Feet back on the ground

It seems as though we’ve barely had time to breathe since the middle of last week.

There was the disappointing New Moon midnight viewing, the dash to Heathrow, the flight to Munich, the Muse gig that evening at the Olympiahalle, the trip out to the Bavarian countryside the next evening, the trip back to the UK…

I think I’ll pick a few notables off the list and write them up singly; the car parking fiasco at Heathrow is probably going to be the first on my list.

But today it’s down to earth with a big bump; this morning’s text from the yard that Tom had a fat leg once again had me cussing.

When the vet said she’d get to the yard at 12.15 I reminded her to bring the opthalmoscope to check Vin’s eyes, because I’ve been worried about him for a couple of weeks.

Tom’s fat leg is, as I first suspected, a flare-up of the knock/infection he picked up recently.

The wet weather and muddy turnout have combined and caused it to return, so he’s on a stronger antibiotic and this time he gets it injected, not added to his feed as powder.

I’m on needle duty; ironically I’ve got more experience of administering injections than any of the yard staff.

The good news is that Tom is sound as a pound on that leg – which will be back to normal size tomorrow anyway.

I was planning on a trip up to Evesham tomorrow for a spot of show-jumping; maybe we’ll still go; I’ll think on it tonight.

I see that there’s a Bloodhound meet in this area this weekend, that’s tempting! But I’m not stupid, the weather will be what I base my ‘go/no go’ decision on.

So that’s Tom.

Vin, on the other hand, continues to be a dreadful worry to his dad.

We’ve known since last year that his seasonal headshaking was related to a sensitivity to sunlight.

In the last few weeks Vin has been spooking in the same place in the indoor arena, when ridden on the left rein. But turn him and he’ll quite happily leg-yield right up to the trouble spot without turning a hair.

So I asked the vet to check out his eyesight today.

She looked at both eyes very carefully and just as she pronounced them clear Vin snorted violently out of his nose – and continued to snort, repeatedly.

She did more checks and furthered the diagnosis that his sensitivity to light has worsened in his right eye to the point where it is no longer sensitive to sunlight, but is now sensitive to all types of light.

The spooking in the arena is due to a reflection from one of the lights shining on one of the show-jumping poles stacked on the side, she thought, which explains why he’s not susceptible on the right-rein (i.e. when his left eye is to the outside).

This makes sense to me. It also goes some way to explain why Vin’s as good as gold to canter on the right rein but after a few strides of left-lead canter he goes rigid and begins to fall in on the circle.

Ho hum.

The prognosis is not good. There’s very little available to us, by way of treatments or preventative/mitigational courses of action.

On brighter days Vin will have a continuous headache, on worse days it’ll be like a permanent migraine.

I have some serious thinking to do about the ginger ninja.