(Some More) Words on Colic

For a year Stella has had no issues with colic. If you go back into the Chronicles of Ernest and scan through posts you will find several of my woes with her gas colics.

I have come to the conclusion that she is a stress colicker. She's been scoped (twice) and treated for ulcers...I decided to treat once just to see if  maybe it would help, it didn't. Both scopes have showed less than three very, VERY mild ulcerative spots on her stomach lining, basically nothing that would even come close to causing the issues that she has, according to the vet, and nothing that they wouldn't expect to see in pretty much every domestically kept horse anyway. She's had a basic repro exam done, no tumors or any inflammation/oddball stuff on her ovaries, everything there appears normal. She is on the most basic diet I can manage: a cup of alfalfa pellets and a 1/2 cup of ration balancer (although I'm thinking I'm going to switch her over to just a vitamin and mineral pellet) and  is stuffed with forage 3-4x a day. The only other thing she gets is Vit. E powder.

The one thing that has been consistent with her since I've known her is the fact that she is ultra-sensitive...to literally EVERYTHING. Bugs drive her up the wall. She can't handle heat and melts into a pool of misery and madness if left out on hot days. If feeding times are off by any more than 30 minutes? Very upset mare.

Mom I hurtses. Circa December, 2012

And again, about a week ago.

She just had her third colic episode since we moved to the new barn back in January. If anything, she is much happier in this environment than she was in her previous one, so I can't really blame the barn. The symptoms are always exactly the same: lethargic as all get out, refusing food or water, wanting to lay down as if to nap, maybe a couple rolls but no thrashing, often gets up and lays down again. Passes multiple piles of manure. Often passes gas. Good gum color, temperature normal, gut sounds like the New York Symphony. You can walk her until the cows come home, but she'd much rather just lay down quietly.

Every time, I give her 3cc (yes, THREE...I know, I told the vet tech this when I went to pick up another bottle of the generic the other day, I think she thought I was nuts) of Banamine orally, and within 30 minutes she's up and feeling better. 

In light of her recent colics and from suggestions of other horse people, I've added simethicone tablets to her grain meals. Basically, it's just generic Gas-X. It seems, as a stress colicker, that when her environment changes too quickly, especially when it comes to sudden stressful events (like the new farrier incident, she colicked immediately after that) and weather (sudden drop in barometric pressure? Approaching rainstorm? Stand by, Houston...) it all goes right to her gut. This has been happening since I bought her 5 years ago, so it's nothing new.

She's been cleaning up the Gas-X (I bought cherry flavor, thinking she might go for that, but in classic Stella style, she refused to eat it from my hand in tablet form...looks like crushed was the way to go) so here's to hoping I found a viable solution, short of a digestive system replacement. 

There & Back Again

I've been posting pretty sporadically. Well, OK, I've been doing that for a while. Like a few years.

It's probably mirroring how up-and-down this relationship with this horse has gone. It's me, I know it's me, I've accepted it's me, and I take responsibility for the fact that she was not always like how she is today.

But, there's also been the exhausting amount of physical damage she seems to be able to sustain.

We were doing really well for a solid 2 months. Like, really well. It wasn't perfect, and I certainly ran into many, many occasions where I seriously doubted if I knew how to handle situations as they arose. But I've had amazing help from Trainer C, who is back in the picture and helping me get her going (again).

I mean, I got on her.

Like, sat on her back. In a saddle. And we walked around. And no one died. I may or may not have cried a little after, and my legs felt like jello for about 5 hours afterwards, but when your last ride on a horse resulted in your being thrown, and you have nursed said horse for 3 years, you'd be a bit emotional, too.

I'd been employing the Back on Track products (seriously, they should cut me a check every month for how much word of mouth advertising I do for them). Her hocks were looking great, she was moving nice and even, she was definitely muscle-sore but you could see changes in her haunches and back every week as she got stronger.

We had just started tack-walking when it happened.

It being that thing that every horse owner who is rehabbing a soft-tissue injuries worries about to the point of insomnia. It being re-injury.

It was stupid. It was a fluke, totally avoidable accident that didn't need to happen. But c'est la vie.

