Today was well deserved but lazy ride.

Frankie’s skin “condition” had worsened. He was VERY sensitive to the touch and also had a decent sized edema between his front legs. Make that two edema’s, as though he had gelding breasts, deflated, but still gelding breasts. I thought about Fight Club.

I tacked him up—the breast plate sits right were the skin problem is at it’s worst. He seemed sore, not lame, just sore. Walking him, the rubbing of the breast collar made the skin slough off really bad. I got on and Codi and I evaluated his “soundness”. He was sound, he felt sound, and looked sound. However, he was a bit stiff.

After making futile calls to local veterinarians, I sent some pics to the best vet in the world, Lorie Valentino at Vermont Large Animal Equine Clinic, for her advise while Frankie sat fairly patiently in crossties. Of course, diagnosing over the phone is impossible, but we both came to the conclusion of a “reaction” to “something”.

So I hopped back on after removing the breast plate. We ran though the dressage test twice, I had the pehlam on so I was only looking for transitions. He didn’t want to move forward a ton in the canter or trot, but he was a good boy.

Then I headed to the outdoor for a few jumps. The jumps I set up the day before were still up. A quarter of the ring was flooded. So two jumps were off limits. But he was very good. He added, very short with just a touch of the reins. I couldn’t have asked for better. We jumped about 8-10 jumps and headed back to the barn.

I had to get back to work, so post work I returned to the barn again to wash his grossness with some hypoallergenic shampoo. A carrot, an apple, and we called it a night.