August Review

As you will know August has definitely been a bad month.  Poor Basil has had another hard few weeks, this time,  with his tooth.  Obviously this means no riding!

 

My August Aims for Basil were:

1.       Calmness, rhythm and suppleness in  canter.

2.       Consistency of bend on left rein in trot and canter.

3.       Halt transitions from trot, continue to improve.

4.       Canter to trot transitions - still need to happen more quickly.

5.       Jumping, 1 stride doubles, in a good sensible canter rhythm.

6.       Turn on the forehand - continue improve movement away from left leg.

7.       Introduce the 'snowman' and 'squareman' exercises.

8.       Change rein in canter with 4 or less trot strides to change canter lead.

9.       Improve our  half circles in trot.

10.   Learn a dressage test (prelim 1) and do it at home.

This is what August looked like:

1st - hack.  Lovely to be getting out and about again.

3rd - lunging, no bucking or loopy cantering today.

4th - flat schooling today.  Pleased as we did some lovely leg yield towards the track in walk and trot and 

Basil tried really hard with turn on the forehand both ways too.  We achieved some really nice trot work on the bit, with a good bend and in a great rhythm.  We tried the 'snowman' on both reins doing the smaller circle in walk and the larger in trot.  After the trot circle we went on to canter around the arena.  Pretty good session today.

6th - Vet to look at Basil's lump - Basil's lump which I initially thought was a fly bite ( 2 days before it appeared  he had one on his other cheek) has not gone.  I decided to call the vet to have a look at it, which is lucky because she said it was a probable tooth root infection.  Antibiotics and painkillers.  I have not noticed any of the 'signs' that Basil may be having trouble with his teeth that I mentioned in my All About Teeth blog.

14th - the antibiotics have very slowly reduced the size of Basil's lump so the vet is advising an x-ray to confirm the extent of the infection.  Basil is not very good to load and is a bad traveller and has not been in a trailer for nearly 6 years.  This in addition to the reaction I know will come from Chesney makes me nervous about taking Basil away for an x-ray.  Vet has suggested we MAY be able to use the mobile x-ray machine.

20th - X-Ray Basil's lump - the vet came with the mobile x-ray machine and confirmed tooth root infection between first 2 molars of upper jaw.  The white tape cross marks the lump!

Since then the vet that has been working with us has been on holiday.  The decision was made that we would wait until her return to decide on the best course of action for Basil.  He is still on a course of antibiotics and painkillers and the lump is continuing to shrink very slowly.  I believe that the options include removing a tooth or widening the gap between the 2 teeth.  Both options will mean food no longer gets caught between his teeth and won't be able to cause an infection again in the future.  We need to discuss what will cause the least problems in the future and balance this with taking Basil away for treatment and/or how long he will be away.

I have been a bit surprised that Basil is having problems with his teeth.  As I mentioned earlier he has shown no signs that his teeth are causing him problems.  He is now 14 years old and I have had him since he was 6.  Each year he has had his teeth checked and rasped and he has had no problems before suggesting he has a gap (or diastema) between his teeth.  The vet also could not feel or see a gap when she came out to see him, but it showed on the x-ray. 

Luckily he still seems to be eating well enough that he is not losing weight.  I am now glad that he has been carrying a little extra as if he has to go away he will worry quite a lot of the extra weight off.  Chesney will also worry lots of his weight off if Basil goes away so I have been trying to feed him up again in the last week or so.

 

 

My September Aims for Basil are only to get him better.

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Until next time!

Jo