Silver Linings: The things we learn when our horses can't work.

I was giving a friend an update on Quizz the other day and realized just how big a blessing Quizz's issues have been so thought it was worth sharing the upside to rehabilitating a horse now that I can see the upside!

For most of January we took one step forward and two steps back each week.  It's been difficult to pin down the issue.  Winter inflicts enough stiffness on its own, exacerbating the question of whether there is a real problem or just an environmental one.  We had some good days.  Quizz no longer cross cantered (rather than bringing both inside legs forward together, the horse brings the front inside leg and the hind outside leg forward together).  She was doing better with her canter transitions though frequently exploding on the lunge line before picking it up.  We would have a good day followed by a day she didn't want anyone on her back.  We panicked that the saddles didn't fit but it turns out that wasn't really the biggest issue.  We did what you do with horses; we tried different things until we found a way to make things work.

Quizz has now been shod twice by her new farrier.  She still definitely has something going on in her right SI.  She won't let the farrier bring her right hind leg up under her so he has taken to doing all the work on that leg out behind her and she is much happier.  She is growing a nice amount of hoof in front, less behind.  He estimates it will take 6 - 8 months to get her feet where he would like to see them.

In the mean time, we developed a routine that seems to be working.  My daughter lunges Quizz for 10 - 20 minutes before every ride.  The goal is to achieve 2 smooth canter transitions on each side before working under saddle.  Some days this takes longer than others.  Quizz generally explodes at least once, leaping off the ground on all fours, bucking and taking off around her circle or another more creative shape.  Some days she explodes 3 or 4 times.  As we implement this routine, the lunging duration continues to vary but definitely improves each day.

As I mentioned in my post on lameness, lunging is an important skill but one we often neglect.  It had been on our list to work on for over a year and we did work on it a bit but usually our trainer would lunge the pony or horse, Elizabeth would watch and take over the lunge once we were sure things were going well and only at the walk and maybe the trot.  Over the past few weeks Elizabeth has developed her skills immensely.  Our trainer now sits at the side of the ring while Elizabeth handles the lunge line.  When Quizz explodes Elizabeth calms her saying, "Easy," and brings her back to a controlled trot or canter.  Four weeks ago Elizabeth was afraid to really swing the whip at her.  Now she uses it to insist on a consistent tempo in the trot and on picking up the canter.  The transitions are still not timely but they are getting better.  And the best part is that Elizabeth is solving a problem on the ground she struggles with in the saddle: respect!  The ground work is making Quizz respect her young rider.  The more Elizabeth insists on the canter transition on the lunge line, the better Quizz's canter transitions go under saddle.  I am so incredibly proud of my 12 year old daughter as I watch her master this skill and work with her horse to build a relationship and mutual understanding.

When Elizabeth sits on Quizz's back, the horse is already warm and loose.  The ride begins with stretching Quizz at the walk on 10 meter circles in both directions.  She's very tight through her rib cage so Elizabeth is learning to not just use her inside rein but to really use her inside leg to bend Quizz's body.  This is also improving.  Elizabeth is not big and heavy at this point so making a horse respect her leg has been a challenge but she's getting some results.  She absolutely has to get Quizz round and using her body properly at the walk before she can trot, and at the trot before she can canter.  In the past we've let the roundness and contact slide since those are difficult riding skills to master.  But now it is too important for Quizz that she engage her core during work and that she is not allowed to hollow her back.  By the end of their rides, Quizz looks wonderful!  It takes an awful lot to get there but she develops a beautiful, forward working trot, a nice long and low stretchy trot and lovely, smooth canter transitions.

The next step is to increase Quizz's work load.  Right now the weather is just miserable.  Quizz is doing very good work but often it's every other day.  By the beginning of March we will start working 5 days a week and, soon after, 6 days a week.  The duration of work will increase and hopefully by then she will be able to reduce the amount of lunging and even begin to jump again but we will be patient and let the horse determine the pace.

