I had Doc Schaefer out to see Howdy.  She is a DVM who does horse chiropractic.  We started out with her watching him move.  I walked him away from her and then walked him back while she watched.  She had a thoughtful look on her face when I got back to her, which is usually not a good thing.  She asked me to walk him away and back again.  I did, and when I got back she had the same look.

I’ve learned not to ask vets questions when they have this look, and that served me well this day too.  She started working on him and found that one hip was down.  Then she went to the other side and found that it was down too (no, I don’t know how that is possible either, but there it is.)  She started working on the second hip and her quizzical look went away as she figured out what she was seeing when I was walking him.  She said that he wasn’t uneven, but that he wasn’t coming through correctly.  Usually she can see that one side is out.  Howdy, tricky man that he is, came up with a completely novel way to present.

She was able to get that and his right shoulder adjusted.  The club foot is on the right, and maybe that shoulder being out/stuck/whatever it was, will prove not to be a coincidence and part of the club foot problem.

Then she worked on his neck where he had a few minor issues that they worked out.  Doc Schaefer clearly really likes horses and Howdy at least, likes her:

Here is the sheet from the exam.  No, I don’t know how to interpret it entirely, but it is pretty cool and useful.

Doc Schaefer made it clear to me that now that he was adjusted, he needed to be worked equally to the right and left, rather than focusing on the right with short breaks to the left as I had been doing.

I worked him the day after the adjustment and the result was both encouraging and mystifying.  Encouraging in that he wasn’t so resistant in going to the right; mystifying in that he now couldn’t hold the left lead (or either lead for that matter) for more than three strides without breaking to trot or switching leads in back only.  I thought about it a bit and surmised that he probably simply didn’t have the muscle development to move for very long in the new way that he was allowed to move after the adjustment.  So I did about 10 minutes of walking on the lunge and ended for the day.

Meanwhile, it was time for his checkup with ISU ophthalmology.  Two DVM ophthalmologists and four DVMs-in-training had a look at the very patient Howdy’s eyes.  That’s Dr. Wehrman in the white coat.  She’s an silken-voiced angel, and Howdy loves her.  Of course sedation was involved, but he was still tolerant above and beyond the call of duty.  The consensus was that they were very pleased with how the eye looks.  The ulcer has healed entirely and the conjunctivitis has improved markedly on the front of the eye (where I am applying the steroids) and has improved on the back of his eye (which the banamine is addressing).  I was sent home with a much less rigorous treatment regimen and a checkup in a month.  We seem to be out of the woods, but we need to stay the course to get it healed all the way.  This is excellent!

I worked him a few more times over the next week, doing a lot of walking and trotting and really not pushing for canter – just letting him get stronger and figure out how his hips/lower back are supposed to work, and then today, I asked him to canter again.  This video, complete with me wearing what looks like a Mr. Rogers sweater but is actually the inner layer of my winter coat, documents his improvement.  The things I really like to see are that in walk, his overstep is quite generous – about 8 inches – whereas before the adjustment, he just barely tracked up; that he can apparently quite easily hold his canter lead (in both directions, but this video only shows right); and that he is somewhat less resistant to the idea of going right in general.  In the beginning of the video and halfway through, you can see where he really doesn’t want me to get on his right side.  This is mild compared to his earlier objections, which makes me very happy.

Earlier this week, I wrote the MS blog that I’ve been wanting to write for, oh, about five years.  After getting that out, I just sort of went into a writing stupor, and now, dear friends, I am back.

Howdy’s eye continues to improve and the thrice-daily (ooooh, getting Biblical!) treatments continue in earnest.  Though I have ridden him, I am spending a lot of time on lunging because he needs:

• the help in going to the right
• more ground work in general
• to stop overreacting to every cluck or kiss

A little back story I got from his trainer at the track – they sent Howdy to a guy to break and condition him.  The guy was supposed to be galloping him under tack but it turns out that after he broke Howdy, he was just ponying him from another horse for conditioning.  When they raced Howdy, he didn’t have the under-tack fitness to do well and his owner said that it broke the horse’s heart to lose so badly to the other horses.  It was so profound to hear this gentleman say that – so dear to see how much he loved his racehorses.  He said Howdy never made him a dime, but that he also didn’t like to see the horse’s heart broken.  <sniff>

So now Howdy hasn’t had much success in his life, and I think that horses know when they are “successful” by human standards.  They read us better than we read each other. (Have you ever had a horse not like somebody that you thought was just fine and later you found out they were not?)  At any rate, if a horse hasn’t had much of a feeling of success around people, it may take a while to help them understand that the game is fun.

