Author: Amanda

volunteering

King Oak Fall Horse Trials

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I had every intention of taking photographs with which to illustrate this post, and…forgot. Ah well.

I scratched Tristan from the Beginner Novice, but still had friends going, and already had the day off, so I helped pack and load ponies on Friday, then drove out to King Oak. We arrived in plenty of time to do the course walk, and my heart did hurt a little bit – we could’ve handled it just fine.

In bed by 10pm after some pizza, and by “in bed” I mean an actual bed! For the first time in years we weren’t sleeping in the truck, thanks to R.’s very generous offer of sharing her hotel room. It was lovely to have air conditioning and a proper bed and a shower. Unheard of for horse showing!

I helped clean tack and hold horses until my jump judge briefing at 8:15, and started to get a bit nervous during the briefing – the wind was picking up, and it was quite cold and cloudy. I told my jump partners that I’d walk out and meet them there, and went back to the car for my jacket.

I was sitting with two young girls and their babysitter, and so ended up doing the recording and radioing in myself, explaining eventing to the non-horsey babysitter (who was very nice and interested, and really picked up on things through the day) and answering questions for the girls. We were at a decently large Training fence for the morning, a sort of squared off stacked logs rolltop with some airy spaces in between. Fairly straightforward. It jumped just fine all morning, as it was soon after the water and usually by then horses were going.

Problems started when it started raining. Basic rain – not so much a problem. I mean, it was wet and miserable and the girls were not thrilled, but so it goes. I mostly kept my sheets dry and during a break ran to put my bag with my Kindle and cell phone in a dry car, and then resigned myself to getting soaked. The girls headed off, leaving me to judge the Beginner Novice fence with another set of jump judges, and at the end of the first BN division it started getting ugly. We heard thunder in the distance, and the wind and the rain picked up, and they called jump judges in when the radar showed a big, nasty storm cell close by.

I ran up to sit in the truck with J. and whew, the skies opened up. We waited an hour, and then they called off cross-country for the rest of the afternoon due to the forecast. I walked back up to the volunteer tent to drop off my things and stayed for a bit to help sort through forms to get them ready for tomorrow, then checked in to find that they were running BN in the morning, and R. was staying over in order to run her horse. King Oak was able to provide stabling, so huzzah for them!

I hung out at the volunteer tent and ate dinner waiting for that decision, and then was able to get back to the barn, soak Tristan’s foot, wrap it up (more on the wrapping adventures later), and be home and in bed by 10:30. Whew.

abscess · colic

Soaking, soaking, soaking

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Not much new to report. Tris is now off at the walk as the abscess processes. He’s definitely draining – if not always visibly, there’s always a stain on the hoof to indicate goo. It seems to be coming both from the coronet band and from the newish hole a bit below the coronet band.

I’m soaking with epsom salt and betadine. Two days ago, I poured epsom salts, betadine, and hot water into a diaper and then did a wrap of that diaper, vetrap, and duct tape over the two holes. Last night, I did a sugardine painted directly onto the holes followed by the diaper, vetrap, and duct tape, and dried off the hoof and tried to get the duct tape to attach directly, in the hopes that it would last longer.

I did chat with the vet the other morning, and despite my valiant efforts to get him to spend my money, he said there was nothing to do but wait it out. Sometimes abscesses just hang around in the hoof and keep channeling around. I forgot completely to check in with them about the gassiness, too, in the hopes of preventing future colics, so I will have to call back this afternoon and at the very least order another tube of banamine for Monday.

I also want to check in with the farrier to see if he can just put eyes on Tris’s foot during his regular rounds on Friday, and call Smartpak to see about doing a digestive supplement. Most of them look formulated for hard keepers or nervous horses – neither of which is a good description of my horse! We’ll see what they have to say.

Tomorrow is a day off to make a Smartpak run to pick up some Animalintex poultice to wrap Tris’s foot with, some assorted supplies for friends, and then to pack up the ponies and head out to King Oak. I am sort-of grooming for Hannah on Friday, then volunteering at King Oak all day Saturday. A bit bittersweet that we won’t be running after all, but with the continuing problems I know I made the right decision, and I have plenty of friends to cheer on.

book review

Book Review: Chosen By a Horse

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Chosen By a Horse: How a Broken Horse Fixed a Broken Heart
by Susan Richards


My mother lent this to me a very long time ago, and now that I am no longer in graduate school, I’ve been working through my backlog of loaned and long-ago-purchased books. I picked this up to head off to a long weekend at a house in the White Mountains, and it suited lazy hammock reading nicely.

