The hoof of the problem

No matter what sport you are training for you should never overlook the horses hoof. I know this, and yet its what I did, and I am now suffering for the consiquences, or Lucy is anyway.

Ok, ok its not that bad, but I hate for anything to not be quite right and since a lot hasn't been quite right lately, this was sort of the final blow. But it might be the answer to all the problems. Maybe.

What is the problem? Just look below or click on Lucy's hooves my last post. Lucy's hooves have always looked so good that its quite a blow that they are in such a horrible state!

I only noticed after going to take pictures of them for a post about her tripping, much their apperance brings up much more then just tripping. It could by why she doesn't want to go out for rides and why she doesn't move out as well. If she is unbalanced by her hooves she could be in pain.

So for the next couple weeks I am suspending her from all activity. Luke just called and can come out on Wedneday or next week. I am NOT happy with him! But hopefully we can get her hooves back on track asap.

And to think I had just made a new training schedule for her! Yes I make a new one like every two weeks!

So more non horsey spring days will be going by!

Lucy hooves

A non Lucy post

Time for Kezi, Ollie and Huck to have some blog time. Oh and me too!

So first Kezi:

So she is now on the Naproxin again, for 30 to 40 days. I know I shouldn't get my hopes up but I just love seeing her sound even if I still can't ride her!
I have bonded with her so much in the last month alone, I just know that we would get alone great out on the trail. She as been enjoying trotting from one pile of hay to another just to upset Ollie! The vet wanted her in a smaller area but I feel that she is less likely to hurt herself in a larger area. She also won't want to run around as much if she has the room to do so.
I have been taking her out for walks almost everyday, she gets so excited when I come to get her out!

Ollie:

So Ollie is going to be a unicorn! Emily asked me if I would put a horn on him for Cambrias birthday, and of course Alicia and I decided to go overboard on dressing him up! We have about a month but I need to buy the glitter for his hooves, mane and tail and body, and we need to make a medivial saddle as well as buy a new halter so I can spray paint his old one gold and make gold reins. We do have to be careful about how much we spend though!

Huck:

I think I am going to start driving again when I am up at Carolyns. And I am going to switch over to giving Emerald her lessons on Huck. He will be so pleased.

In my non-horsey life, I found out that the iphone is coming out with a big update this summer! We will be able to text pictures, copy and paste and search the iphone, among other things! I can't wait!
Oh and I was having a bunch of issues with my credit card. When they issued me a new credit card they didn't deactivate the old one. So my on line banking said that I had no balance, which was annoying because I needed to put some money on it for buying my computer since I lost my debit card. I finally got it figured out today and on Monday will be able to order my computer! Yeah! This one has been so horrible lately!

Thats about all for now!

Before, during and after pictures of Lucy

And these are the most recent pictures from only a couple weeks ago.

These are from about a month after her treatment:

Her while she was sick, sometime in February 2008. She had just come back from Davis like the week before:

So these are the before pictures. This is Lucy at her first horse show. She was such good girl and won 3rd place in Cross Country! This is in October of 2007. She had come down with a cough in August that the vet just gave her ati-bioitics for. I almost didn't do this show since she had been having energy issues. I later found out that that is one of the sypmtoms of lead posioning. I even had the vet out about her energy issues and breathing but he said to just feed her more grain! Eeek! Glad I just took that with a grain of salt!

Lucy can never be bothered to actually jump over something!

Ah! Horse and boyfriend bonding!

So right after christmas I noticed that when I took Lucy out on trail rides her lower lip would start drooping. She also started loosing weight although that was harder to notice because she had a long coat and never really picked up much weight in the winter anyway.

Within about a week she progressed to having her lower lip hanging all the time. I called one of my closest horsey friends and we discussed it. She decided that we should call the local chiro since she was also losing muscle and had some neuro symptoms.

The chiro was very concerned about her state as was my friend. She recomened we start by doing a full cbc. We had another local vet come out the next day and do that. She recomended x-rays of her lungs at UC Davis. I made her appointment with Davis that same day.