It's actually very interesting to watch this mare's progress.  She has had moments that she was not exactly cooperative which bothered us because she generally has a great attitude.  I have sensed a shift recently as though she feels like we finally figured things out and are giving her what she needs.  I believe she loves working, she loves eventing and she loves my daughter.  So I'm extremely optimistic we will get there and hopefully in time for a great season.

So in the end this whole thing has been a blessing in disguise.  It’s actually great seeing the things Elizabeth is learning during this rehab period that she wouldn’t have worked on if Quizz had been perfectly healthy.  If she had been healthy we would have been working on jumping position, jumping higher, no stirrups, etc, all valuable things we will get to but I feel like the things she’s focused on instead are the things we easily skip over or don’t fully embrace and perfect because we all have limited time.  We always say we need to work on lunging but until the horse forced us to go there we weren’t doing it in a way that Elizabeth was really learning and taking responsibility for.  I’m so proud of her.  You should see Quizz being totally ridiculous jumping up and down and taking off all crazy and Elizabeth telling her easy and bringing her back without a care in the world.  It’s hard to believe my daughter is only 12 years old sometimes.  

My Horse is Lame (and not in the middle school sense of being uncool, I mean lame, unable to do what I want him to do!)

So here's the thing: everything with horses is complicated.  Once in awhile you get an uncomplicated horse or maybe, if you aren't really doing a whole lot, the horse is able to go along with your plans pretty easily.  But if you are competing in any of the many equine sports out there, at some point, your horse is going to have some issues.

When we say our horse is "lame" it reminds me of when my kids were babies and we called them colicky if they cried all the time.  Colic in human babies is not in any way a specific diagnosis.  It basically means I have a crabby baby who cries all the time but we can't find anything that is actually wrong with him so we think maybe he has a permanent stomach ache and basically I never get to sleep!  So it goes with a lame horse.

The generic term lameness covers just about everything.  A horse can be lame from simple soreness from a bad shoeing, or maybe the saddles aren't fitting properly.  Often older horses who have competed heavily have arthritic changes in their joints, most commonly their hocks but just as likely their SI or their back.  Lyme can cause stiffness that presents as lameness.  A bone spur, an abscess, ulcers, you name it.  There are as many possibilities as bones in the horse's body.  If your horse is unable to do his job, he's lame.

Photo by Amanda Sylvia

My daughter got an awesome new horse a few months ago.  A 10 year old mare, Quizz will be Elizabeth's partner for at least the next 6 years.  She's big, athletic, talented and has the greatest attitude of any horse ever, not that I'm biased or anything.  Sadly, shortly after we started working with Quizz, something wasn't right.  It was never not right all the time.  But sometimes, you could swear she took a funny step.  Then it all seemed fine again.  Some days she couldn't seem to pick up the canter without bucking but the next day she would be amazing.  We brought in a masseuse, a vet/acupuncturist, we refit saddles, bought a fancy new saddle.  Then we thought maybe it was a stone bruise (a bruise or soreness in the hoof) so we gave her some time off and poulticed her front hoof which seemed to help only to have her go lame again a few weeks later.

This seems to be a pretty typical scenario.  We had several people look her over.  Everyone had a different idea about what might be wrong.  This is also pretty typical.  The thing is, the horse can't tell you with words what is happening.  For a horse like Quizz to refuse to canter, you know something is wrong, she's telling you that much, but figuring out what is like a great whodunnit mystery.  Even with the best available diagnostics (we took Quizz to Tufts for a bone scan) you don't really know what's going on with the horse.  In Quizz's case she had inflammation in her bones in several places but none of it severe enough to be the cause of her issues.  Just because it shows up on the scan doesn't mean it bothers her.  So it's all guess work.  The best we can do is to gather experts we trust, accept their best guess and come up with a plan of action.

In Quizz's case we decided to be pretty aggressive.  We injected her neck, back and SI (it's like your sciatica) to get the inflammation under control.  The vet came out and administered a course of Tildren which is an old human drug now being used as a fancy new equine drug the purpose of which is to inhibit the growth of new bone in order to prevent old bone from decaying, at least from what I can tell.  In humans it's used to treat osteoporosis but in horses it's used to treat just about everything and the consensus is that the horses feel better but honestly no one really knows why.

