Richard and MiKael Updates and a Little Ground Work

Richard posted about his injury on his journal in this post There is a cartoon by Charles M Russell and modified by Richard's daughter, Larissa, to characterize the accident. Larissa changed the rider to make it look like Richard.

My friend, Bev, and I both thought this cartoon gives poor Tag a bad rap, however. He was not an angry, fighting beast. He was a poor horse with a pinching cinch trying to tell someone he needed help. However, Tag did take that sideways leap when he got pinched. Then another couple when Richard by accident bumped him with his spurs. Richard baled off the horse and landed on his hip against the wall.

The result was Richard broke 4 transverse processes of his vertebrae. By going to his journal entry you will find a case history very similar to Richard's.....complete with pictures.

I don't know if I ever mentioned that after the fact it was discovered the horse had not been longed before this accident. Once he was longed and the saddle fixed, the horse was ridden without incident. Knowing this horse and his attitude towards work, we have all concluded that he must have been pinched by the saddle.

I might mention on Richard's journal he says that he has 3 broken transverse processes. Just for the record I'd like to say the doctor's diagnosis was 4 broken transverse processes. So when you look at the expected recovery time for such injuries......bump that time up for one more broken bone. It is that last bone that's been causing the most problem. It is sitting right next to the bone it broke off from, rubbing it and causing pain.

Has it kept Richard from riding........only briefly. By last week his was up on Vee walking around the arena. The next day he said he would only walk and trot but I looked up to see him loping past. Sometimes it hurts to ride and other times it doesn't. Mostly it depends on what he's doing. Yesterday he tried to sit a working trot and that was very painful. It definitely slowed him down a bit..........but not for long.

As for me, I had another doctor's visit on Wednesday. This time he told me I was healing just fine but it would probably be two more months until it's not painful to ride.

There's no way I'm waiting two months more to ride. I'm already having major crab attacks from not getting to ride. I asked the doctor if riding now would cause any damage or interfere with my healing process. His answer was "No." So I said, that mean I can ride now. His answer to that was "Don't call me because you are in pain."

I sat in my saddle and I think I'm going to shoot for Monday for my first day back on a horse. I'll let you know how it goes. In the meantime Richard has written two posts on ground training for young horses. Since our philosophies on this are darn near identical, I figured I'd post the links for Richard's perspective Part 1 and Part 2 Then later I will post mine. In the meantime I'm working on a post on long lining equipment. My pictures need to be retaken so I'll get that one up tomorrow.

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