She stayed the week following at my friends barn where she got to stay in a stall and just eat by herself (at home she shares with my two mini's)

At Davis they did several different tests. They started with a basic evaluation of her gait and body condition. They also drew blood and did a cbc. They tested her for strep equi myositis but felt that that came back negitive. They also did several tests on her cranial nervise system and was found to have a deficit in cranial nerve 7 as evidenced by the lip paraliysis, droppy eye lid and dull ear movement.

They scoped her upper airway to find that revealed paresis of the arytenoid carilages (vocal cords which made me realise that it had been a while since I had heard her whinny), pharyngeal collapse and no cough response when the tracheal was stimulated (which explained why she was coughing, becuase she had food in epiglottis and trachea).

They did a BAER test (brain auditory evoked responce) under sedation to test her hearing and the function of the regions of the brainstem. Not much to see there.

They also did a spinal tap while she was sedated. That was interesting to see!

We spent the night and watched her some more the next day but had to go home day. She was left there for more tests. There is another not so fun story about our way home.

They did an electromyelogram to assess the function of the neuromuscular system, which just showed abnormalitys specific to cranial nerve 7. They also did an abdominal ultrasound wich was unsignificant. Then a muscle biopsy on the right side of the neck which didn't show much.

They also submitted blood for selenium and lead, but would not come back for several days.

I brought her home that weekend after she stayed 4 days with them. We uped her feed intake considerably. She was pretty much given whatever I thought she might like, equine senior, rice bran, wet cob, molassas, all in once, alfalfa. It was difficult.

Then once night not long after when I was trying to get her to come out to get her blanket on she had her first breathing attack.

At first she just kept making odd breathing noices. Then she started having trouble standing up right. I took her out and she fell on my car and sliped down next to it got wedged between it and a wall along the road. I got my dad to help me get her up. He held her head up and out of the way while I backed the car up. At that point she seemed recoved but in shock from the episode. We let her walk back to her pasture on her own. She got to wear both her blankets that night.

A few days later we got her lead results back, they were unsusualy high although not high enough to be considered lead poisoning. But the vet felt that after some research on lead poisoning her symptoms fit very well. She was glad becuase she had been telling me that we probably would not find out what was wrong with Lucy.

She recomended that we give Lucy one dosage of Calcium ADTA and take a urine sample to see it it helped flush out the lead (the calcium bonds with the lead and then body will naturally dispose of the calcium). However admistering calcium ADTA was risky and she felt that we should bring Lucy back to Davis to do it. In the end however we choose to do it at my friends barn. We did the test and the results came back positive. In the meantime Lucy had another attack when I was walking her up my road from the horse trailer. She bled out her nose and fell again. At that point we knew that it was because she couldn't breath when exerted.

Finally in early March we were able to do full treatment. The vet inserted a iv cathiter in her neck and we hooked the calcium ADTA solution up to her for about 2 hours a day for five days straight. Within a couple days her lip went back to normal. We did a second treament just like the first about three weeks later. During that time she had one of her breathing attacks again, only this time my friend and trimmer saw it too.

She regained her weight and slowly her mucle. By May she looked much better and more like a normal 7 year old horse. She still have two more breathing attacks, getting worse every time to a point where she was bleeding out her mouth.

In July I took her back to Davis since I was going there for another horse. They scoped her again and found that one of her arentoids was moving. They also took x-rays of her lungs to be sure she wasn't hurting them during her breathing episodes.

By October she could run around unhindered and I was able to move her into our large pasture.

In November I started taking her out for very short rides. I continued through the new year with sporatic short rides. As of March I decided her condition was good enough to start riding her on a regular basis.

New addition to my blog!

I'm all excited because I finally got around to uploading my tracks! So now they are all saved to google maps, its really cool to see where I have riden on terrain and satellite view! So if you click any of the links below my tracks it will take you to them!

