I'm easing back into a normal schedule again after a sad and tumultuous month and a half... And nothing soothes my soul more than quality time in the sunshine with my favorite silly biscuit.
the look of champions, folks
And as mentioned yesterday, the timing works well for Ms Mondeuse in terms of reassessing how she's feeling after a few recent veterinary and farrier related soundness interventions.
but oh no! we have encountered an unexpected error!
Verdict? Well. Lol I don't really know. There are a few different ways to interpret this most recent ride (which is captured almost entirely in the video below, so you can judge for yourself).
NOBODY SAID THERE WOULD BE CHAIRS
The good news? The mare seems remarkably steady and happy and established in the work -- despite having the better part of a month off. She clocked right on around quite pleasantly -- and I didn't even have the metronome running!
whew, made it past alive lol
Given how challenging I personally found it to get the horse going in the first place (compared to Charlie's earliest days), it feels like a solid win that the training is holding. It also gives me a really good feeling that, hypothetically speaking, I could pick the mare back up in a year again if it came to that and she'd still be the horse I love.
"that was a close call" -- the silliest mare ever
The next piece of "news," which could be a good thing depending on your world view, is that I don't think the fetlock was the culprit after all. Or at least, the injection we did doesn't seem to have 'done the trick,' so to speak. I didn't love the idea of a barely-7yo horse intended for a jumping career already having ouchy fetlocks so... I choose to see this as maybe a good thing.
annnnyway. ahem. brace yo'self for about a dozen variations of this
Obviously tho, that takes us to the, er, less good news. I still feel the same lameness in there. It was subtle in this ride, but there are definite lame steps in the video (even if only occasionally) while the feeling itself is pretty consistent throughout.
playing with the hackamore (set fairly loose with only padded leather straps) bc she goes so quietly in it
As of this writing I haven't had a chance to confer with my vet about next steps, and am assuming we may want to wait another week or two after we get the Equioxx going just to see where that plus more regular riding gets us.
it's a pleasant picture, no?
Will the mare get better? Stay the same? Get worse? It's all information, ya know?
grateful for the pics even if it's mostly bc we were getting video for the vet....
Realistically, she's been on and off now since about January. And when she's "on," well.. She's fine, ya know?
pause for applause snuggles
The ouchiness seems to either be there, or not be there. And when it's there it seems to get worse through the course of a ride.
pictured: a fucking fun horse
But there have also been days when she's been super ouchy one day, and.... maddeningly fine the next. Which, obvi, is also part of why it's been hard to pin down the main issue -- she hasn't always been entirely forthcoming with my vet lol.
we played briefly with canter too bc #yolo
All that said, tho, it doesn't seem like riding around has made anything worse, per se, this season. And actually, if it DID seem to start going in that direction, that might reasonably make it easier still to figure out where the main complaint actually is.
EL-OH-EL doozy it's just a ground pole omggggg
Sooo this is me rationalizing why I'm going to continue riding her. For now, at least, or until my vet advises against. And ya know. Another reasonable experiment is continued tweaking in her shoeing, for which the next cycle is still a few weeks away. May as well keep testing how she feels leading up to that, right?
unprepared emma is unprepared for mare's adorable efforts
Depending on how the next few weeks unfold, we may even do a lesson or two -- if the mare is up for it. I figure, at the very least it could help us get a fresh set of eyes and perspectives on what might be going on, ya know?
just casually fabulous
Tho at this rate I'm kinda just assuming that our spring competition season is a wash -- over before it started, womp. I don't usually like to compete in the heat and hard ground of July or August anyway, and it feels like stepping back from trying to do any calendar planning gives me more room to keep working incrementally on getting Doozy fixed up.
she was struttin' for the cute arab ring mate <3 <3
Or at least... Lol, that's the plan. Subject to change without notice, as always!
(or ya know. just one of those internet folks convinced maybe you can crack the lameness case!)
With horses, as with life in general, sometimes unexpected shit happens. That's certainly been the case for me this last month!
hangin out cool as a cucumber after we finished
But I've said it before and I'll say it again: sometimes hardship can be clarifying in that it helps us see more clearly what's really important. For me, riding and competing -- challenging myself, pushing my boundaries, expanding my education -- these are all critically important facets of my horsey experience.
