10/25/2026
If you’re in for a random topic that bothers me to no end, here’s my Sunday toss up. A toss up that is about a personal horse of mine.
HB 🤍
This mare was in the comments of a Facebook thread on un started 3yr olds. $3500 shipped out of Montana. She was sold with cosmetic blemishes. But for $3500? Who cares. She unloads halter broke, a little sweet but also mean as hell. Her blemishes? They also Radiographed ugly but the joint it self was beautiful. So I rolled with the what ifs. Fast forward to her 5yo year (2025). She took to the barrels no problem. Now her papers say she shouldn’t lol but she did. She was flirting with the 2D just about anywhere we went by fall of 2025. I turn my horses out for 6 weeks every winter while I’m out of town working events.
December of 2025 she had an incident with a blanket and a gate. Things happen. Horses are horses. It’s part of it.
I get home from Vegas and she visibly looks sound. Travels sound. Hardly a scratch on her. She was a train wreck for the chiropractor but to be expected when you tackle a gate. A few weeks in she starts cold sweating on her right stifle. Some sort of nerve damage. I run her up to the vet for a full lameness. She needed routine hock injections but still looked great on the lameness pad. Just to be sure we took radiographs and ultrasound of her stifle. She was clean. We go back to work 👏🏼.
2026- Her first few runs back she wasn’t committing to her first barrel. Now to the eye, she was but she didn’t have the same feel. She’s only 6 so I think training. We fix the first. 2 months later she starts trying to tackle the second barrel. Take her back to the vet, she needs her coffins injected. Normal things. Okay perfect. Back to work 👏🏼.
Now we aren’t tackling are second barrel, we are pulling our left front shoe, 3 strides before the second barrel and pulling it from the inside out. I’ve had the same farrier for 2 years. He’s stumped. But when she’s pulling it, we are breaking the pattern she’s tripping so hard from pulling her shoe. Repeatedly for a few runs. Now I’m thinking, why? Am I starting my turns too soon? Am I slingshotting her into the barrel?
Switched her left and things got better, and we were on the up again.
June 2026 We go lame Left front. Blocks sound to medial heel. MRI is in her best interest. At this point I felt defeated. I pulled her shoes and turned her out. Because I don’t have time to fix my own 🫣.
This is my toss up. She doesn’t flex lame right hind. Theres no evidence of a right hind lameness. The cold sweating in the stifle quit months ago. But since pulling her shoes, I noticed she squares her right hind toe off. Shes not traveling correctly right hind. She is still lame left front as of today at a trot. 4 months off. Still lame. I could mri the left front. (Mind you no injections have helped the left front). But what’s this right hind that vets sound but obviously is why we are lame left front. It is the reason we were pulling our left shoe.
Her bad radiographs she’s had since I bought her, have never been her issue. Even though most people would’ve never given her one thought because of them.
Moral of this rant. Your visible lameness isn’t always the underlying issue. Your text book vet trips aren’t always going to show the problems (because why would it be that easy? Horses is why.) Trauma typically shows its self later on once the scar tissue has set up.
Videos in the comments
