Abscess

Yup, it was an abscess. I came out yesterday morning to find that it had finally erupted at Rose's coronet band, and she was walking a little more easily.

There it is, draining out down the front of her hoof.

Well, abscess is good news - much better news than an injury. Her walking continued to improve, and this evening, although still limping, she was trucking along at a pretty normal speed. The fetlock was still swollen this morning, and my trimmer friend said the cause may be lack of circulation in that foot due to the curtailment of movement and weight-bearing.

You can see how much more swollen the near fetlock and pastern
are. (It's more common for an abscess not to cause this swelling.) 

And this photo demonstrates something else. Namely, her coon-footedness. Yes, I have coincidentally just found out the name for these kinds of legs, where the pastern is flat and the fetlock dropped. There are all kinds of scary words associated with this condition - e.g. long-term damage to the suspensory ligament. However, we will just take a positive attitude and continue trimming in the confident expectation of gradual improvement.

Abscesses can be caused by stretching and detaching of the laminae, caused in turn by long toes leveraging the hoof wall away from the internal structures. Necrotic tissue forms, which the body then has to expel. Rose has a band (about 2") of new, healthier hoof wall growth at the top of her feet, but the hoof wall below that is stretched and flared. I assume the abscess has formed in that area. Unfortunately it seems to have had to work its way up through the healthier tissue to find an exit. My good trimmer friend re-affirms the need to keep her toes as short as possible to minimize leveraging and optimize the position of breakover.

My other trimming mentor is someone whom I've never met, who lives far away. When I emailed her to ask about the abscess, I mentioned the coon-footedness. She immediately replied that for such a young horse to be coon-footed already suggests that she has a "hunter bump" and a "sacral sprain." Well, I wasn't exactly sure what a hunter bump is, so I asked. It is a high spot right at the top of the croup, with a slight dip in front of it. So I sent her this photo of Rose and asked if this was what she's talking about:

She said oh yes indeed, and that slight lumbar bulge is called a "roach," and it's a sign of sacral sprain and often develops in response to pain in the front feet. Oh, I've got a lot to learn.

She also remarked that the boxy appearance of her feet indicate that the bars need to be lowered to the level of the sole. That's something I'd do anyway, in keeping with the trimming school I follow, but I have not worked with Rose's feet nearly as much as I should have (as she really doesn't like to stand on three legs), and I fear the bars are in fact overgrown. My local trimmer friend is hopefully coming over tomorrow, and we'll work on it together.

Did I mention that Rose won't eat her uveitis Chinese herb apple sauce any more? I pendulumed it, and got a straight back and forth swing, so I assume she knows what she's doing. The eye is back to the way it always was before the uveitis flare-up. I guess the cloudy spot that remains is just scar tissue.

She's a deep one, that Rose.

I was struck by the fact that the whole time when her foot was so painful, she remained rather upbeat. It hurt so much to put weight on that foot, she would grunt every time she had to take a step. But her appetite remained hearty, and she never seemed depressed.

What with one thing and another, Rose is teaching me a lot.

Improvement

Rose's eye 11/16/10

12/6/10

You can see that the cloudy area has shrunk. In fact, it's almost back to the size it's been all along, since before she came to live with us. I wish I had a good photo from early in the summer. There's still tearing. I'm keeping up the treatment in the hopes that we can really make a difference in the eye.

Hay, Eyes, and oh yes, here we go again, Dominance

We came close to running out of hay, but are now back in business - phew!

A very nice farmer and his wife, who live nearby, brought it over, stacked to a perilous height on the back of their pick up truck. Mr. Burkman must be seventy if he's a day, and he scampered over the roof of his pick up, scaling the tower of hay like a mountain goat, to undo the ropes and then throw the bales down. We'll run out again in another month or two, but he said he'd have hay for sale until spring. It's nice clean, dry brome hay. He lets it dry for three days before baling, and frowns on farmers who bale sooner than that.

