Donkey, TWH and a show

So on the plus side, the TWH no longer has a swollen hock, it is nice and cool and tight.  On the downside he is still a little short strided on it.  I have kept him on bute for 6 days now and had hoped to flex test him this morning however alarm fail, I ended up sleeping until 7a!  Thankfully I had taken the time last night to fill hay nets so I didn't get too far behind but as a result I didn't get him flexed out.  I will try again tonight and see what he looks like.  I do have the vet scheduled out on the 17th and we will inject him if we think it comes down to that.  We will see.

For the horse show I have decided to pass on the show on the 18th.  The TWH is certainly not ready and I am not confident in the App being a rock star so I am going to wait.  My instructor is going to a show on the 31st, however, so I am now looking at going to it with the App.  The instructor said we certainly should do First level 1 and either First 2 or Training 3, depending on my comfort level.  I got the tests printed out last night and will try to ride tonight to see how they go.  First 1 isn't a hard test, per say, however the transitions will come FAST with almost no room for error.  I am excited to see how it goes and am planning to take another lesson on the App after riding this a few times.

While I understand planning on showing the App goes against the plans for the TWH, I am going to push forward.  Hopefully by the time I take my next lesson the TWH will be sound again and I can re-evaluate.  I am torn as I want to keep showing the App, especially since he is finally making good progress in his dressage, but I don't have the resources to show two horses.  It sounds like I will have the same dilemma as last year, we will see how it goes.

On a side note, I tried something new last night.  I tortured my donkey!  My boarder is a 10 hand pony that used to drive.  The owners are selling him and offered to sell me the harness and cart if it fit.  I tried it on and it doesn't look like it fits, some pieces do and some don't.  The donkey was not pleased about any of it but handled it really well.  I am going to try putting it on her again tonight and make sure it doesn't fit before passing on the offer.  The donkey is only 11.2 hands so she isn't that much bigger, the biggest part of the pieces that don't fit is the length of the crupper and the breaching is a little high.  Going to see if adding extenders would fix it as those are the only pieces that are too small.

I am not amused.  Not amused at all.