Bo's Taping

Dr. Landes came out on Friday to see Bo and was really impressed with how much better he's doing already.  Much less reactive to the ulcer points, overall less body sore, so we didn't treat him with acupuncture or laser but chose to give him some more time in his current program before re-treating.  Bo's next recheck will be on the 24th with the rest of the horses.  Dr. Landes and I agreed that Bo needs more time to recover, get comfortable in his body, and be moving correctly before we start eventing conditioning, which is ultimately what his owner would like to do with him.  This is to make sure that when we get to conditioning, we're strengthening the correct muscles and not the compensatory muscles.  I did put kinesiotape on Bo Friday afternoon and we walked over poles in hand in the arena, but he fatigued fairly quickly.  He began hitting the poles regularly with his feet at about 10 min. instead of the half an hour he was doing without the tape.  I removed the tape on Sat. since it also changed his resting posture into a more uncomfortable stance, more similar to the posture he had when he arrived.  These were fairly subtle changes, but definitely significant.  His system is not ready for that kind of stimulus yet, which he told me by his body language.  The reaction to the tape is a reminder from Bo not to push him too hard too fast.  I'll give him some more time before I retry that, in the meantime I'll increase the difficulty level of his pole work but keep using the bells.  All good progress for the guy.  He also got his feet trimmed this week and now has much more balanced barefoot hooves which will give his nervous system and muscles better information about where he is in space and make it more likely that he will use the correct muscles.