The horses prefer our own hay and will eat it first if I put both out, probably just because they're used to it. The bought hay is better quality, I think. Ours got a little damp due to its forcible removal from the barn during the wedding. It was in wagons and covered in tarps, but there was some severe rain during that time. Only a few bales actually got mouldy, but the rest ended up a little dusty.

Next year I'm hoping our own hay will last through the winter, because:
1) with any luck a severe drought won't make me have to start feeding hay in August;
2)  a neighboring farmer spread manure on our hay field, and we had some new seed drilled in, so we should get a better crop; and
3)  I'm planning to take back three of the acres which we have been renting out during our absence in Mississippi. It currently has alfalfa growing, which I'm planning to overseed with a grass mixture - giving us some alfalfa/grass hay mix to ration out to the horses in the colder weather. (Of course, I belong to the Blanche Dubois School of Farming, depending on the kindness of strangers to effect these little miracles on my behalf.)

Rose's eye is looking a little better. I have been mixing the Chinese herbs with a little apple sauce and serving them up in bowls. If I then pour the goop onto my hand, that's even more acceptable.

She will eat up all of her uveitis remedy in this way, but refuses the immune booster.

This prompted me to bring out the pendulum again and re-test the herbs. The uveitis formula produced the same reaction as before - alternate vigorous swings clockwise and counter-clockwise. However, the immune booster formula caused a different reaction - a strong back-and-forth swing, followed by a vigorous counter-clockwise swing, following by a short, weak clockwise swing, and then a halt. Ok, I won't insist on the immune formula.

I believe Chinese herbs really ought to be prescribed by someone who can check the meridian pulses, or whatever the heck they're called. However, I take comfort in the fact that the eye is improving, that Rose seems to enjoy the uveitis formula, and that the pendulum says, um, I don't know, that it's in balance or something .... ?

My good friend, who has slightly divergent opinions from me, was over and we hung out in the field with the horses. Last time she came over our different approaches led to a confusing and slightly upsetting situation. However, this time, I found I was able to listen to her, even follow her suggestions, and because I have a better connection to the horses, it was possible to try a little bit of doing things her way without losing that connection in the process.

She was trying to get me to move Bridget's shoulder over.  She saw me moving her hindquarters over, and remarked that the real test is moving the shoulder. She poked her finger (gently but significantly) into a spot on Bridget's shoulder. Bridget just about jumped out of her skin. My friend is trying to achieve what she sees other, more dominant, horses do - namely obtain instant obedience by a look or gesture. She is actually extremely good at this, and her own horses are devoted to her, as well as being very friendly and confident. So I wouldn't want anyone to think that she's really on a very different tack from me.

I agreed to try what she was suggesting. But it was confusing to me and to Bridget. As I am not trying to obtain instant obedience, I don't feel an immediate need to overcome initial resistance from the horse. So when I sense Bridget's reluctance to cede her shoulder, my instinct is to stop and re-assess rather than press forward to compliance. I believe she needs to take her time and agree to what I ask because she trusts me rather than because I'm mimicking mean old George. My attempts to do what my friend was suggesting only ended up with Bridget resisting or becoming anxious.

The next day, when I was out in the field on my own, I reprised the shoulder yielding exercise. I gave it some more thought and remembered how I obtained a good result with George. It is easier to cede the shoulder from movement than from a standstill. So I asked Bridget to move forward a little and at the same time indicated that I'd like her shoulder to move away from me. She moved away beautifully, even crossing one front leg over the other. A second attempt was much more muddy, and I called it a day.

Here's what I've been thinking: there's a difference between insisting and making. My friend has noticed that when she, or one of her riding students, is able to control the horse's movements at will, the horse becomes more confident. I would not disagree, and that's what Carolyn Resnick talks about. However, it is possible to insist without becoming coercive. I think that's what brought about the recent change in George - that I finally figured out it was ok to insist, and that it's possible to insist without forcing. I mean, gosh, isn't that what I've been doing as a mother for the past 24 years?

The difference between me and my friend is that I draw the line between insisting and forcing in a slightly different place, although actually we're not far off each other.