"all in a day's work!" -- doozy, who is NOT ready to retire yet!
It's hard to do ANY of that, tho, without a good horse. And Doozy is a good horse <3
So for now, we content ourselves with tons of media from a pleasant ride in perfect spring conditions. Good enough, eh?
The last month or so has been more or less universally consumed by other non-horsey realms of my life, so…. in the grand scheme of things, Doozy picked a pretty good time to have an existential lameness crisis.
I’m too occupied by other things to spiral about her, and — in fact, maybe the extra time off better aligns with my hopes of keeping her going for the long term.
sometimes we ride in jeans and paddock boots. doozy == not impressed
Not that she didn’t give me reasons to spiral, naturally. She is who she is, after all. Poor mare was completely crippled, lame at the walk, and extra touchy / spooky in the immediate week or two after getting hind shoes. She definitely needed some space and time to make that adjustment.
Presumably, it’s just the changes in geometry etc that she reacted to — nothing was specifically wrong, like a hot nail or anything like that. So ya know. Maybe that’s a good reminder for myself that even “common” adjustments to the mare’s physical experience can have big impacts on her sensitive self.
an attempt at lunging was made. those nostrils omg
My vet and I also talked about doing a trial month (or three) of Equioxx too. That particular medicine made a HUGE difference for Charlie — tho sadly it was short lived since he got that catastrophic sub-solar abscess just two months later…
My vet has been careful to set my expectations that not every horse responds as well. But it seems like an easy next step in our incremental progression, with the bonus of being less hard on the mare’s guts than bute.
turns out i’m not great at multi tasking
I’ll probably pick up a bottle this week, so more on that later. In the meantime, Doozy and a subset of her group of ponies recently transitioned to a new paddock that’s freshly rested and full of fresh spring grass. Happiness abounds!
Except, lol, when Doozy apparently found herself “alone” temporarily the other night (one field mate was in the outdoor arena literally right next door and in full sight; the other was down in the barn) and had a bit of a meltdown. Whoops lol.
so a ridden assessment would have to suffice <3 <3
I still brought her out the next day for a little test ride anyway. I tried popping her on the lunge slightly-long-lead-line first to see how she looked…. But the combination of trying to video, and the mare’s Residual Sadness From The Prior Evening’s Abandonment made for an inconclusive session. Or at least, not conclusively lame. At this point, we’ll take it!
“i was told there would be cookies”
Realistically, I don’t have the best eye for visually assessing lameness anyway - esp for an issue as intermittent and hard to nail down as Doozy’s. The feeling from the saddle, tho? That part I got. So I opted to tack her up (sadness and all) and see what we had.
“garçon! my cookies!”
This mare is so full of surprises too. Hasn’t been ridden in like, two weeks — and honestly barely at all this whole month. Was whinnying pitifully and needed to be hand walked around the indoor bc (again) #sadness. And I really just didn’t know what to expect.
But, eh. Maybe the horse is actually getting trained, go figure. Bc under saddle she was steady, let me get my legs on, and honestly quite soft over her back — something that’s notably absent when she’s very sore. We only did a very little bit of trotting in each direction, and I didn’t really push her out given her tension and the fact that she was being so good despite so much time off.
smooshy biscuit
We’ll get to that later, after giving her a chance to get back into the swing of things again. No need to push all the buttons all at once. Bc… if the lameness issue is still there, it WILL present itself again.
For now, she felt a little stiff in this ride — not quite exactly the same feeling as the intermittent issue we’ve been having since January. But not completely perfect either.
one step at a time
So we’ll see. We’re about 2.5 weeks post-injection now, and 2 weeks since getting hind shoes. Any differences from those interventions should be settling in and taking effect. We’ll add the Equioxx hopefully this week, and then basically go from there.
I’ve continued to try to be realistic and gather at least some early information on the various options if none of this works. Including starting to scan the market to see if there’s anything out there to light my heart on fire. And… Honestly? Not really.
