Sometimes Silence is Golden

A friend remarked last week that I haven’t been blogging for ages. I guess the main reason is that I hate to come across as a moany ould so-n-so.

In a nutshell, my back is still giving me trouble, despite two massages a week from a physio and an hour of yoga almost every day. Don’t get me wrong – it’s much much better than it was. The acute lumbar pain is all but gone and there’s no sciatic pain any more but I’m still not doing ‘normal’ things, like riding for more than thirty minutes, or gardening, or paring my horses’ feet. Every time I do something a little out of the ordinary, I have pain the following day. I fear that once I resume living my normal life, it’s just going to flare up, leaving me crippled for weeks again. I’m due to start a new treatment with a physio in April and I’m holding onto the hope that that course of treatment will finally fix me.

Then there’s the horses.

Aero is coughing – it’s pollen time and he’s now allergic to every speck of dust floating on the breeze. We’re trying a homeopathic treatment prescribed by a vet/osteopath who is into homeopathy. Her prescription included the advice that we should soak his hay… no shit, Sherlock!!! But they have a new field companion, so there are three horses in ‘our’ field now. We’d have to soak hay for all three, because Prince Aero doesn’t like soaked hay and he’d eat everyone else’s feed. And there’s no water at their field so water would have to be brought down. And we live in an area of drought so it’s sometimes difficult to get water at all in the summer. The alternative to soaking hay for all three would be to keep him on his own, which he would hate. I’m holding that as the ultimate last resort 😦

Both horses had the dentist (a new one) in January and when I started trying to ride Flurry (very carefully, to protect my back) I realised that he’d been badly affected by the treatment. He pretty much told me everything that was wrong – he was shaking his head constantly (atlas/axial joint was out), didn’t want me to touch his head (two frontal plates were out), particularly didn’t want me to touch the left hand side of his face (something else out there). So he was also seen by the vet/osteopath who treated all of the above plus a long standing blockage at his withers. But I notice him still shaking his head from time to time, so either he needs another visit or (oh please god, no) he’s also become allergic to pollen and that’s why he’s started head shaking.