I think when you sense resistance in a horse, you have to try to get inside what's going on and unravel it from within, rather than trying to overcome it by remote control.

And here's another thing. This cold weather business. It makes it much less appealing to go out and just spend time, share space. I need to invest in some serious cold weather clothing. This won't help George, though, who is a little uptight in the cold. My friend, who knows a lot, says that the cold weather makes the fascia get tight, and tight fascia don't like to be touched. George is a tight guy at the best of times, and the cold weather exacerbates it. Still, he might like the company. So, I need long johns, vests, scarfs, balaclavas, down jackets ... oh well, Christmas is coming.

Balance

I've decided to go with Chinese herbs for the treatment of Rose's eye. The vet doesn't think it's uveitis, but then again, he doesn't know what it is and was using a scattershot approach to treatment. The folks at For Love of the Horse believe it is uveitis and have recommended an herbal uveitis remedy, as well as an immune system support treatment. As uveitis is something which conventional medicine treats with only moderate success, if any, I'm placing my confidence in the herbs. Chinese medicine got my daughter over fibromyalgia and got me out of a borderline thyroid/fatigue slump, so here goes.

I know very little about Chinese medicine, but I gather it is all about balance - keeping the body's own systems functioning harmoniously - strengthening the parts which are weak, and toning down those which are overactive - helping the body cope on its own with the challenges thrown at it.

Every organism is in a constant state of adjustment. If we were in a permanent state of equilibrium, we would be deader than rocks, not to mention hermetically sealed off from our environment. Life is movement, rearrangement, change, and interaction.

In Paradise, I imagine every creature's ability to adjust to changing conditions was finely tuned, and each challenge met with the immediate, appropriate response. If you run fifteen minutes in the sun and then take a drink, you'll stay in balance. But try to run a whole marathon without hydrating, and you'll probably need days to recuperate. A little off-balance is what makes us alive. It's only when the response is too little or too late that pathology ensues.

I'm reminded what they say about the traditional Chinese doctor - that he is paid only when you're healthy, and you stop paying him when you're sick. The fabled Chinese doctor maintains your health by helping you constantly adjust and compensate in the face of all the challenges thrown at you - by the environment, by the available nutrition, and by the micro-organisms who share your world. Pathologies are to be prevented before they happen. The creatures of the world were designed to function together as a harmonious whole, interdependent, but not mutually exploitative.

My reservation about the remedy which I've bought for Rose is that it was prescribed for the disease and not for the individual. Strictly speaking, Chinese medicine should treat the individual, which means that two horses with the same symptoms might receive totally different treatments. However, we do what we can.

I checked the herbs with the pendulum and was very surprised to find a reaction I've never encountered before. The pendulum swings vigorously clockwise, then stops, then proceeds to swing vigorously counter-clockwise. I take this to mean - somehow - that the remedies work in a very different way from allopathic or homeopathic ones, which attack, or help the body attack, a specific disease.

Ok, decision made about treatment. Now to persuade the patient that this is the right thing to do. I went out today, all bundled up (remembered gloves this time), and determined that Rose was going to take her herbs without me bullying her, but also determined that she was going to take them. It took a full hour to accomplish this.

Rose politely but resolutely declined to have anything to do with the syringe containing the delectable and health-restoring concoction. Bridget was jumping up and down: "Me! Me! I love Chinese herbs! Give 'em to me!"

Bridget's opinion of Chinese herbs

Rose thinks Chinese herbs are dumb

After a while, Rose let me scratch her face with the syringe. She started giving Bridget the evil eye, which is a good sign, and it means: "I'm having a good time, buzz off and leave me alone with the human." However, she was not, not, not, not, not going to let me put that syringe into her mouth. At one point, I started to wrap the rope around her nose, and then realized that was not the way to go. I hoped she'd finally get so bored that she'd capitulate, but no such luck.

Eventually, I discovered that if I led her along, holding the tail of the leadrope in my left hand, and with my right hand holding both her halter and the syringe, I could touch the tip of the syringe to her muzzle every step or so, and she would only tug her head away a little bit, focussed as she was on forward movement.  Then I managed to infiltrate the tip of the syringe into her mouth every so often and squirt some in. In this way, I managed to empty both syringes, with Rose making a big show of smacking her lips and chewing and opening her mouth, but not actually pulling away.