Richards has a very straightforward, simple writing style. Probably about half the time it worked for me, and the other half I felt frustrated that she was clearly describing things far too plainly. I can tell there’s a good, knowledgeable horsewoman in there, but several times I spotted her dumbing down her descriptions or analyses for a broader audience.

The story of Lay Me Down really was touching, and well-told. The mare sounds like she was utterly wonderful, with loads of personality. I’m not sure she “fixed” Richards; as another reviewer pointed out, the battles with alcoholism and abandonment were in Richards’ past by the time she adopted the mare. If there was some more profound connection between the mare’s story and Richards moving to a new phase of her life – I didn’t get it.

The only parts that truly annoyed me were some of Richards’ horsekeeping decisions. More than anything else, her decision to enclose her barn inside her pasture and then…leave the stalls open all day, let the horses wander in and out of stalls seemingly at will, and feed them wherever they hung out, sometimes in the aisle, really, REALLY grated on me. I’m not sure what she expected would happen with an alpha mare and a small enclosed space. That’s an accident that should NEVER have happened, and from descriptions later in the book she really had no intention of fixing the problem.

Anyway. Those reservations aside, this was a pleasant enough read. It didn’t change my life, but I also found it quite readable and read to the end – something of a feat for me and books recently.

abscess · adventures with the vet

Again. Some More.

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So, my horse has an abscess.

No, another one.

Or maybe the same one.

Do I sound like a broken record? I feel like one.

I was away for the weekend, and left anticipating that all I would hear was that my horse had some lovely walk/trot sets to ease him back in slowly. I was thinking, maybe I’ll ride him in the lesson on Tuesday, even if we just do a bunch of trot stuff.

Then I got the text that he was off at the trot and there was some discharge from his foot – that same right front. #@!@!%$#%@

I got to the barn tonight to see a nice lump about 1/4″ below the coronet band, quite hot, with a pinprick hole or two in it. He’d been soaked by awesome friends over the weekend, and I bought more epsom salts and betadine on the way to the barn to keep going.

I was frustrated, riding the tail end of a long weekend, and we had some bad moments early on in the soaking but I took a deep breath and apologized to him. We both stood and sighed for a moment, and he behaved from then on.

I’ll call the farrier and the vet in the morning. Farrier just to take a look; vet to try and talk them into getting me some antibiotics and then coming out to see him on Monday the 10th when they’re looking at another horse in the barn. I’m not sure it will work, but I can always hope. At this point, I don’t want to chase this around anymore with soaking; I worry about it going more systemic.

He’ll stay in tomorrow and be good and mad at me for soaking tomorrow night, but hopefully after talking to the vet & farrier I’ll have a better plan of action. I’d like to be done with this already.

adventures with the vet · colic

Here we go again

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This post was supposed to be all about how I trotted my horse last night, and even bareback around the ring for a few minutes it felt good, and he’s sound, and we’re going to ease back into work, and so on and so forth.

A few minutes after I got off, though, he pawed at his hay a little bit. Okay, I thought, he’s begging. Then he pawed some more, and when I got back from putting his bridle away, he was laying down. Then he got up and circled his stall and pawed some more and wasn’t eating his hay.

#@$#@$!

So I started walking him, and a helpful friend went to check on the possibility of some IM banamine. No dice, so we dosed him with half a tube and started walking, and walking. About 15 minutes later he really started getting that peaked colic look: hunched and yet distended belly, labored breathing, worried face. His gums were quite pale.

I had my hands on the phone to call the vet when T. came out and watched him walking and reassured me. I had in fact seen him pass some manure not long after I rode him, and he had gut sounds, so there was clearly some movement. We kept walking. Another 20 minutes or so and he started easing up a little bit at a time: his walking became more natural, his breathing a bit easier, his gums a teensy bit pinker.

It still wasn’t fast enough for me so we gave him the other half of the tube and kept walking. All told, I walked him for about an hour and a half. I let him stand quietly when he wanted to. He sniffed the ground quite a lot but never quite offered to roll. When he started mugging me for treats again when we paused, and T. went back up into the house, I put him on the crossties in order to strip his stall – I didn’t want him adding anything to his stomach, and wanted to be able to see every bit of manure he left.

