Trouble, A History

I bought Trouble as an unbroke two-year old who was barely halter broke. After much hard work, I turned her into a showmanship star, but the undersaddle work was iffy. Years later, we moved to a hunter barn and learned all the fun that is jumping. However, they had virtually no turnout and that certainly wasn't the greatest idea for a horse named Trouble! We eventually left, having gotten burned out showing, and moved to a barn with good turnout and trails. Trouble resided there when I went off to college. Later, I did drag her with me to grad school, where we began taking hunter lessons again. We had a blast and even started going to local shows. We were having a blast, until I had to grow up and get a real job.

Where we live now, hunters are not very popular, but eventing is! I signed up for our first CT test (minus cross country). I thought, dressage will be just like an equitation pattern, right? Turns out, the dressage was held in a scary, horse eating indoor, with frilly white chain lurking in wait, ready to snag Trouble, and the judge was cowering at the end of the arena, obviously in fear of the monster table! Yeah, so maybe we have some work to do... But at least we were clear in show jumping! No hunter circles, and EVERYBODY was clucking to their horses (a definite no-no in hunterland).

Next we tried a CT with cross country (minus stadium). I went to walk the course the day before and thought, we are SO dead! This was a super fancy XC course, complete with Winnie the Pooh and a dragon to jump! Yikes! I was quite pleased that we were eliminated on the fifth jump - Trouble was very looky, but after letting her stop (bad, I know) she would go over the fancy decorated jumps.

So at home, we started setting up "dynamic jumping" exercises. We'd start with a simple oxer, and while I looped around, DH would do something to make the jump look different (putting a blanket over the jumps, using traffic cones, etc) Instead of getting used to jumping strange things, Trouble started stopping. As I tried to work with her, her stopping got even worse. Soon, she was stopping at dinky crossrails! Very uncool. So I finally decided to get us some real eventing lessons, and hopefully we'd get some help on this stupid stopping problem!

Fast forward a few months. Instructor thinks Trouble is NQR. Something in her hind end. I certainly don't see it. A few weeks later, I think I *might* see something. Nothing very obvious, at least. But trainer recommends taking her to a vet. Vet recommends x-rays, and then hock injections. Wait, I cry! This horse is mostly fine. Are you people crazy to go to these drastic measures? But I get convinced and agree to the injections. And Adequan.

During the week after the hock injections, Trouble looks worse. She used to careen around the pasture, but now she does nothing more than walk. No Trouble-ish antics in the pasture. I feel horrible. Have I made my horse worse?

Three weeks later, Instructor declares Trouble a new horse, moving much better than before. She is better than immediately after the injections, but I'm not so sure that she's entirely different than before. Except... she's not stopping at the jumps anymore! Even really scary XC jumps. Hmmm.

So, this blog with describe our continuing endeavors with eventing, dressage, and injections.