I don't know if it's the taste she doesn't like. More likely she just has an aversion to being dosed, as the poor girl has had so much of that in the past. Next time I'm going straight for the walking application method, and I sincerely hope it doesn't take an hour.

Paraphernalia

Homeopathic Pills

I'm waiting for Rose's equine eye homeopathic remedy to arrive, but in the meantime I'm giving her some homeopathic pills which are supposed to help with oedema (localized or general).

As they're sugar based she's quite willing to eat them. However, because of their tiny size, she usually ends up knocking most of them off my hand.

So I've been taking a large piece of apple or carrot, cutting out a plug, enlarging the bottom of the cavity, filling it with the pills, and then replacing the plug. The plug usually stays in pretty well, even in my pocket. I can then give the whole thing to Rose without spilling any pills.

All this treatment is not really helping so far. She's better than she was at her worst, but doesn't continue to improve. I'm also looking into an equine herbal uveitis treatment, which I'll try if the new homeopathic remedy fails to help. However, she's not light sensitive, which I believe argues against uveitis.

What a Night

We went to bed last night to the sound of the deluge continuing for the second day in a row.

Around midnight I awoke to a crashing, flashing storm. After running downstairs to unplug the computer and tv, I went back to bed, where sleep was slow to return, besieged as I was with thoughts of the horses out there amid the mayhem. My daughter appeared at the door, just like in the Sound of Music, and I was grateful for her company as we snuggled down under the duvet.

Finally, as the booms of thunder grew more intermittent and distant, I drifted off to sleep. Only to be woken by a mighty wind howling and lashing the house, its fury persisting unabated until morning. Not much sleep to be had with the gale whirling around outside my head and thoughts of the horses agitating the inside.

The wind is still blowing this morning - it's not a cold wind, though, as I discovered when I stepped outside. The horses were grazing, and as so often after a storm, the light and the clouds were particularly pretty.

Looking East

Looking West

Although the horses were jumpy in the wind, Rose was calm when I administered her eye treatment. This morning, the pendulum said no to the banamine, so it was pretty easy. Her eye looks the same as yesterday.

Well, the pendulum didn't actually say no. I take a counter-clockwise rotation to mean no, and a clockwise rotation to mean yes. But sometimes the pendulum swings side to side or back and forth; I don't know what this means. For the banamine, the pendulum swung side to side, which may mean something like - it's not actually counter-indicated, but there is no need at present. I am a rank amateur at this and am kind of making it up as I go along. I've heard that you can "program" the pendulum to swing whichever way you choose. If you prefer counter-clockwise to mean no, then that's what it means.

I believe the pendulum's ability to diagnose is simply a mechanism of nature that science has yet to understand. But lawks a mercy, it sounds like voodoo.

More Rain

Twenty-four hours of rain, and the bigger horses are still dry underneath. Although I don't know what another twelve hours will do.

Bridget

George

Rose

The rain had found its way all around Chloe's torso but had not managed to penetrate to her skin.

Those lighter areas are actually dry. Meanwhile my "waterproof" jacket was completely soaked, with the rain making inroads into the next layer underneath, and every time I bent over, water ran down inside my jeans.

I'm leaving the horses where they are for now as it's not that cold. I put their hay under the meagre canopy of some small leafless trees, on lower ground, so they could eat in relative shelter.

I wasn't looking forward to doctoring Rose in the fading light and the rain, but she let me catch her after only one or two tries. She took her banamine like a champ and visibly composed herself so I could administer the antibiotic ointment into her eye. She is a very dear creature.

Rose's Eye

Rose's eye was a little better after the vet's visit. Then it got a little worse, and now it's a little better again. The puffiness has gone down a bit, the tearing has stopped, and the area of cloudiness has shrunk slightly.