Oh gee the excitement of it all!

Evaluating our current situation

So this moring on my ride I was doing some serious thinking about Lucy. She had seemed more upset about having to go out this moring then normal, or maybe its my imagination.

Some rides she seems a lot more happy about going out, and others she isn't. But all in all she still isn't getting that excited about going out for rides. Yes she will let me catch her now, but thats only since I started bringing her out for her grain in the morings.

I'm not sure how much longer I can push her out on the trail before we are both fed up and no longer want to ride. Even though my asperations are for endurance, that doesn't mean I am going to push Lucy to doing it, but I would like her to go back to being the same horse she was before she got sick. Or maybe she was like this before and it never bothered me, but I don't think so.

I am no longer worried about her fitness, I can see now that she is going to be able to come back conditionaly wise just fine, I think her breathing is getting better to and will improve even more when we start doing more hillwork.
No, its just her attitude that is bothering me now. And the tripping, which I think is a by product of the attitude. She triped even more then usual this morning. Maybe it was just an off day for her, the whole ride she just wanted to turn around and go home. Her condition was fine, in fact I belive out average speed was 3.1, fairly good for average.
But her tripping. She almost went down on both knees today. And there wasn't even anything there for her to trip over. She is just tripping over the ground or herself. I am pretty sure I am going to talk to Nancy about it. She has been tripping ever since I brough her back into work. At first it was just every once in a while, but even then it worried me since Lucy never used to trip.

Well it could just be that she hasn't had enough time to strangthen her legs and that with time the tripping will go away.

But back to the main subject, will I ever get Lucy back to being interested in going out for rides?

I know that she would make a wonderful endurance horse, becuase:

1. She has a lean body that doesn't carry any extra fat
2. Her skin is thin and she can cool herself off quickly and easily with lots of blood vessals next to the skin.
3. She has incredible endurance, I have only seen her tired on two occations in her eight years
4. She is good at holding her pace for a long time
5. She is good at learning where to pick up the trot and where to walk to save her strangth and not injury herself.
6. She has never had any sort of metabolic heath issues.
7. She has never gone lame from something other then a wound on her body
8. She does great by herself out on the trail
9. She is easy to get fit and stay fit
10. She has study legs and big strong feet

And the number one reason why she wouldn't make a good endurance horse:

1. Well she just doesn't seem to want to be out on the trail anymore.


Sigh.

I think I get to worked up over her little attitude issues. I think I should keep her on her current conditioning program and see how she is by the end of this year so I can decide if we are going to compete next year or if I need to change her to a different disapline or just retire her to pleasure trail riding.

Of course a lot depends on Kezi. She is currently on Naproxin again. Which of course means I have an overactive cheerleader on my hands again. Its so nice to see her sound, I just wish I could belive it is going to last. Dr. Peterson seemed to think her reaction was heartening and might lead to a recovery, but I don't think he understands that when she goes sound, she looks very sound!

Oh well only time will tell. I will cross my fingers.

New training schedule!

Well sort of, we will see how it goes! As usual I can't wait to write it up on Excel, but it will have to wait until tomorrow when I am at work again!

My god its hot!

Just had to throw that out there! Its not that bad, its just that going from cold windy days where I was wearing two layers of everything to 80 degree weather is a bit shocking!

So last night I rode Lucy after work becuase I was too tired out from the weekend to get up in the moring. It was a lovely ride, except Lucy getting eaten alive by the mesquitos! Its time for them suckers to die! And fly spray is NOT working!

I decided to make this a speed ride. I feel it is time to start conditioning her lungs and heart to faster work, plus start trainning her to faster work. Lucy has alway required that I teach her to trot for longer periods of time. Once she picks up that that is what we are going to do she is great.