Doozy is the horse that I want, and silly little rides like this when she’s whinnying and distracted, and I’m just in jeans and paddock boots and we only just toodle around the ring…. It’s still the stuff for me. I can feel how far Doozy has come in her development, and feel the results of all of last year’s work. And I’m honestly still just so energized and excited at the prospects of going forward with her, should she be able.
We’ll have a better sense of what’s what in the coming weeks, I imagine. So until then, we carry on!
In my experience, horse people are notoriously cagey and secretive when it comes to broadcasting specific details relating to unsoundness in horses. Probably for good reasons, if we’re being honest. But. Good choices aren’t always my specialty. SO. Let’s get into it lol.
obsessed with the greenery
The briefest history for those of you not following with bated breath on the edges of your seats…: Doozy came up a bit lame in January with suspected bruised feet from nasty ice balls packed into her shoes. That lameness abated, but she’s been intermittently on and off ever since.
We’ve gone through a litany of theories on potential external causes — a deep slow-healing bruise! poor saddle fit! cracked heels!! — and an initial lameness work up a few weeks ago showed a basically sound horse who flexed negatively, kinda reinforcing our hypotheses about external factors.
omfg RUDE BISCUIT leave that poor pony alone >:(
I’m a firm believer that the simplest solution is often the correct one. Occam’s Razor etc. And I appreciate that my vet has a well established methodology for measured, conservative and incremental interventions. Sometimes “wait and see” is the correct first choice.
But we’ve waited, and we’ve seen, and now we have the information that the intermittent nature of this NQR-ness persists even with (some) rest. So the next step was to find a way to get the vet and Doozy into the same space at the same time the mare was presenting with lameness, which we accomplished last week.
Sass Level 5000
Quick note here, guys: While I am committed to documentation and don’t mind transparency, please don’t confuse that with an invitation to provide unpaid / unsolicited counsel. Unless I’ve remitted payment to you for services provided in the last 12 months, I am not your client.
Plenty of folks had plenty to say about their internet diagnoses for Charlie, as well as my and my vet’s presumed failings at addressing those diagnoses. You were basically all wrong, and all assholes. Those comments did nothing to benefit Charlie, and presumably the satisfaction for telling me that I suck as a horse owner was short lived anyway. So let’s just like. Not, yes?
Maximum Pest
Ahem. Anyway. Back to the appointment.
The main benefit of getting the horse and vet in a room together when the horse is actively presenting as lame is that we can do nerve blocks, which basically allow you to isolate areas of the limb incrementally to see at what point the horse goes from jogging lame to jogging sound. Starting from the bottom up, it’s a neat way to zero in on pain sources.
Doozy, naturally, was not the most compliant critter for this. It was hard to tell when the block took effect bc she reacts to being poked on sight. As in, I actually had to cover her literal eyeballs with my hands while my vet crouched on the wrong side, reaching under the mare’s belly to poke the blocked foot to confirm numbness. Ridiculous sensitive creature!
patientlyeagerly chaotically awaiting the farrier
Our hope was that the mare would jog sound after blocking the foot. Which… she did not. Except about 10min later, after the block had likely diffused farther up the tissue planes of the leg — then the mare jogged sound. So. That is not explicitly conclusive, tho it tells us that probably our source is somewhere in the neighborhood of the fetlock and down.
From that information, we next moved to getting rads of the coffin and fetlock joints. I should also add — we did another set of lower limb flexions before the nerve block too, all of which were negative. As in, Doozy trotted away after each hyper-flexion the same as before.
incremental steps, y’all. we added hind shoes!
So I guess for those of you who, like myself, are wondering if this dilemma could have been avoided by a pre-purchase exam… I’m honestly not certain. The mare last year was sound. She still today flexes fine. And then we took rads and… Nothing super obvious there either. No chips or anything beyond the wear and tear that is common in racehorses. I doubt I’d have even done x-rays of the fetlocks based on how the horse flexed anyway.
I bought Doozy for $1,500. This appointment with x-rays and an injection cost $1,200, and we only took pictures of one limb. PPE economics continue to be questionable for cheap horses.
stalkerish barn cats being stalkerish
Anyway, the fetlock had more signs of irregularity than the coffin, and since she still jogged lame after the initial nerve block and didn’t come sound until it had enough time to diffuse (presumably up the tissue planes to the fetlock), we decided to start there with a steroid injection.