In addition we will be changing farriers and giving Quizz new shoes.  When all is said and done, almost everyone we have consulted agrees her issues probably started in her feet.  And let that be a lesson to you.  If their feet aren't comfortable, it throws off everything else and eventually (within a very short period of time really) you have a huge mess.

And then there are the saddles.  Through all of this I keep doing what I can to make sure the saddles are fitting her as well as possible.  Quizz has as super long back and her withers go to the middle of the saddle so she's tough to fit.  The challenges are numerous. When she's in pain she moves funny so the saddle doesn't fit.  She's lopsided so the saddles don't fit.  As she gets back into shape her body changes and the saddles don't fit.  I have had several people examine our saddles.  Among them there is absolutely no consensus.  Each says something a little different, approaches fit from a different angle.  Unfortunately, none of them feels the expensive new jump saddle I bought is a great fit for her but the hope is that when her feet feel better, the saddles will too.  For now I'm taking that on faith and trusting my experts because I'm exhausted by all of this and just need to believe it will all resolve.

Now we are starting down the road toward rehabilitation.  So far, it's been great.  Quizz is definitely doing better than she was before all the treatment and the expectation is that it takes 4 weeks for the benefits of the treatment to be fully realized.  We expect even more improvement as her new farrier makes her more comfortable.  We are spending lots of time with her on the lunge line and lunging her in a Pessoa (a fancy contraption which resembles a torture device but isn't) which is great for several reasons.  Firstly, it's great for the horse, her condition and strength, and building the muscles in her back which is difficult to do with a rider on board.  Secondly, it's an important skill for my daughter to learn and one she will be required to demonstrate proficiency in for her pony club rating a couple of years from now.  It's also one of those things that not that many people really spend time on and even fewer really know how to do it properly.  It's really super amazingly great for the horse and they can often do better work on the ground than they can under saddle.  I'm sensing an entire post on lunging in my future.  So we are taking advantage of this opportunity to make lunging a major part of Quizz's routine moving forward.

At this point, that's all the personal experience I have with lameness.  For the most part this experience has served to illustrate the challenges of parenting a horse kid with limited personal horse knowledge.  I'm actually pretty lucky.  We have a phenomenal trainer, Erika, who has been involved with horses for over 30 years.  She's amazing and incredibly generous with her time and support, guiding us, introducing us to professionals who may have something to add, helping us sift through all the information, loaning us her gut feeling when ours is inadequate and working to keep our emotions in check and help us understand that with horses, these things take time, lots and lots of time.  We also have the world's greatest pony club.  The other pony club families are a phenomenal resource of experience, information and moral support.  Even so, with the best people by my side every step of the way, I panic.  Did I do something wrong?  Did I make some mistake that another person would have known not to make?  Should I have known we needed a different farrier sooner (actually I think we all knew this a few months ago but changing farriers is often a complicated business)?  Should I have been more patient about buying a jump saddle?  Did I just waste thousands of dollars on useless tack?  Is my husband going to divorce me as a result? Did I wreck my daughter's horse?  Did I just do a bunch of crazy expensive treatments when a new set of shoes was all the horse needed? Some of these questions sound totally irrational but I'm telling you every one of them has run through my head and kept me up at night.

If lameness has found its way into your horse experience, my sympathies are with you.  The best we can do as people newish to horses is to hire good people.  Find experts you can trust.  At a minimum you need a great trainer, vet and a great farrier.  Your trainer is sort of like your general contractor.  She will find the subcontractors you need if you run into trouble and she will be the guiding hand in your program.  It is useful to have a saddle fitter and I found our masseuse to be a font of valuable knowledge.  We also now rely on a back up vet who specializes in lameness.  She has quickly become an important member of our team.  Make your experts communicate with each other.  I like it when I have several of my experts together.  I like to hear them talk things through.  It makes me feel good and I always learn something from the experience.

And try through it all to keep a sense of humor and remember life is long and horses are worth it.