amendments

My post last night was so all over the place from me being so frazzled, but I tried to smooth it over a little in the comments--so if I confused you, run there!

Anyway, I wanted to clear the air on a few things. I hope I didn't seem like this at all, but my horse is going nowhere. He is my responsibility, and in this economy, I am not giving him or sending him to anyone. I am not going to pass him off on someone else if the tailside of this is that he's unrideable. I know that he's so arthritic that realistically he'll only have a few more comfortable years, but I'm optimistic that I'll be able to do something for him to help with his pain. I just hope I can afford it.

I know some of you are probably wondering how I didn't notice, and I'm wondering the same thing. But when I'm told that he's a very young horse when he actually isn't, and that he passed the flex test in his PPE, I guess I'm not really looking for something like severe arthritis. And there was always something--when I first got him, before his injury, he had sore feet from bad shoeing, and an abcess, and the vet told me that was why he was slightly off for the first few trotting strides. Well, then he hurt himself, and of course that caused lameness. I'm just hoping that my ignorance didn't cause him to get any worse... hopefully I didn't cause even more discomfort for him in riding too hard or something.

"Free horse, you know," I told the vet yesterday.

He laughed and said, "They're never free."

I'm sure he met it in a monetary sense, but I think I finally understand what that saying means.