I finally got the vet in since Nicole has been lame for about 3 weeks with no improvement. Apparently she has some opaque injury to the deep tissue muscles that connect her neck to her shoulders that appears to amount to a muscle strain. Those muscles in her neck/shoulder were stretched somehow, most likely resulting from the marriage between a pre-existing condition and an incline in her turnout paddock.
It's nice to know this since we spent, oh, I don't know, 3 weeks guessing whether it was the right front or the left hind, only to find out it's basically both legs. No problem with the actual legs, but the "off-ness" of the limbs is symptomatic of this neck/shoulder issue. I had a feeling it the issue was in that area. She's on banamine and injectable steriods, and hopefully we won't be dealing with any mare roid-rage. She probably hasn't been in any pain, as indicated by her willingness to work, but she's off because the strain makes everything a little more clunky.
On another note, after a near nervous breakdown, I've finally figured out how to ride Nikita's enormous trot. This just re-affirms my belief that dressage shouldn't be this hard, and when it becomes this hard, it's time to reevaluate what I'm doing. If it's hard, I'm probably doing it wrong. Which I was. Now I can ride the mare's powerful trot all day long with no problem, whereas before I was huffing and puffing and wanting to put the Colt 45 to my head to end my misery.
What's interesting is that the riding ideology I've been using espouses that the knees should remain closed in order to produce a powerful show trot. I've found the opposite is true - closing the knees interferes with producing a deep seat - which is why I couldn't ride Nikita without wanting to blow my head off. Take off the knees (or reduce the pressure) and maintaining a deep seat is easy. And the mare doesn't want to kill me. And now riding is fun again. And there you have it.