The owner of the tack shop recommended an herbal eye wipe solution, called Calm Eyes, so I added that to the arsenal. I thought Rose could benefit from something just soothing and cleansing.

Rose does not appreciate this barrage of interference: atropine, banamine, anti-fungal, anti-biotic, fly mask (required by the atropine and the anti-fungal) and now eye cleanser.

Ok, the atropine was only to be given for three days, so that's over. But that still leaves four or five steps to be gone through twice a day.

In the wild, a horse will instinctively seek out the appropriate healing plants and minerals. It doesn't dose itself with additional remedies just in case. I don't want to put Rose through any more discomfort and annoyance than is absolutely necessary. She is already becoming very reluctant to be caught.

Enter the pendulum. My view about the pendulum is that it works in the same way as the horse's natural instinct tells it what to eat - the horse's body receives information from the plant and decides whether or not it will be helpful. In the case of the pendulum, the person's body acts as a go-between, receiving information from the energy (or whatever word you want to use) of the substance and from the energy of the patient, and the pendulum swings one way or the other to indicate whether the substance is desirable.

So, obviously, I was hoping that the pendulum would say ixnay on everything except the nice all-natural easy-to-apply-without-making-Rose-upset eye wipe solution.

I was disappointed. It did have a negative reaction to the anti-fungal, but it was all gung-ho for the banamine (Rose hates banamine) and the antibiotic - as well as the herbal eye wipe. So since yesterday, that's what I'm doing. I don't really know how to break it to Dr. Justin that I'm discontinuing the anti-fungal because my pendulum says so. I think perhaps he doesn't need to know this.

Here is Rose's poor eye - photos taken at the behest of Dr. J, who is a very conscientious vet and asked me to send him pictures today when he called for an update. The line of moisture on her face is from rainwater running off her forehead, and not from her eye.

The sore eye is closed more than the other one.

A Day with George

My day with George began when I went to administer Rose's eye medicines.

The first order of business was a search mission around the field to locate the missing fly mask. George followed me on, and the mask turned up near the fence. Rose probably used the fence post to rub it off.

After I had retrieved Rose, George of course wanted to be in the thick of things and, if possible, to interfere. He hovered close by, while I summoned my best schoolmarm manner, admonishing him to keep his distance. After a little while, he did something which I thought was very nice. He turned and placed his hindquarters towards us. I felt that in this position he was clearly taking the pressure off us, and also possibly standing guard. Rose felt relaxed too and stood quietly while I applied her ointments.

The day's next George episode was in the afternoon, when I went out to trim his feet. I brought him out of the field, tied his rope to the fence, gave him a bale of hay to nibble, and told him that his feet were definitely going to be trimmed and no nonsense thank you very much.

He was the best he's ever been about letting me keep his feet up for longer periods of time. I even managed to go through all the required stages on the front hoofs - exfoliating, measuring, marking up, nippering, and rasping (inside and out). His back hoofs were, happily, quite nicely worn and only required a little rasping. After finishing one back hoof, I walked around to the other side and found the other hoof already lifted up and waiting for me.

When I went to wipe fly spray on his back legs (not wishing to be caught in the cross fire between his hoof and a fly), he was annoyed, and I gave him time to relax before proceeding. There is a time to insist - "George, you really don't have to put your foot down yet" - and a time to back off and breathe - "Ok, it's fine to just stand here for a while." I don't pretend to always know when it's time for one and when it's time for the other, but I reckon the important thing is to be aware of both options.

After feet, we had some grazing.

Later, at the time of Rose's evening dosage, George once more lurked close by. This time, when I asked him to back up a little, he sidled away, turned around and bounced his back legs at Rose. This was not the tooth-bared snaky-necked get-out-of-here George; it was a cheeky, almost flirtatious, little kick. I chased him away very emphatically. He drifted back, looking innocent, and kept his distance until I was done.

Then he came over and plonked me into the happy spot, where we stood quietly for a few minutes, breathing peacefully, returning to simple friendship at the end of the day. Thank you, George.

Meanwhile, Bridget discovers a more entertaining purpose for the fly mask.