Lame!

I was all excited to go work with the young'un tonight.  Mom sent me a DVD by Natural Horsemanship trainer Julie Goodnight that was all about working the horse on the lead line.  As I mentioned previously, Ginger needs a lot of work on respect and this looked like a good start.

So I watched it and headed out to the barn.  I would note that at this time of year it's completely dark by the time I can get to the barn and raining.  Note my devotion (some might say obsession) to doing this well.  You can't work a baby once a week and get very far.  I got my flashlight (they're still working on getting things like outdoor lights up) and tromped through the mud to the paddock.  My two girls are standing on opposite sides of the paddock from each other and Ketah comes right over to see me.  Ginger actually nickers at me, how cute!  I haltered her and start to lead her away and...she's lame.  

*Sigh* We do end up having a bit of a lesson on standing still (part of Julie's lesson on the DVD) because I really needed to clean her feet to find the problem.  Took us a while.  That horse can move amazingly well on three feet while I'm holding one!  And I didn't see anything obviously wrong.  I HATE this time of year.  The horses's feet are a mess.  She may have just bruised her foot, but in all this wet and mud it will likely become an abscess (this is when I wonder what the hell I'm thinking trying to have horses out here).  I clean her up, walk her around, inspect her legs and feet and find nothing.  The barn manager says I can go ahead and stick her in a stall.  Mabe tomorrow I'll find it, or else Ginger and I will have a fun discussion about soaking her foot.  

Horses...