He pawed up a storm on the crossties but it was already starting to look pissed off instead of painful. I put him in his stall and he started rooting around for hay, getting little wispy bits but not much more. He stood in the open stall door and pawed and pawed and glared at me, clearly furious that I’d taken away his dinner before he finished. Within 30 minutes of being back in his stall he’d pooped, peed, and passed copious amounts of gas. Just a little over three hours from first noticing symptoms to being totally comfortable with his recovery.

This is not new for him, unfortunately. He’s a very gassy horse to begin with, and when he adds anything to that mix he can get colicky. I wish he didn’t, and it terrifies me every time, but he has clear and recognizable symptoms and I always keep banamine to hand for precisely this reason. Next time the vet is at the barn I’ll get another tube, and we’ll talk about some maintenance things to help him out.

adventures with the vet

Obsessive Organization: Tristan’s Medical Binder

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Given that we’re currently wrestling with a medical issue, it was fitting that I spent time on Sunday going over Tristan’s medical binder and getting it ready for the next few years to come. Yes, years.

I have a system. It is meticulous and yet simple, and I love it. I spent a lot of time creating it and tweaking it to suit us just right, and I am quite proud of it. Here it is, in a nutshell.

The main tool of the system is a three-ring binder. Within that binder, years of medical records are separated by tabbed dividers. I usually keep the current year and 1-2 years previous as well as 1-2 years upcoming, which means that his current medical records sit in the middle.

Each tabbed section contains two parts: overall calendars and specific invoices.

At the beginning of each section are twelve monthly calendars. I use printfree.com for just a basic, no-frills blocks calendar. Behind these twelve months are all of the invoices for all of Tristan’s care, in chronological order. If an invoice (say, for a farrier bill) is smaller than a page, I tape it to a blank page and then three hole punch that.

Whenever he gets any treatment, I write a quick note on the day of the treatment itself – something as short as “vet – spring shots” or “farrier – trim.” I usually include the name of the professional as well, just to keep track of our help through the years. Each type of visit is color-coded: green for the vet, blue for the farrier, so on and so forth. I made myself a key to the color-coding that lives at the front of the binder so I don’t forget. I color-code by highlighting the first word – “vet” or “farrier” – of the entry. If there’s an invoice, I then file it behind those initial sheets.

Now I have both an at-a-glance overview as well as an easy way of finding more information. Every two years or so, I take out a few years from the back of the binder and file them in my larger filing cabinet, again by year, and then print out another few years of at-a-glance calendars for the binder.

There is also a folder at the back of the binder that contains some miscellaneous things not necessarily date-related: copies of his radiographs, feed labels, his vitals.

In the front pocket of the binder I keep my current boarding agreement as well as five or so copies of his current Coggins. Whenever we get a new Coggins, I always file the original pink carbon copy as well as one clean copy in the back part, and then make many copies to go in the front to use up as needed, replacing the ones I keep in the trailer, tack trunk, etc.

I’ve used this system successfully for three years now. It was a bit of a pain to put together – backfilling all those records – but it’s worked brilliantly going forward. It provides a good visual reference for how recently he’s had his feet done, or had a massage, or when the vet did spring shots last year, and it gives me the confidence that I have all the information I might need right at my fingertips.

abscess

Slowly, Slowly

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Last night, I put Tris on the longe line: sound at the walk and trot, a bit stiff at the canter but in a way that suggested to me he was just unbalanced and out of work, rather than hurting. Huzzah! He was also fresh  – well, for him – and kept picking up a trot when I’d asked him to walk, and even gave me a little flourish in his transition into the canter.

The abscess site looks like it’s healing well. I scrubbed it with betadine and soaked it, then iced his leg while getting my trailer ready to haul this weekend. The leg is still a bit spongy, but after chatting with J. I agree with her that it needs to be worked off at this point.

So, he will go back under saddle at the walk and have something of a rehab schedule, working up to trotting and cantering again slowly to make sure the leg clears up as we go along and he doesn’t get stressed too much.

I’ll keep soaking his foot through the weekend, and probably then hold off unless I see signs of a renewed problem. The abscess looks to be cleared up at this point, thankfully.

2012 show season · abscess · show planning · valinor farm

Onward, Upward

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Tristan’s slowly, slowly getting better. The leg is down a bit; the hoof is a bit more stable, but still draining. Per the vet’s advice, I put him on the longe line: sound at the walk, iffy at the trot to the right (when he had to put more weight on his RF).