We didn't go far, only about half way down the hill after the Y, so all in all about three miles total (2.74 to be exact) We trotted about 90% of the way out until the Y, which is about a little over a mile. We only stoped for branches that needed walking under and for Bruno to catch up! I think we stoped to walk twice on the way out.
Then I walked her up the long strecht after the Y then Trotted from the Y back to the area with all the brush. I let her walk out after that. And wowee did she! She was back to her old breakneck speed! It was nice to see that getting her moving out helped get her walk going more.

For now I feel like our rides are not too taxing and deffinatly getting her back in shape! But here is the new schedule:

Monday: Depending on what was done Sunday:
a. If we rode at Carolyns on Sunday, we ride down the main road and back up for hill work
b. If we rode out on the trail on Sunday, we ride down daves road at the trot.

Wednesday: Just an easy going walk only ride down to the end of Daves road. Eventually we will ride out on a longer ride on this day.

Friday: Depending on what we plan on doing on Saturday:
a. We plan on riding at Carolyns, then we do hill work down the main road.
b. We plan on riding out on the trail, then we do speed work out on Daves road.

Saturday: We ride out on Gazos, Cloverdale or Wilder (eventually we will ride over in woodside and up on 35) OR up at Carolyns.

Sunday: We ride out on Gazos, Cloverdale or Wilder (eventually we will ride over in woodside and up on 35) OR up at Carolyns.

Note: In some cases we may choose to ride both weekend days out on the trail, if soI have to make up time with Sassy during the week, AND we must do some sort of balance training out on the trail.

So thats the plan for now! I will make a spreadsheet for it soon I am sure!

If there is a tourist season, why can't we shoot them?

So I can see now that this summer is going to be very trying on my patients. If I am trailering out twice every weekend, I am going to have to come to grips with the tourists. Perferable my hands gripping their throats!

But really, on Sunday I was so mad at tourists out on Gazos, and none of them were doing anything overly stupid! Which is unual! So if I get that annoyed at them just being there, imagine what I will be like when they start doing stupid stuff!


So we did make it up to Carolyns without killing any tourists, which may or may not have been a good thing.

IT WAS HOT!!!

I worked Lucy in the round pen for about five minutes doing some games, then tacked up. She looked so pretty! Both Carolyn and Alan kept telling me how pretty she was now. Which reminds me that I need to send Carolyn the pictures of Lucy while she was sick.
They were pretty amazed at her recovery. She told some of the other boarders who were up there all about her! Lucy is going to be famous up there!

So anyway, Lucy and I started with walking/trotting around the track. It took about 4 repititions for her to get that I wanted her to trot ALL the way around and that I wasn't going to allow her to stop and walk at every little thing. Once she got the idea that we were going to trot all the way around she stuck with it.
Then we headed into the arena. We did a figure eight at the walk, then added in a half circle in the corner off the diagonal. She did quite well bending both directions.
Then we added in some trot. We didn't do as well here. I was wearing capris and my hush puppy sandles so every time she broke to the walk I would lose my stirrups! Eventually we got things down and she kept trotting, but even then my leg was swinging a lot and it was hard to ask for proper bend. I got her to bend fine to the right but she absolutly would not bend to the left. I finally ended up on a circle to the left desperatly trying to push her out while asking for inside bend. It worked, sort of.

I deffinatly need to work on the long lines on proper bend!

Then I worked with Sassy on backing (she did quite well!) and going through gates because she got her fat ass stuck in the gate coming out of the pasture! Then we did some lunging over the sides of the arena, and I backed her up over the side of the arena, it took her a while but she finally got it!

Then I took her over to meet Lucy who was grazing in the corner. I told Carolyn that Sassy needs to lose weight and that I might be willing to pony her off Lucy on some trail rides.


Oh and Lucy did the cutest thing! After I put Sassy away I was talking to Carolyn in the yard. I saw Lucy across the arena and asked her if she was ready to go home. I went back to talking to carolyn and ten seconds later Lucy was at the gate of the arena looking at me like, umm yeah I am so ready to go home!! It was really cute! She followed me back over to where her halter was, I was suprised she was so willing to leave the grass!

