Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Of twitter, arthritis, and wide calves

The last of my resistance was recently worn away, and I now tweet. The final crack in my armor was finding out that Nathan Fillion tweets. How am I supposed to resist that? And once I had my account set up, it was just so freakin' easy to type 140 characters. And to link it up with my blog. Sigh. I never thought I would tweet.

Sam the German shorthair has arthritis in his gimpy shoulder. I was actually pretty happy to hear that. I was envisioning horrible things like torn ligaments, cartilage chips in the joint, and bone cancer. Arthritis we can deal with. He had a shot of Adequan at the vet, is on a course of anti-inflammatories, and I'm going to start him up on a glucosamine/chondroitin sulfate/MSM supplement ASAP. He's already at least 50% improved. But man, was he stoned when I brought him home from the vet. They sedated him for his x-ray. Around mid-evening I carried him out to the yard and set him down. He stood, eyes closed, gently swaying from side to side. I left him for ten minutes to see if he might snap out of it a bit, but when I returned he was still swaying. I picked him up and plopped him back on the couch.

My current pair of schooling boots is falling apart, so I ordered some Ovation boots with zippers because they were on sale at Dover. Now, I was once a slim-calf-sized person, but I accept the fact that I am no longer that person. That person was ten pounds ago. I am firmly in the regular-calf camp these days. So that's what I ordered. And guess what? The regular calves were too narrow. Ack! I don't think I qualify as wide-calved. Seriously. I'm offended. But the price was too good, so I sent back the regulars and requested the wides, which have not yet arrived. If they turn out to be too wide, I am going to be really grumpy. I can't be dinkin' around getting replacement boots. My current boots have cracked wide open where the stirrup hits the outside of my foot, so I have steel pressing against my foot during every ride, producing a giant, permanent bruise. I'm suffering, here.

Last night Willow felt so good through the neck -- loose and adjustable. I could see her crest clearly flip when I changed directions. She's also much less locked on the left rein than she used to be.

2 comments:

Kathleen @ ForgingAhead said...

Welcome to the world of twitter! I just wrote a little post about it yesterday trying to explain it to one of my commenters.

So glad Sam is ok and it sounds like Willow is doing beautifully!

BMGallop said...

I completely understand about the calf size offense. I'm 5'1", about 120 lbs, size 5 feet, and wide calves apparently. My calves are tiny. They are not muscular. And yet I wear a wide. I, too, was offended. lol

It's like going into Abercrombie and Fitch and wearing a size 10 when everywhere else I wear a 4-6.

I haven't given into the twitter yet. Thank goodness.