Foiled again

On Tuesday, as I was doing a final girth check and putting the stirrups down on the saddle, a lady ran into the arena to tell me that the tornado sirens were going off.

I was surprised--there was some nasty weather brewing but Limerick hadn't shown any signs of hearing the sirens. She had been behaving a little oddly while I was grooming her--very cuddly and wanting me to hug her, which is unusual for her--but since it was a "positive" odd, I had not thought about it much.

Maybe it was because of the storm.

Either way, I took her back to the barn immediately and untacked and fed her in record time...and not a moment too soon! On my way home the hurricane-force winds and torrential rain started, and I saw the biggest, blackest funnel cloud of my life. Yikes yikes yikes. Fortunately, the storm didn't do much damage around the barn or my home.

Then yesterday....

While picking Lim's feet out I noticed that one of the horseshoe nails was coming out and awkwardly twisted in her shoe. Crap!!!! I really wanted to ride, so since the shoe was still on straight and not all that loose, I decided to try anyway. I put her bell boots and splint boots on just in case that nail tried to do damage. Doubtful, but you never know with horses.

Yet when I walked her to the arena, I could see that she wasn't walking properly. She strided out fine but would step down hard with the hoof that had the loose shoe, as if it were annoying her. Once in the arena, however, she appeared to walk okay so I decided to see how she was.

It just wasn't meant to be...from her back, I could tell she wasn't walking perfectly and the awkward steps were very obvious to me at the trot.

Ughhh....I was supposed to go on the first trail ride of the year with her this Sunday. Hopefully the farrier can fix the shoe before then. To make things worse, I'm afraid to turn her out like this, so she has to be on stall rest until that shoe is fixed.

Foiled again!