Our LSD ride of the week

So on Saturday I rode Lucy out on the trail. We went up Gazos then up Johanson a ways. At first she was really slow, but then picked up the pace considerable until about a quarter of the way up. I got off and walked at about the same place as last week. Her breath was fast and shallow but she recovered well when we stoped. I got back up at Sandy point. We only went about a mile and a half down Johanson because Lucy was determined to turn around. At first I didn't care, she had a good pace going and oviously wasn't out of energy, but then we came to a hill that I didn't feel like climbing on the way back, so we turned around. And of course she power walked back down. She easily could have gone farther!
She triped several times coming down again. I still can't figure out if she is just being oblivious to where she is putting her feet or too tired to pick her feet up all the way, or too lazy!
I got off and walked her the last ten minutes to save my knee and watching her I felt that she just isn't making the effort to pick her feet up and over things. I think we might do some calvalleti work next week!

When we got back I untacked her and took her down to the creek. Boy did she love that! Got her underside all wet and silty!
Then since she still had most of her breakfast to eat I totaly brushed her out until she was not sweaty at all. It was quite warm out.
When I took her back up the hill to the house she was agin power walking, then when grazing at the chalks she bumped a pipe with her nose and spooked herself. It was pretty funny! But also annoying because she oviously had plenty of energy.

We went about7 miles, our average speed was 2.8 but that was just because she slowed down a lot on the way up the hill, she averaged more like 3.4 out on Johanson. We were out for 2 h 30m not bad for all walk and slowing a lot on the up hill!
Hill work this week!

Very nice ride, weather finaly coming around

Rode down my road today. Planned on only going to flat spot just after pond, since I had all my dogs with me so I didn't want to go past Lisa's with them. But her dogs were at the flat spot. The male ran home when Bruno barked at them, but the female stuck around. I got a hold of Bruno pretty quick but when I let go of him (the female had run off) he ran back down the road after her. Damn males! So I trotted Lucy down the road to catch him before he could run off to Lisa's house (trying to retrive him would not have been fun). I ended up getting a hold of him finally. Lucy was very unhappy, not only because I made her trot down the hill, but becuase she wanted to stop and stare at the dog and I made her get close! I think she was also a bit annoyed that she wasn't the center of my attention, like usually on rides! I tied Bruno to the end of Lucy's lead rope, so technicly he was attached to Lucy, but I wasn't worried, and it was better then having to bend over to hold on to him.

I got back on about half way up. Lucy never seemed to have a problem with the hill. We rode down Daves road to the Y. I don't have an exact speed or distance becuase I dropped my phone when I got off to get the gate.

But Lucy did seem to move out really well, espeshally considering that she had just walked a half a mile up the hill.

I plan on riding up Gazos and going for about a 8 mile ride tomorrow. Last Saturday was a 8 mile ride and she did fine, and that was with climbing two hills, so she shouldn't have any problems with it.

Its a Raven! Its a Duck! No! Its a panguin!

No seriously!

I swear I saw a panguin walking down the side of hyway 1 today on the way to school.

Maybe I've had to much LSD training with Lucy! HAhahah! Ok I crack myself up! But really though, it looked like a panguin!

I don't know, maybe it was a odd looking duck.

A really odd lucking duck. Uh huh. I hope the newspaper lets us know if it was a panguin. I mean now thats news! Very socialy importaint stuff there.


But in other non-panguin seeing parts of my life, I haven't updated my blog in almost a week!

Eeekk!

The blog gods will get angry. Ha! That sounds funny, blog gods!


Last week:

I can't remember much of what I updated last week, so I will go over it briefly. I rode Tuesday and Thursday morings. She deffinatly had a lot more energy then previously. We had fun, just went down Daves rd.

