Day 28 Misplacing my mistakes

One of my favorite singers, Will Young, sings

And some days you just have
To misplace all your mistakes
Somewhere that you won’t miss them
So that is exactly what I'm trying to do, not to think how we got into this mess and focus on how to get out of it.  I know that soaking Little Love's feet is important and I have rigged up something where I could soak both her fronts at the same time, but it would involve her standing on hard ground while we do it.  So, for the moment I soak one foot at a time in her stall.  She is extremely patient about it, something I didn't expect her to be, as she dislikes water.  But she seems to welcome the soaking bucket.  This morning she stood with her right foot in it while I was mucking the stall, and would signal to me when she had to adjust her position (and I had to adjust the bucket).  With this seamless team work we managed to soak the foot for 20 minutes.
After the right foot I moved to the left one, but at the point Little Love had just about had it with standing with one foot in a bucket, so we stopped after 5 minutes.  Tomorrow is a new day and we'll soak again.

Despite still being on the pain meds, Lilo came out of the stall pretty gimpy, but she did come out again eventually.  The weather is absolutely brilliant, so the ground is no longer hard in the pasture.  Little Love can walk visibly better once she gets on the soft ground; she even took a few (hesitant) running steps to keep up with Col.  She is also starting to boss him around, which means she is slowly recovering back to her old self.  I'm planning to stop her pain meds after today, so I guess tomorrow will reveal the reality of her heeling. 

After I finished with the barn chores, I took my little "artists stool" and my sketch pad and sat in the pasture with Lilo and Col for 30 minutes.  Sitting in the sun and observing the horses while attempting a few clumsy sketches felt good, it left me grounded and more at peace.  At one point Little Love walked (yes, she is moving on her own!) over to me and touched my sketch pad with her nose, then turned slowly and walked off to follow Col down the hill.  It reminded me of the several times I used to hang out in her pasture at the old barn, where she had no horse friends to talk about.  She definitely gave me more attention then than she does now.  But when I see her and Col nuzzling for blades of grass side by side and then every now and then lifting their heads to touch noses, I am filled with such strong certainty that this is how it is supposed to be; she needs to be with her kind.

When I came back to check on her in the evening, Little Love was caked in mud on both sides.  Becky said that when she had gone into the pasture the get them in, the horses had come up to the barn ahead of her.  By the time she made it back to the barn they were both in Little Love's stall - together.  That is a pretty tight fit.  I think they are trying to tell us they would really like to live together permanently, 24/7.  I have nothing against the idea, as I would love for them to be able to come back and forth freely between the barn and the pasture.  I'll have to keep working on Becky, to get her on board with that idea. 

Tomorrow we'll see how Little Love is doing without the pain meds.  I hope all this movement has made a difference.  I know the right front is still very, very sore, there is no miracle to help that foot heal in a few days, but I do hope there is an overall improvement in her condition so that she could continue healing without the meds. 

I don’t believe that it’s a failure
I don’t believe that it’s a fault
Cause if everything were plain sailing
Oh tell me – what would there be left to exalt
(Will Young: All Time Love)