Kezi Lameness chart

I just made this chart of Kezi's lameness ( I downloaded a timeline and was planning on using it to make a timeline for Lucy's conditioning for the summer) and decided to try my hand at publishing it on my blog, this may take a couple trys to get right!


http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=F.1ec3c1a5-53e1-4774-bab3-8e83e6b1d74f&hl=en


Ok so I cannot figure out how to make a title clickable, but then I am the girl who cannot figure out how to post pictures in the middle of a post, rather they all end up at the top! Haha!

Ok lets see if this works!

Some pictures of Kezi!

Classic muddy Kezi, she got caked with mud over the winter and I was unable to get her clean, I had to wait for her to shed out to get the mud all off!

Kinda pudgy here!!

Very pretty in the morning!

This is from the week I brought her home.

A Miss Kezi post!

I feel like bloging about Kezi today! Maybe its because I have been having so much fun taking her out for walks lately and that has been my only horse contact this week. Its funny that right when I started thinking about putting her down because she was so bad during the winter is right when I started bonding with her more! Not that I didn't like her before, she just never really felt like "my" horse like my other horses do! Even though I have spent more money on her then the two mini's combined! But Lucy still managed to rack up bigger vet bills last year.

I have been obsesivly watching Kezi move for any sign of lameness and gotta say that whatever is wrong with her, its entirely pain related! Maybe once a week at the most I see her do something that is lameness related, and at this point some of it, like her resting her hoove on her toe, could just be habit. Espeshally since I have seen her do it with the other hoove a couple times now. Also, ever since she has been on the anti-inflamitories she has been laying down with her leg underneither her, rather then stuck out in front of her.
I love seeing her trot up to the fence in the morning, she has such an amazing trot! I know she shouldn't be trotting right now, but unless I allow her the space to do so she will start rearing to get her energy out and that is really bad for her!
Part of me wants to keep her on the pain meds all summer just so she can feel good and be happy! But hopefully she will stay sound while on continued paddock rest through the summer.
I also wish I could take her on longer walks. I'm sure she more then enjoys our little jaunts out to eat grass, but a longer walk would be nice. I don't think it would be a problem if it weren't for the steep hill! But eventually we will have to go down it to go for any decent langth walks. But that is a ways away right now.

She is starting to shed out and loose her winter weight, I have always thought Lucy was a beautiful horse, and still do, but I defy anyone to not admit that Kezi is drop dead gorgeous! She is the kind of horse you see on those horse calenders. Like the one that I have in my office right now! HAah! None of those horses are as pretty as Kezi though!

Well lets hope I have a good weekend and start feeling better, I dont' mind being really sick becuase I get to rest and get better, but when I am just a little bit sick then I still go to work and then it takes longer to recover! Grrr!

Oh and its raining, but really warm, its wierd!

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!

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.

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.

I hate making decisions!

I have a big case of horsey blues! Its so upseting that I didn't even have fun out riding Lucy yesterday! Although it was amusing how she kept spooking at the ground!

Anyway, I need to just spill all of whats in my head into a thread. Maybe you guys can tell me how you make your difficult decisions. In the end though, I am the only one who can make these decisions (yes I am facing more then one!)

So, as some of you know I am contiplating putting my morab down. She has been lame for a year and I am running out of money and energy. Plus she seemed to get worse over winter and I am worried about her being in pain.
Right now I have her on Naproxin, an anti-inflamitory. The last vet that I went to see suggested I put her on it for 21 days while in a paddock to see if there is any improvment indicating a soft tissue injury. Well the very first day on it she jumped out of her paddock and went on a little adventure. Since then she has not run around much and has been just as lame on the anti-inflamitorys as off (also I had her on Bute before going to see the vet and she was just as lame then too) so she has pretty much been her normal, lame self. When sound she has a lot more energy.

So those 21 days are up this Thursday and the plan is to take her off and see what the difference is, if there appears to be any improvment, then to continue on the a lower dose, if not then we are pretty sure she does not have a soft tissue injury. Now I have been in contact with the vet so he knows that she has been lame this whole time, even on the anti-inflamitories. So unless she makes some sort of miraculus (sp?) turn around in the next couple days, I feel like the best thing is to plan on putting her down sometime in the near future.

So here is where things start to get complicated!

1. I was telling my dad the other night that I was thinking of putting her down and if he could dig a hole (he has a very big tractor for the job). He was suprised that I had come to that decision but understood and agreed to helping me bury her when I have her put down. Suddenly putting her down seemed a lot more real and I realized that I wasn't sure I could do it! Its not like I haven't done it before, when I was 9 my mom and I put my rat to sleep, I understood why and was ok with it. When I was 11 we had to put my first horse to sleep, again I was ok with it and understood it had to happen. But now I am having a hard time seeing myself doing it! Its hard to imagine coming home from work and not seeing Kezi waiting at the gate for her dinner! But I know its for the best, becuase even though she can't tell me she is in pain, how could she not be with how lame she is?

Then there is the other thing that has been a big issue for me. Its not entirely related to Kezi but parts of it are.

Once I knew I was going to put Kezi down, or at least that would be the plan if nothing changed with her lameness, I sort of happend upon this beautiful Anglo Arab for sale (funny how that happens huh?). I figured it wouldn't hurt to go look at him and since I was sure I would either be putting Kezi down or giving her to a home where she could be more comforitable (my house isn't so good for injured horses) so then I would be looking for another endurance prospect, hopefully one that wouldn't end up lame a week after brining it home.
But now that Lucy (my Qh) is mostly recovered, I don't know, I seem to be having issues deciding wether to get him or not. I know that Lucy will never be an endurance horse, she doesn't like going real fast out on the trail, plus I am unsure if she will ever be 100% again after being sick, so I am not sure I will ever be able to push her to do something like endurance. And I really want to do endurance, I live in an area perfect for training, and haven't gotten to to out on the trails for over a year, I really miss it!
And of course I still really want to compete in Endurance (I’m tired of just trail riding!) and he could be a great horses to do it with! Plus he just has a great personality that I love! He would be so much fun to work with!