After reading this blog post from Flying Free, I realized it’s been a while since I updated on Tristan’s Cushings. For previous entries, check out the Cushings tag.

This is definitely one of those “no news is good news” situations. He’s been doing amazingly well. He’s maintaining on 1mg of pergolide a day, and eating it without any difficulties. After the Wedgewood Pharmacy scare, there have been no problems with the supply of the drug itself.

Right now, he’s on about three flakes of hay a day, 1/2 Q of Blue Seal’s Carb Guard in the morning and at night, and about 3 hours of grass a day. Remember, he does not have associated insulin issues, so he’s still fine to have access to grass. We’re careful about what grass he gets and how much of it he gets, but there’s no physiological reason he can’t have it. The barn was unbelievably good about getting ready for grass turnout: he and the other Cushings horse got acclimated to grass in 5 minute intervals, adding on 5 more minutes every other day, for two weeks until they got up to an hour.

One of the main reasons that we first suspected Cushings was because he just would not gain or keep muscle or fitness. I’m really happy to report that both of those things are dramatically improved this summer. He came out of the winter in beautiful condition (even after the worst winter ever!), and with a careful conditioning program has bounced back amazingly well. His summer coat is shiny, fine, and soft, with not a hint of coarse growth or overgrowth.

Saturday night, for example, he had a solid 55 minutes of trot set work in intervals, with about 8 minutes of canter in short bursts (30 seconds – 1 minute at a time). He finished barely winded, and only sweaty under the girth and under his bridle. o.O

He often feels muscle-tired but not winded or overly tired, like he’s had a good lifting exercise and would like to be done working on those muscle groups, but not overall body-exhausted. That’s to be expected, since he’s working on a higher and higher degree of collection with each ride as we ease back into more intensive dressage work.

In short – knock wood – I have my horse back. Whew. 🙂

I’ve been at quite a few barns now, and I’ve had my board calculated differently at each of them.

At my first barn, I paid after the fact for lessons on a monthly basis. I also worked at that barn regularly because I was flat broke, so the amount I owed each month was very different, sometimes by hundreds of dollars. I kept a running tally myself, but I can’t for the life of me remember how they let me know how much I owed. I think it was verbal, honestly. Everything at that barn was verbal, which is amazing considering it was the tightest-run barn I’ve ever been at.

Barn #2 I only paid two months of board, one of those a sacrifice month due to leaving without notice, so that doesn’t count.

Barn #3 was precisely the same base amount each month. There were no extras. I used an outside farrier, a different vet, and never lessoned with the barn’s trainer. When I took lessons it was with an outside instructor and I paid that person directly.

Barn #4 was also precisely the same amount each month, and it included four lessons per month, as required. I am still really torn on that system. On the one hand, it was terrific to have a guaranteed weekly lesson, and I really improved quite a lot under that system. On the other hand, my schedule could be unpredictable, and when I missed a lesson it wasn’t easy to make up. When Tristan was off for so long, I did some lessoning on other horses, but not consistently. I built up a HUGE bank of lessons that was basically money left on the table, which was hard.

My current barn does it my very favorite way: they invoice me. It sounds so sensible and business-like that I’m amazed I’ve never seen it before!