sacroiliac joint


Tonka and Dr. Monika Calitri discuss his ultrasound results. For the last four years, Tonka has been consistently inconsistently lame in his left fore. Most of the time there’s nothing amiss, some of the time there’s a slight unevenness to his stride, occasionally he’s head-bobbing lame. It’s hard to diagnose […]

The Next Step


In the more than seven years since Tonka and I have been a team, we’ve had niggling issues with soundness. Except for a couple of specific instances, it’s not been dramatic enough to come up with a clear cause or cure. I tell my veterinarian that he’s not 100 percent, […]

Hoof Prints Tell All


Tonka has a history of having issues with the canter. When I got him, he had no stamina for it. Once around the ring and he’d peter out. As we progressed in our dressage Tonka was able to do a first level test without breaking stride, but the judges always […]

Hill Work as Physical Therapy



Tonka sometimes feels off. The veterinarian has had a look, and then another. The slight gimpyness isn’t enough to come up with a clear diagnosis, or even to be exactly sure where the unsoundness is coming from. This isn’t a new problem. It keeps rearing its head. Or should I […]

Sound to Ride


What with the coffin joint injections and a change in shoeing, Tonka has been sound. However, I felt that there was something not quite right. We had the occasional buck and resistance at the canter transitions. To me it felt like he got stuck and couldn’t step into it.   Tonka’s […]

Feeling (Too) Good


Some lamenesses have obvious causes and clear resolutions. Your horse is injured by a known trauma. The wound heals. Perhaps a ligament swells, causes pain, and eventually returns to some semblance of its former self. X-rays and ultrasounds can give definitive diagnoses. Sometimes. Unfortunately for the health of the horse […]

Horse Back Health Is Complicated



Tonka has been going really well. After way too long (a couple of years!) with cascading soundness issues, we’re finally out from the other side of the neck/back/sacroiliac saga. Tonka enters the indoor arena (it’s winter, it’s Maine, we’re in a ring, but at least we’re in the saddle!) with […]

Tonka Gets Hock Injections


Dressage people call riding in the ring, “playing in the sandbox.” That’s just what we did on Sunday. For most of this year I didn’t think that Tonka was going well enough to compete, and the one show that we did go to confirmed that assessment. Recently, though, Tonka has […]

We’re Back in the Sandbox


In August, I shared (in this blogpost) how Tonka was moving when I rode him. Instead of clear two and three-beat gaits, with moments of suspension, Tonka was altering his strides so that he didn’t put his full weight on his hocks and stifles. He was also moving so that […]

Suspension!