How Not to Die

I guess I forgot to mention in my last few posts that Walker is sound.  Well, from my quick walks of him down the concrete hall, he is at least sound at the walk.  I've decided to give him a week or so just to be on the safe side so I've been hand walking him instead.

This has turned out to be wildly dangerous, and he has turned out to be as high as a kite.  I don't blame him, of course.  He's at a brand new barn, where he has never been turned out but in the indoor arena that I walk him in, and he hasn't been worked or ridden in three months.  Besides a couple of days where he got turned out while sick, he has been cooped up.

I love this picture because he looks so unimpressed with me,
which is an accurate portrayal of our day

That being said, it's not that fun to have your horse throw his head up and rear in front of you when you dare to ask him to jog beside you.

The vet has said that I shouldn't lunge him excessively, and in my opinion, excessively means anything that would be a little too wild.  Well, I know my pony, and the minute he hits that lunge line, he's going to go crazy.  So no lunging excessively means no lunging.

The barn manager (and one of the trainers) thinks that we shouldn't turn him out until he has been ridden for all the same reasons.  He's going to go crazy in a field with or without other horses and potentially hurt himself.

This leaves poor ol' me trying to devise the safest way to ride my horse without lunging him or turning him out after three months on stall rest.  Needless to say, the words "tranquilize" have come up in conversation with my barn owner.

Tranquilizing Walker doesn't really bother me in principal, but for some reason, I just don't think it'll help.  First of all, it's not solving anything; it's just doping him up long enough for me to get on him.  Once we stop doing it, he'll still be wild even if I've ridden him a couple times by then.  I know my pony very well at this point, and when he's hyper, he just needs to get it out of his system.

So I've emailed the vet and asked her for her advice on the three issues: turnout, lunging, and tranquilizing.  In my ideal world, I would like to be allowed to turn him out for a week (this week preferably) before I try to ride him.  I would also like to lunge him before I ride him for obvious reasons.  Whether or not we tranquilize won't matter to me as much if I can do those things, but I threw the idea into my email just in case.

No matter what, bringing him back to work isn't going to be simple, and it might just be a matter of getting a professional to help me if it turns out to be too much to handle.  I don't necessarily think it will go that far.  I think it will simply be a matter of getting the first few rides in, and then we'll go back to our lovely ask/fight relationship.