I've griped about it a lot IRL, so I won't go into full detail here. The short version is: farrier was injured, recommended another farrier to do Stella in her stead while she recovered. I took farrier's word: I trusted her judgement. I shouldn't have. I should have done my own research, asked around, asked more in general. New farrier came out, and I got an icky feeling in my gut. I should have trusted it. I didn't. I gave her the benefit of the doubt. It ended up costing me and Stella. Farrier made a rookie mistake after being given very clear instructions on how to handle the horse given her recent history, and caused her to tweak the RH to the point of re-injury.

So now, I once again have an unsound horse. A new u/s didn't show much: it actually showed quite a bit of improvement overall, but a dark spot on the very most proximal point, around where the original injury was, suggests newer damage. Basically, we're assuming, based on how she's moving and her previous history.

The amazing Dr. R, Lameness Specialist Extraordinaire, has suggested one month off and then reconvene. I'm giving her until the end of April before we do anything.

I've done a lot of soul-search in the past few months, and even moreso in the past few weeks. I'm ready to ride. I'm ready to put the work and effort it takes to make changes and get her back to a good place. We were doing the damn thing, for crying out loud! But what do I do if I'm faced, at the end of the this month, with a horse that is STILL not sound? It's been a year since the original injury, and I was SO careful with her rehab. Diagnostics to confirm she was healed, weeks of hand walking, the introduction of poles, slow tests of balance on a very large circle. I only took what she offered. We did the BoT boots, sheet nightly, careful stretching, gentle massage 3-4 times a week...

I'll admit, I'm fairly defeated. But I'm holding out hope for this little mare. She's rallied before, she can do it again...I think.

Damage in Pictures - Ultrasound

I always like actually being able to see what I'm dealing with. I wish I had x-ray vision, it'd surely be a lot cheaper.

Dr. R, arguably the best equine lameness diagnostician in Vermont, came out on February 5th to take images of both hocks and ultrasound the RH, which was the original injured leg. Stella had been at the new barn for a couple weeks by then, and was settling nicely into "doing stuff" that resembled rehab. She had been chiropracted by Dr. R the week before this visit, but something in my gut told me I really needed to see what exactly was going on in her joints, if not just to confirm that she was healed and ready for a job.

Glad I did.

The difference between the RH and LH suspensories is HUGE when you look at them together. For those who aren't savvy at reading u/s images, the first image is take looking at the back of her leg, u/s a few inches below the point of the hock. In the second and third, the images are flipped so the horse's leg is viewed as if it were horizontal.

I think the actual measurement difference between the two suspensories was almost 4mm. The LH measured something like 9.3mm, and if her RH had matched up approximately, there'd be no concern. But 4mm is a big difference, which indicates some kind of trauma. You can also see, in the first image, that it's enlarged: you also get the benefit there of seeing all the fuzzy grey, which is irregular scar tissue patterns, indicating it was injured but is now healed.

Yes, good news is, healed. Also good news, no lesions showed up in the u/s, which would make her chances of re-injury much higher.

Coming up: x-rays

WE'RE BAAAAAAACK!

And better than ever!

There is no way I am ever going to succinctly put into one post everything that has happened over the last 4 months or so. Sometimes I think things happen for a reason, and sometimes I think that whole logic is bullshit. Not sure which side of the fence I'm on right now, and I don't particularly care. I have my HORSE back.

A few minor details:

1. We MOVED. Well, she moved. I'm in the process of moving. Long story short, the old barn situation wasn't working for either of us, for so many reasons it makes my head hurt. We were both ready for a fresh start, and I had two months of serious down time when my seasonal job ended and I was only working 3 days a week. What better time to rehab a horse? I am loveloveloving the new place: it's super laid back, the price is right, she has TURNOUT FRIENDS (!!!!) and the BO is fabulous and accommodating. Stella's attitude has done a complete 180: she's laid-back, friendly, happy to see you and really enjoying being fussed over and given a purpose again. Sometimes, you just need a totally new start to get out of an old rut.

2. She didn't have collateral ligament damage. A couple weeks back I had the best lameness vet in VT come out and do some ultrasound and x-rays of her hocks and that RH. It's been over 10 months since the accident, but before I asked her to do more than handwalk, I wanted to know what I was dealing with. Turns out there was never any collateral ligament damage: nothing on the x-rays suggested it. However, the ultrasound did reveal RH proximal suspensory damage, or at least what was damage. It has fully healed somehow, with no lesions. It's about 4 mm thicker than the LH suspensory, but as far as recovery goes, I couldn't have planned for it to go better. Which is great, because I couldn't have planned at all: I didn't even know.