I soaked for an hour (two 30 minute sessions with water as hot as I could get it), then iced the leg and gave him a gram of bute. I’ll do the same tonight. I can see the path and the destination, but I don’t quite know how long it will take to get us there.

I sent in my withdrawal to King Oak today. I’m holding off on a decision about Valinor until Thursday; I still have hopes that we’ll be able to go and do a dressage test, though I may just cancel it altogether and focus on something like, say, the October Beland schooling show. There’s also the possibility that the barn will go to the October Hitching Post schooling show, where we had such a good run in the spring, and there’s the Groton House Fall Classic. Then there will be a multitude of hunter paces for experience in that regard.

New goal: finish the fall on a high note, getting him out and running around, and re-focus on some specific improvements that I want to see over the winter in our dressage. I have half-seriously said in the past that he will probably never canter on the bit, but I would like to improve his canter, to improve our transitions, and overall get him more consistent in the bridle.

2012 show season · abscess · adventures with the vet · valinor farm

Best-Laid Plans

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Things have been happening so quickly I haven’t updated. To recap: last Thursday Tris was a bit off. I blamed the crack in his RF, and scheduled him to get shoes on Friday.

Wednesday morning, he came up quite lame in the RF, and stayed inside. Thursday night, I went down to check on him/ride, and he was very VERY lame – and leaking copious amounts of pus from an abscess that had burst through his coronet band, in line with the crack. His leg was also quite stocked up. I am about 99% sure this is the same abscess we dealt with some months ago, that just never quite blew out before.

Friday morning, the farrier saw him, put shoes on, and said he was getting near to done draining, but to keep soaking his foot. So I’ve been doing so. There has been some reduction in his leg, but it is not cool and tight. The area around his coronet band where the abscess blew is still open, still hot, and I believe still draining a bit. He’s also still got a clear pulse in the leg, so: still working through.

He went back out for the full day on Sunday, and I was hoping the leg would go down with some walking. No dice. It also didn’t get worse overnight, so there’s that. I checked in with Mass Equine, and they weren’t worried just yet. Tonight, I’m to put him on the longe line and see what he looks like at the trot, and bute him for a few days to help resolve things. I’ll check back in with him for a few days.

I don’t feel comfortable putting him back into work with his leg blown up like that. If it continues through the middle of the week, we may have to scratch Valinor this Saturday. With everything that’s been going on, we’ve fallen behind on our prep. If his leg isn’t magically better tonight, tomorrow morning I’m going to scratch from King Oak.

I’m an odd mixture of heartbroken and zen. I am pretty clear on my options, and pretty clear in that I don’t think we’re ready for King Oak, and even if he were magically better tonight we’d be hard-pressed to get ready. Scratching tomorrow, on the closing date, gets me a refund to re-direct toward hunter paces and schooling shows in the fall. Then, who knows? The possibility of getting to a recognized event diminishes greatly if I scratch King Oak, but it doesn’t vanish. We’ll keep working.

physical fitness (human)

200 Situps

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I’ve felt for some time now that my own physical preparations for riding were lacking. My schedule was so crunched, however, that there was no time I could scrape out regularly to exercise more. I would go to the gym with my boyfriend, using his pass, when our schedules lined up, but other than that, not much on top of riding.

While away on our road trip, my sedentary lifestyle and road food meant I gained a few pounds. I don’t really have body image issues, but I noticed that with that extra weight came a bit of a tipping point of lethargy. I’ve been losing energy for some time now but this was my signal that something needed to change.

I’ve instituted two small things that will help turn around, and in the coming months might visit the idea of getting my own gym membership and making sure I carve out time to use it.

The first is that I’ve downloaded the 200 Situps app for my iPod Touch. I followed the program for a few weeks a few years ago, and liked it. So far, I’ve found the app is a good way to keep track of where I am with the program. It was only $1.99, and it should help my core strength. I’d love to add the squats program too, but I doubt my knees would take it.

The second is that I’ve redoubled my efforts to eat better. I’ve always been vegetable-averse but I’ve let that slide the last few months into generally unhealthy eating. In the past, I’ve successfully and happily made healthier lunch choices. Time to go back to that. Lunch today was melon, cottage cheese, some whole wheat crackers, and water. I’ve packed some protein granola bars for snacking to stave off the temptation to grab fast food on the drive to the barn.

It’s late in the season to be pushing hard on this, but if I can get myself back into better habits and carry them through the winter, next summer will be much better.