Fort Valley: 17 miles and lame

View from Massanutten Trail (the ridgeline on the first loop)

I should be at Fort Valley base camp finishing dinner after a long but rewarding day of 50 miles. Instead I am writing this back at home, with my visiting out-of-town family.  My parents drove up from Florida to see first hand this crazy sport that their daughter has gotten obsessively involved with!  Unfortunately they got to see first hand ALL the aspects of endurance... (except a completion award!)

Fort Valley prep officially started 10 days ago with a new set of shoes, then light riding the week prior to the ride, with mashes, electrolytes, gastrogard, etc.  Sunny traveled well and was relaxed at camp. We had a great pre-ride and he vetted-in without an issue.  We had a calm start, but going up the initial gravel road I felt something was slightly off so I stopped to make sure he hadn't picked up a rock in his shoe.  All looked good and he evened out so we enjoyed the trail, readily moving out on the forest service roads and taking our time on the rocky climbs.  Sunny ate and drank well on trail and was an absolute dream to ride! However on the downhill forest road headed back into basecamp he felt slightly uneven at the gait and trot and the rider with me confirmed a very slight head nod-- off on the right front, but then on level ground he felt sound again.  At camp he pulsed in quickly, but I asked Dr. Bob Marshall to pay extra attention to the RF on the trot out and he confirmed that he was consistently off on the RF.  The wonderful ride vets had a lull in the horses coming in, so they looked at him a little more in depth and Dr. Julia Wolfe found a moderate amount of coffin joint effusion, mild reactivity to palpation of the proximal suspensory and definite reactivity to the 'foot' acupuncture point on the right side.  His shoeing and hooves still looked great (boy I wish it was just an obvious hoof bruise or muscle cramp!!).  In hindsight I also noticed he kept throwing me to one diagonal when trotting -- of course now I can't remember which one as I make a point to consistently switch.

Spot on the right front that I thought was an abscess coming out the corornet

I am not sure what is going on yet,  but of course all the horrible career ending injury thoughts are going through my head.  Sunny is my decade team, amazing-forever-partner horse- we have another 10-15 years of great rides ahead -- he can't be permanently lame!! The kicker is he was off in the right front on September 15, our first conditioning ride 3 weeks after he completed back-to-back 50's at Iron Mountain (sound).  He had a spot on the coronet band of the hoof that looked like an abscess coming out, but he was only about a 3/5 lame and hoof-tester negative.  I had to go out of town and by the time I got back he was sound and we had 3 good conditioning rides prior to Fort Valley.   Now I am wondering if he had something brewing in the hoof/tendon/joint/etc and now it is rearing it's ugly head.  I sincerely hope it is not low-ringbone :(  Sunny and I can take all the time we need to heal a tendon or even surgically remove a bone chip, but there are not many great options for osteoarthritis of the coffin joint besides management and reducing athletic demands.  Sunny has an appointment for a full lameness workup on Tuesday and hopefully we will have some good answers. Hopefully it is nothing but a minor strain or bruise! On the bright side the timing is convenient for  rest as Fort Valley is the last ride of our season and I am also very glad he is insured with medical coverage!

For now he is enjoying relaxing back in his home field, comfortable with a dose of Equioxx on board.  I will post again when I have answers.. until then I will worry 😊