My Weekend:

So I ment to ride both days, but family got in the way. I was headed up to Carolyns on Saturday when I got a flat tire. Naturaly I did not have a spare (not that it would have helped much since my spare has no air in it currently!) nor did I have my air pump. So, since we were at the gate when Loren noticed, I parked there. Loren was sweet enough to stay in the truck and read while I went on a ride. Or is that lazy enough? I'm not sure. Anyway, we had a lovely ride up Gazos. I got off and walked Lucy up the last halt, the steepest part, which I think helped her not be too out of breath.
Up at Sandy Point we ran into a group of kids. Of course they wanted to pet Lucy, and Lucy wanted to sniff them all to make sure they weren't bomb carrying mutants. Then we headed down Gazos trail, since we hadn't been down that way in a while. We went about a half a mile or more out, then I trotted her most of the way back. No problems, except that she seemed a little bit tender. So I decided it was time to put boots on her.
I walked Lucy back up the hill to the house, becuase I felt it would be impolite to ride while Loren had to walk. Plus I thought it would be better for Lucy. I didn't need to worry, she practicly pulled my arm off power walking up the hill.

Sunday was Easter and I ended up stuck at my brothers all day.

I rode Monday moring, and Wednesday morning. I tried the Wintec on Lucy on Wednesday. I liked it except I had a hard time reaching Lu's sides with my heels. But it was comfy.
Lucy didn't seem to want to trot in it, but that might have just been her being her. I haven't made up my mind if I want to keep riding in it or not.

I would have measured Lucy's feet for the boots yesterday, but Luke never showed up. Not sure why, I should call him.

Oh and Lucy is living in the other paddock right now. Want to know why? Because my destroyer horse sat on a fence. So of course the fence is no longer of any use whatsoever. Lucy has now broken or destroyed a fence in every paddock or pasture at my house. Lovely.
I put up a couple 2X6's yesterday so I think they should be good to go back in.

I am going to ride down the road back back tomorrow. Will be nice to start doing a bit more hill work.

Oh and we learned about smart art in excel today. I cannot wait to play with some of these cool new things for conditioning charts!

Yeah!

"what a wonderful day!"

I feel like singing, but becaue I love my boyfriend and he is currently in the same room as me, I will not!

I took Lucy out for another ride this morning, (wow I am getting good at this whole go out and ride and be happy stuff!) and decided to test her at the trot. We trotted out in several places and she had energy and didn't get out of breath until we trotted back up the long up hill coming back after the Y. I think she needs some hill work at the walk and trot work only on flat right now. She deffinatly could have handled a much longer ride, so only another week or so of these shorter rides then longer rides, hopefully.

It was so nice to be riding that big floaty trot again! I had forgotten how nice it is! I love Lucy's trot!

Introducing Mr. and Mrs. Peacock!

Well the peacock now follows the Peahen around all over! Dad says it just like Loren and I, I did find that kinda funny!

I took a picture of them but its not very good so I will try to get some more.


Lucy drives me up the wall!!!!

I took her out to eat her enrich this morning and she took forever! And wouldn't even finish it! I had to dump the last of it into her bucket she shares with Huck. Whatever. I got some nice shots of her though.

I'll post them later.

More energy, are we seeing a pattern?

YES! I belive we are!


I took Huck and Lucy out for a ride this morning (got up at 6:30 and got back at 8:30 not bad!) and she was really good! We trotted from just past the water tank all the way up to almost where you can see across to the chalks! Without wanting to stop or slowing down! And we trotted again without slowing down and I even got her to canter a couple stides!


Out at the Y I did our normal circle and she did better then last time, yeilded better anyway. She wasn't quite as responsive about turning though.


All in all a very good ride!

Pictures of Lucy!

Its been a looonnnggg weekend

Well long decition wise anyway. I actually made some decisions! Can you belive it!? ME! who never can make decisions, made several this weekend! But at least I have no regrets about them, not yet at least. This is why I take so long to make decisions, because I never like to regret anything, and I never do!

So to begin!