3. I did get some unexpected and somewhat heartbreaking news from the x-rays. Stella is coming 7 this year, and I knew that at some point I would probably be faced with arthritic changes in her hocks. Her back legs are essentially too long for her body, and it puts her hocks at a tough angle in relation to the ground. What I didn't expect was to be told that my almost 7 yo mare has substantial arthritic changes in both hocks, about 10-15 years sooner than she should. The good news is that the changes are occurring/occurred in the intertarsal joint, which is the least mobile of the multiple joints that make up the hock. I had an x-ray of the RH done last May, which showed some minor changes. Now, 10 months later, you can see that both intertarsal joints have basically fused or are almost totally fused. Fused = no more cartilage.

What does this mean? Well, it sucks, for sure. Not what I had hoped or expected. But in terms of what I had in mind for her, it doesn't change a whole lot. She was never destined to be a Grand Prix level dressage horse or jumper. She wasn't destined to be ANY kind of jumper. With proper management and careful rehab/care throughout her life, both the vet and I are optimistic that she will do just fine as a pleasure riding horse/low level dressage horse/all around hacking horse.

Sorry, did I say minor details? Oops...

Her rehab is already well underway, with help again from an past trainer friend and with a new perspective on horsemanship and the bond between horse and rider. I couldn't be happier with where we are now, where we are headed, and where I hope we will end up.

The Second Coming

We're back. Both of us. Together, this time, and with such an amazingly different outlook on how to continue this relationship.

Well, maybe different isn't the right word. Maybe I mean sincere. It's not that I didn't want this mare on the best path to recovery that I could provide, and it's not that I didn't (or don't) want an absolutely undeniably honest and trusting relationship with her. I do, I always have. But I don't always think I had the humility to see, to really see, that I had a lot of changing to do, more than I ever could have imagined, and in ways I never realized.

Yes, I've written about it before, a million times. How much I've grown, how much I've realized, how I've learned humbleness over and over and over again until I'm blue in the face. But sometimes your subconscious takes a while to catch up with the conscious. You know what you have to do, you may even know how to go about doing it, but you just aren't in the right place to start. The universe is trying to tell you something, and ignoring or going against it only leads to frustration and anger most of the time.

I've asked for a long time, why me? Why did I have to go through this? Now I know. I'm not being punished: this is how things had to happen for me to grow. I don't wish abuse or anything so terrible on anyone, ever. But as a survivor, it is important to look at things for what they are, and to take what solace you can. Ernie started my healing path, but I never recognized it at the time. It was only after he was gone that I started to really see what was happening. Then along came Stella, by far the best teacher I've had in this life, and it's only in the last few weeks that I've felt that gut feeling, an undeniable yes, this is the right time. 

There's so much to tell, but the story is really just beginning...

Massive Info Dump

Fasten your seatbelts, folks...

As of, oh, three weeks ago, the vet cleared Stella for a larger turnout (which I'd been doing anyway, oops) and handwalking. Now I'm no stranger to ligament injuries: for long time readers of this and the old blog, you'll remember Ernie sustained two different suspensory ligament tears in his right hind that added up to a total of over a year of stall rest. But this one worried me slightly more given Stella's less-than-stellar hind leg conformation and the fact that we're talking about damage to her hock, the most complicated joint in the equine body and the one that most often has horse owners wanting to headdesk.

So, naturally, I didn't want to mess this up. And yet, as I thought to myself one day when I was unpacking and watching her hightail it into her stall away from chasing flies, if she was going to do more damage, it certainly wasn't going to be from anything I'd be doing. She clearly doesn't need my help.

And yet I've done no handwalking. I find it pointless, to be honest. This mare does enough laps around her paddock andher private pasture to equal a hundred handwalks a day. Twenty more minutes with me on the end of a leadrope is going to do very little in the way of real rehab. Instead, I've been slowly putting together a stretching and massage routine paired with long lining a couple times a week. The issue is less a lack of movement and more a lack of purposeful movement. I need to get her thinking stretchy, flexible, round thoughts while she's moving, instead of just poking around at the end of a line.

