which_chick | (no subject)

Yesterday was a day off from the horse functions, but Wednesday was kind of alarming.

We did the 7.6 mile loop to Pittman and back, which we've done often enough that I don't really need to steer the horse. She knows where we are going. New, this time, we added 1 minute canters to the mix. She's handling the trotting well enough that it's not wearing her out if it's on the flat. So, in addition to the (trot six or seven minutes) bits and the (walk two or three minutes) bits, we now have (canter one minute) bits. Yay for building blocks. The canters were slow and workmanlike, only slightly faster than her working trot because she is all-too-willing to offer me speed. I don't want speed yet. I want slow and workmanlike. There will be time for speed later, after we've internalized the fact that cantering is a working gait like trotting. Cantering DOES NOT mean continual accelleration. Cantering DOES NOT mean racing the other horses. Cantering means you still have to have things like brakes and steering... just like the trot has brakes and steering. We're working on it.

Anyway, she went fine on the way out and was good at the halfway checkpoint. On the way back, she coughed about four times, which was unusual for her. She also felt... off. Just not-right. She didn't feel hugely bad, like bad enough for me to stop and get off and see what the deal was, but she didn't feel all there. I thought she was getting tired.

When we got back, I was untacking her and discovered blood on her nose, from both nostrils. It'd stopped by the time I noticed it, and it wasn't much -- maybe two teaspoons -- but still. I'd never seen anything like that before and it was kind of alarming. I was alarmed, anyway. The horse was not at all alarmed, ate her feed happily and trotted off, ears up, to the round bale when I turned her loose. She was also fine and perky yesterday, no sign of having ever bled from the nose.

Weird.

The internetwebmotron suggests that this might be exercise induced pulmonary hemmorhage but I don't know about that. We weren't going very fast or hard -- have done much harder workouts without any bleeding. I also thought EIPH was like huge amounts of blood. This was just a wee little bit. I don't really know what to do, but we're going out again today (after work) and doing another conditioning ride to see if the nosebleed thing was a one-shot deal or not. If it recurs, I will need to figure out what to do about it. If it doesn't recur, well, then it's not a problem.