But! I had dreams!

It's hard when you think your friend might be done. Or, at least not up to what you'd like to do with them.

It's looking more and more like Penny was in some pain at Santa Fe. Needing her hocks done is sort of a no-brainer. Its almost been six months. The farrier was out yesterday and he said she's wearing her hind feet weird and he thinks there's something up with her back.

It's so hard with her, to figure out if she's being disobedient just because she wants to be disobedient or if she hurts. Even on the best of days she's still highly opinionated and you simply will not be making her do something she does not want to.  We've been chasing down possible pain in her for two years. She's had her poll x-rayed and ultrasounded, same with her hind legs. Nothing ever shows. We injected her hocks for the first time just to see if anything would happen: she got better, so now we're doing hocks. We had her on an NSAID for a month earlier in the summer and she was super. I could even ride her down the gravel road without shoes on. Alas, no NSAIDs for competing ponies.

I'm seriously considering retiring her from eventing. She loves the jumping parts, but she just hates dressage so much. Yes, I could compete her "for fun" but it's not much fun when she bucks during her dressage test. Also, it's a pretty expensive weekend with at least a 6 hour drive. We're always last unless other competitors get massive sj and xc faults. If there were more competitors in Area X we wouldn't have any ribbons at all.

For now, I'm taking Bean to Coconino at Pre-Comp and see what she thinks about XC. She's not a long term solution for a mount: she is 22. But, we'll do just fine and there's a good possibility we won't be last.