All thing considered, I like how she's looking right now. She's gained some weight back, she's shiny and dappled out and the thickened fluid in her hock (that the vet said would likely take months to go away, but that shouldn't affect her long-term) is mostly gone. I haven't wrapped her legs in a few weeks.

She's still got no topline, surprise. What little there was went the way of the Dodo when she got hurt (and even moreso with the tail injury, which I'm happy to say is fully healed and hasn't seemed to cause any lasting damage other than some atrophy along her dock; she's got full tail function though). We finished the Vitamin E concentrate and have switched to a Vitamin E powder for maintenance, which she'll stay on most likely long term.

Now onto the newest bits. My therapist happens to live on a huge farm about 45 minutes from where I live now. Said therapist, aside from being an amazing counselor, also does Equine Assisted Therapy and has several horses on the farm that he and his partner use in their sessions. I discussed with him a week or two ago the fact that I haven't moved anywhere with Stella in some time. For a while, I was tossing around the idea of selling her: it occurred to me that there was a distinct possibility that we just weren't a good match. She needs someone with skill and time: lots and LOTS of time. I just doesn't have the latter at this point in my life, and while I have enough of the former, my confidence has been shaken with her more than once to the point where I don't feel comfortable starting her back up on my own.

Said therapist, after listening to me gripe about how awful I feel about the situation I'm in with Stella, smiled and said, "Did it ever occur to you that this isn't all your stuff? That Stella is her own entity with her own personality and issues? That maybe she's just learned to relate to you in this way, but that it's not her reacting to you in the moment?" My jaw about dropped off.

What? You mean it's NOT all my fault? You mean every time I go to work with her and I see her nostrils flare and start to hear her breathing more rapidly, that when I see that lower lip get tight and start to flap, that when her eyes get big and concerned and she starts to fiddle and squirm and look irritated and upset, it's NOT all me?

Fast forward an hour and we'd weeded through some options as to what to do moving forward. For those who are wondering why I'm discussing my horse with my counselor, it's simple: *psychologist hat on* we've figured out that anything that causes me emotional stress negatively affects me sexually (sorry if this is TMI, folks, but we all do it). When it comes to intimate situations with a partner, emotional stress is a killer. It transforms into pressure, and when I'm placed under pressure or feel like I'm lacking control, my whole sexual being shuts off. So we've had to start addressing my issues with intimacy from a more holistic perspective, not from just the angle of sex.

*psychologist hat off*

Basically, my therapist offered me an amazing option: he'd talk to his partner, K, about having her work with me and evaluate both myself and Stella from an entirely training-based perspective. I could share with her information from our sessions but I wouldn't have to if it didn't seem pertinent. I could trailer Stella there and work with K, get her opinion and potential training advice/a direction to go in, and then go from there. We discussed boarding Stella up there for a few days every couple weeks or so, or having K come here. Either way, I about jumped at the idea. I had found a really great trainer a while back, but she's since moved farther away and isn't as available. Not to mention my schedule has changed dramatically.

We'll be discussing this more, and I mentioned to him the physical limitations Stella has at this time (vet still wants us to limit movement above the walk and a little trot in straight lines, so roundpenning would be a stretch...) but hopefully within a couple weeks I will finally be getting someone else in on this. It's about time I stopped taking this burden on my shoulders and accepted a few things, namely that this horse is her own being and has her own way of dealing with things and relating to the world. Dumping all of what happens with her on myself only leads to guilt, which leads to serious emotional complications for me.

On a final note, I've relocated. I finally moved out of my parents house (which was a disaster, but that's for another day) and moved into the little cabin on the same property that Stella is at. It's been wonderful to be so close and cut out an hour commute round trip just to do chores. Between the two jobs and working a full seven days a week, I need all the time I can scrape up, and this has freed up quite a bit.

More to come as things develop.

A (Forced) Extended Vacation

Not by choice so much. I moved, officially, and am now living within spitting distance of Stella mare. Quite literally. But with this move has come no access to the outside world, i.e. no cell phone service (which means no internet on my phone, either) no internet hookup, etc. It's been quite the experience.

More to come, so much more...including pictures of my FANTASTIC new view from pretty much every window in the cabin.

And more on the Stella girl, too. Good news abound!