Mystery Solved, or, I Suck

WELL.

I got on Lex again today, and she was immediately like "I AM A DRAGON AND I KILL EVERYTHING WITH FIRE!" So I sat it out for five minutes, got off, and burst into tears, sure that I had ruined my horse. I walked dejectedly back to the wash rack and Barn Mate S pulled Lex's saddle off and immediately identified a slight swelling on the right side of her back, like she'd been kicked or run into something, or whatever. The right side of her back REALLY hurts, y'all.

I am a dummy. Minus 10 horsemanship points for me.

So, that's what's going on here. It's not the ring, necessarily, although I bet that doesn't help. Something hurt her, and I probably won't be able to figure out what, so now it's just onto treatment. I put some poultice on her back and gave her some Bute, but the little girl doesn't even want to go into the wash rack because she's anticipating the saddle. I'm going to give her a week off, at least, but during that week, we'll go into the wash rack every day and I'll feed her lots of cookies and then let her hand graze. I just hope that whatever this is, she recovers from it and goes back to being happy under saddle. I feel like a monster.

In other news, my boss at the lesson farm just brought in a six year old Friesian/TB cross for me to play around with, so I'm really excited about that. He's very cute and looks a lot like Fynn, the three year old I've worked with a couple times. I will have plenty of horses to ride while Lex is on the mend.

Here is a cute picture, in case anyone needs one. I know I do.

TJ meets my nephew via my mom.