A minute everyday

Well I have decided to update weekly. I know that every minute I add to his walking is exciting to me, it most definitely isn't to everyone else and I couldn't imagine writing on every minute….boring. So as of today it has been a solid week since I started to walk Forrest under saddle myself. We started at 5 minutes and added a minute every day. Today we will start to add 2 minutes every time which will put us at 30 minutes of walking and the point in which we graduate to adding some trotting! J

Forrest has been doing very well. The leg has been looking really good and we knew it would be interesting since he has my weight on him for the first time in months. Of course as should be expected with Forrest and his Rehab his leg only got smaller the more minutes we added to his “workout.” And yes it most definitely is a work out; only Forrest could have sweat marks under his girth at the walk but then again we aren't exactly on a loose rein either. We have been getting him to walk up from behind, to help his hip, and leg yielding every day. While he has been getting annoyed at the fact that “leg” is being applied I believe he is happy to have a “job” at the moment.

So the week went well and he progressed as we thought. However we did hit a pivotal moment in his rehab this weekend. There is nothing like getting a call from your trainer and starting it off with: “: you know how I always tell you I am so happy with the leg, it looks great, exactly where I expected it to be,” (insert moment of panicking as I thought it looked terrible), “ well today I went to check the leg and ran my hand down his leg as I always do and for once actually had to DOUBLE CHECK if I had the right leg and even after the second time running my hand down had to LOOK AGAIN to be sure.”

Haha, yep basically she was beside herself with shock at how GOOD it looked. She had her expectations and what she felt and saw blew those out of the water. For the first time in a transition of rehab Forrest’s Tendon Sheath was no longer swollen. This is usually something we account for which is why we usually account for 2-3 days of plateauing work and keeping it the same before adding more. She basically said if he was further along in his walking, and she was half tempted to forgo it anyways, we would start trotting today. But we have our game plan and sticking to it no matter how fast the leg heals we will continue with our timeline. I was so happy to know that the leg is further along than his rehab schedule. But in the long run this basically means when it comes time to trot, canter and eventually jump that his tendon will be ready for it and be stronger.

His leg in general looks amazing. It’s practically gone and at about 95% healed swelling wise. It was even better to hear someone who hasn't seen his injury in a couple months, come and take a look and the first thing they say is “What exactly am I looking at?” J We have decided to schedule the next scan the week of Christmas. This should have Forrest and I trotting for about 14 days before the scan along with a drop in degree in his pads. Unfortunately with the warmer weather, it does make it harder to reduce the rest of the edema in his leg, but when it’s hot out we’ll cold hose/ice the leg to counteract it. So we will keep going and adding two minutes the next week and be ready to rock and roll at the trot next week!