms hope for, right?

And now a flashback to fly mask problems past.