Friday, Kezi came down lame again. But not to badly, just a little bit, and still energitic. Saturday morning I took her out as well and found that she is a puff ball of hair! She needs to be groomed something horrible!

So we went up to see the gelding, Briana gave me some brushes and let me go out and brush him and work with him. He absolutly would not lunge! He just turned toward me and would occationally throw a fit bucking and rearing. He actaully kicked a branch loose on one of the trees! I had Briana come in and lunge him so I could see how he moved. I was less impressed with him this time then last. Maybe it was just becuase of all the problems I have been having with this decision.

Then we headed over to Sacramento (two hours of beautiful wine country!) and picked up the peacock (who I let out with the dogs around and might have lost, my dad is not so happy!)
Then when we got back we went up to the campsite to see Lorens causin, Keith. We talked for a bit and then went home.

Sunday I took Lucy down to Cloverdale to ride. IT WAS BEAUTIFUL OUT!!! A horse trailer pulled in just before Lucy and I were setting off, so we knew we would have some company on the trail at some point.
Lucy was good, she picked up her pace with a little help from me. She even trotted out really nice! Although the next couple times I asked her to trot out she was deffinatly slower! On our way back we met up with the other horses. One turned out to be Micheles dad (the one who had mookie) and the other was and endurance rider (I turned green with envy I think!) we chatted for a little bit then headed on. Lucy of course wanted to turn back with them and so insisted on whinning a bunch at them. And super walking! Which is normal for her, but not lately. I yelled at her a little bit for going back to her old ways for a couple of horses she didn't even know!
I got really annoyed at her near the end of the ride when she wouldn't stop trying to eat grass. I was thinking about what I wanted to do with her, trail riding, endurance, eventing. She is such a nice looking horse but I can't quite figure out what to do with her. I think for now trail riding and if she wants to do endurance, then great! Otherwise we will figure out what to do then!

Then when I got home I went over to see Kezi, I took her and Ollie out so I could brush her and get all the loose hair off. I realized that I am not quite ready to give up on her, and that she is more my horse then he could ever be! I don't think I quite realized before how much she is my horse, and how importaint she is to me!

So I am e-mailing Briana to explain to her and then Russ to see where we go from here.

"Imagine all the lame horses!!!"

So I took Kezi off her Naproxin last night. What fun she is right now though. It was very windy and Kezi, much like Lucy, likes to run around in the wind. Oh fun. She kept running up and down the fence along the road. Then crazy chicken ran across the paddock and Kezi felt the need to spook at her, literally, she ran at the chicken then ran back at us. And since we were standing right on the other side of where she jumped out, we both backed away quickly, or at least I tryed to, but my ottoman of a dog was right there waiting to trip me up. Do you think they realize that if they ever sucseed in killing us that they won't get fed anymore?

So I think its my imagination, but I swear she was a little more careful about her leg this moring. Loren thinks its my imagination. Before we left I took a carrot out to her and Ollie (Lu and Huck were to far away to get in on this good carrot action) she was laying down. With her foot tucked under her! I have never seen her lay like that! I would have been thrilled to see that back when I still thought there was a chance she would ever recover. But now I actaully want to see her lame because I feel like she will never recover and there is no way I can put her down while she is sound, even though I know in a couple months she will go right back to being lame again.

I have a theory though. Kezi's lameness is caused by downward presuer on her leg. For instance: when she jumped out of the trailer, it was downward pressure, turned up lame a week later; in october she was rearing a lot when I was trying to load her, a week later she was lame; in December I didn't see how she got lame but I think it was the mud, possibly the mud pulls on her leg; earlier this month she jumped out of her paddock, and was very lame even on the anti-inflamitories.

I mean I have lunged her a good deal and she has never come down lame becuase of that! But when she rears or comes down on her front legs from jumping over something, she ends up lame.

They whole mud thing is the only one I can't quite figure out though, maybe its just because the mud is pulling on her leg.

The swamp queen cometh!

