A misleading photo series

The photos I posted yesterday may have led you from the truth: I was tacked up and readied not for a ride but for a photo-shoot. I wanted to show you the delightful interplay between my quarter sheet and my new barn. Unfortunately, I was not sound enough for our planned outing.

The fact of the matter is, FarmWife knew before she began to tack me up that there would be no adventuring for me. You see, a brief walk to the salmon pond and back last week caused a bit of thickening in my hock joint. A slightly less brief walk up the mountain and back, with my biggest filly aboard, caused even more thickening. Friday, with no particular cause at all, my hock was about one baseball bigger than it ought to have been. Yesterday, too. I'm not lame on it, but with my history of issues in that joint FarmWife doesn't want to push it. She said we won't do any more riding or walking for a while except in the pasture, and that I'll get an ultrasound when she can afford it and a lot of time off in the meantime.

"You have a terrible hock," she told me, "but you are a wonderful friend." We played "Nicker for snacks," instead, wherein FarmWife holds something delicious and refuses to relinquish it until I whuffle at her. It's a great game.

Ears,
FenBar

An old x-ray of the offending hock, showing nothing significant.