Yes. Injecting a not-quite-7yo horse’s fetlock feels… Not great to me. I don’t like it, not gonna lie. And I’m not totally sure it’s going to do the trick, either. Tho - if it does, and becomes a point of future management, my vet indicated it would be a good candidate for non-steroidal orthobiologics like IRAP. We’ll cross that bridge when we get there, tho.
pls just be pretty sound
We also concluded from the rads that while Doozy’s feet look marvelous and the farrier is doing good things for her heels etc, we may have room to explore options with pads and/or wedges. And adding hind shoes — which was actually already in the plans — was confirmed as a good incremental step for continuing to work the margins.
With a horse as sensitive as Doozy, she could be a marginal case anyway, ya know? It could be that a few little tweaks can make a big difference. Or at least. I am happy to hope. Regardless. Hind shoes are officially on. Fetlock injection will take time to settle in. So we’ll wait and see what impact these adjustments have, and assess from there.
she’s come so far in the last year and a half, it would be a fucking tragedy to pivot
It’s disheartening to be in this position, not gonna lie. Tho there’s a certain clarity that comes with hardship. Realizing that we may be dealing with something more serious got me thinking bigger picture about the horse, myself and the future.
A clear next step was learning how/if Doozy could return to the adoption facility… An awareness that was **instantly** drowned by a gut-deep, visceral “But I Don’t Wanna!”
Guys. I really like this horse. I straight up love the shit out of her. She is the full package. Challenging sure. But in all the right ways, and I can so clearly see a future for us.
But. Obviously. She has to be sound. And if we can’t get her sound… Well. That doesn’t bode well, right? If we can get her sound, tho… Well, there are questions there too. Particularly around the long term sustainability of that soundness with respect to fairness to the animal. It’s on my mind, have no fear.
My deepest hope is that we are able to get the mare sound with a realistic management plan that feels acceptable. I don’t want to worry that running around novice level eventing would destroy my horse’s prospects for a comfortable life. And I also don’t want to worry about what happens to this silly sensitive creature if she goes back into the OTTB resale pipeline.
Happy Friday, y’all! It’s been a TIME around these parts lately. So instead of any deep thoughts or carefully curated considerations… Let’s just dump some fotos, yes? Yes.
let’s sit back and smell the roses, eh?
first up: Doozy found a puddle and had #NoRagerts about it
youtube liked this video so maybe you will too lol
we also hacked out in the mist! was lovely, if slightly ill advised lol <3
rained upon pony didn’t seem to mind tho <3
you know what they say about april showers tho — it’s getting GREEN!!
and we all know how Ms Thing feels about her #snacks lol… omg those nostrils tho
in more directly related news, those cracks on her heel seem completely resolved, and were perhaps superficial all along. i dunno. nobody knows. horses, amirite?
but the mare persists in being totally gorgeously wonderfully rideable right up until, wham, off again. finally happened when i could get a bunch of video for the vet tho
yes i have reservations about sharing that video with y’all.
but i am who i am, so it’s documented here. just don’t be bitches, yes?
naturally video of a lame mare is not the same thing as having a lame mare and a vet in the same room at the same time, so we persisted in riding ahead of the appt, during which time mare was lovely and less lame, grrr <3
we had a truly (maddeningly) pleasant experience schooling around the day before our appt — including flat work, ground poles and a couple little jompies — again, with the intention of helping her be most prepared to show the vet where it hurts. and the side effect of reminding me why i’m so attached…
made me think that now that Doozy knows how to use her neck, maybe the hackamore (with leather curb) could be a thing??
anyway there was also a scary bucket. and a cat hiding under the kubota lol
and then there was the vet appointment!! again!! and doozy agreed to sooooorta show a little bit of her off-ness
it was enough for us to do a nerve block, tho, and gather information from that.
we took pictures too. nothing is really super duper conclusive, bc that’s apparently impossible / illegal with horses… but we are isolating variables and trying some things.
wish us luck, tho expect it to be a little quiet for the next little bit
In the meantime, hope y’all are looking forward to a great weekend!