So Kezi is now sound. Lovely huh? I know I should be happy but sorry to say I am not! I took her out for a quick walk and she was very explosive! She actaully reared and bucked becuase she steped on a tarp! I mean for crying out loud! So now I have to convince the vet that this is what happens to her and that it doesn't mean that she is recoverying at all. I can't believe I didn't see this happening when we first started her on this.
It will be even harder to put down a horse that doesn't appear lame.

Grrr! I am off to admire Lucy, she is looking so amazing now that she is putting muscle back on and losing her winter coat.

What to do?

So do I buy the Anglo Arab and assume I will either be putting Kezi down or giving her away?

OR

Do I tell the owner I can't make a decision for another couple weeks and see how things go with Kezi?

OR

Do I just tell his owner no I won't be taking him and try some more stuff with Kezi, potentially keeping her in pain?

My poor baby!

Is she permanently lame? I believe so. She has been on and off lame since last June, being lame the longest since Christmas. Several vets have agreed that she is permanently lame. The one I am working with now is unsure but leaning that direction.

Can she be fixed to not be in pain? Hard to say. I have had ultasounds and radiographs of her knee (two vets thought it was there), x-rays of the neck and shoulder (the chiro and first vet) and an EPM test (one vet thought maybe). Current vet (who I really really like!) thinks that for all we know it could be in any one of those places or in none of them or in all of them!! Fun huh? A bone scan would probably pin point where most of the pain is, but the vet feels very strongly that whatever it is, if it was fixable we would have found it by now or her continus paddock rest would have corrected it. So I could spend $2000 to have the bone scan done, then potentally even more x-rays and ultrasounds to ultimatly only find out that whatever is wrong isn't fixable.
Is she better with meds? Well, sort of. Previously she seemed better on anti-inflamitorys, BUT she would get energitic and run around like a chicken withs its head cut off, making it more likely that she could makes her condition worse. About a month ago, when she got so bad she could hardly move, I put her on Bute and she was better but not really even close to being sound. Now she has been on Naproxin for almost three weeks and is still lame when walked out, and she hardly moves around in her paddock at all.

Can she live out her life as a pasture ornament at my house? No. I live in the mountains in the redwoods. She currently she lives in a small paddock, that I don't believe any horse should have to live in, espeshally one that isn't going out reguarly. And my big pasture is very rough terrain and steep. I wouldn't ask a lame horse to naviagate that.

Can she live out her life as a pasture ornament with someone else? Maybe. Unfortunitly Kezi is a morab, and an itch with a b in front of it and has major seperation anxiety (if she is left alone she just gallups around her paddock whinnying the whole time) and has eating issues (we think she was starved by another horse or person at one time). In other words the other horse has to really want the food to get it away from her. Luckly I have a perfect situation where she can live with my mini who never goes anywhere and is really pushy about his food.She could only go and live with just the right kind of person since she isn't that easy to handle. I have learned how to work with her so that she doesn't completly flip out and run off and we still have difficult days (which wouldn't be so much of an issue if she could get out and be worked) which is something her last owner never really learned. Kezi was deffinatly too much for her!

Is she in a lot of pain? Thats hard to say. Seeing as I have only seen in her brief spells sound, and even then she was never 100% better, I have a hard time comaring! But I will say that usually when she is feeling better and not lame she does run around her paddock a little bit until getting lame again, and then she does not run around at all. In the last couple weeks while on the pain meds I have not seen her run around at all. And over the winter, yes she was in pain, but it gets pretty muddy at my house which might have been why.


*** So I deffinatly like the idea of donating her, but when thinking of her emediate (sp?) happieness, I don't think it would be best. Kezi takes a while to trust someone and she needs another horse to live with her all the time. And I feel she is most comforitable with just one person who she trusts taking care of her, she gets nervous easily. But I will deffinatly give it some serious thought****

I have a lot to think about and on Thursday when she ends her anti-inflamitorys I will get to see what she is like off them currently and then I will be confering with the vet again.