He skitters at a cluck and jumps in the air into a canter depart at a kiss.  Some horses just do this. I’m not blaming anybody, in fact, I don’t think it is all bad.  At least we have forward.  Alois Podhjasky would approve!  But we want him to go forward in relaxation.  Why look, that is near the bottom rung of the dressage training scale.

I have no problem spending the time to get him to settle and to learn that everything we are going to ask of him he can absolutely do.  It may seem like I have been just “chasing a horse around in circles,” doing eye treatments and paying vet, farrier, chiro and feed bills with this horse so far, and I suppose, objectively, that is true.  But just like it is winter forever until one day it is spring, all of this time and attention to detail will put things over the tipping point, and the sun will come out and the birds will sing.

He’s getting there.  Today was the first day he ate a cookie from my hand.  That’s a good sign.  And now he can do big circles to the right in a trot on the lunge.  He even cantered a few times today to the right on a right lead of his own accord.  Yay.

Tomorrow the chiropractor comes out to see if we can get him more comfortable going to the right.  I’ve had some good experiences with having horses adjusted.

Meanwhile, two other items of note: Bravado did his second hunt on Sunday and represented himself pretty well most of the time.  There might have been a small anxiety rear once or twice, but he was much better at staying in trot when he should have been (horses new to hunting tend to want to canter rather than trot to get from point A to B, but honestly, most of hunting can be done quite well in trot) and he stood at checks pretty well.

And the other thing is that I found the coolest app and I hope it will be really helpful to me in my meal planning and execution.  Maybe you are looking for something like this too.  It is called  Mealime and basically it provides recipes and the corresponding shopping list for four meals at a time (you can also choose different numbers of meals, but four is what I chose).  Brilliant!  You can choose how many people you are cooking for, whether you want Traditional, Easy on the meat, Vegetarian or a couple of other options.  You can tell it what ingredients not to include in your recipes and you can sync your phone to the online app.

Not having to think every day about what is for supper?  Smashing.  Eating healthy without stressing over it?  Brilliant.  And absolutely horse-related.  Did I mention it is free?  Double bonus technical merit points from the West German judge*. A rider who is not worrying about what is for supper is a happier rider.  Nom, nom, nom.  🙂

*an obscure reference to ice-skating judging in the 70s.  Those West German judges were so cranky!

 

There’s this thing called Equineline, which is a website run by the Jockey Club (JC, the studbook for thoroughbreds in the U.S.)  On Equineline, you can buy race reports for every JC-recognized race run in the U.S., pedigrees and a whole bunch more stuff.

So let’s take a look at Howdy’s race report:It has a bunch of cool stuff on it, no?  Owner, trainer, year, DOB, color, breeding, earnings, length of race and a whole bunch of stuff I haven’t figured out yet.  What I do know to check is the penultimate right (Ok, I love the word penultimate, it means “second to last” and is just so British, that it makes me giggle, so please just humor me.)  Anyway, the comments column way on the right.  The most recent race is on the top of the list, so the last race he ran he was “outrun.”  Before that it was “inside, no bid,” then “outrun,” “never menaced,” “retreated,” and in his first race, “void of speed.”

Now “void of speed” is a turn of phrase!  I might have to see if that name is available for USEA registration for eventing.  Can’t you just see it?  Ok, well, maybe not, but nevertheless, I think it is hysterical to say that about a race horse – it is basically the racing equivalent of the mountain climber sailing off the end of the cliff on The Price is Right .  Just, “Aint gonna happen, thanks for playing.”

At any rate, a horse with comments like this is just the kind of horse I want to work with.  He’s had some training, he’s galloped a bit, he’s been in a start gate, he’s trailered, he’s seen a thing or two, basically.

Speaking of seeing, Howdy has seen exactly how the flash works on my phone and he knows how to time his blink so that I get images like these three different takes:

Ha!  I did manage to get one half decent but out-of-focus one, but I think that is going to be it for using the flash.  The good news is, I think it is a sign of his pupil actually responding to the atropine and really opening, so bright lights are not comfortable – so I’ll let him alone about it.  This is the best one I got and it’s actually quite useless.  Ha! 

But I did shoot one without the flash and I think you can see that the eye is starting to look a little less grey.  Go steroids.

Meanwhile, we had a stellar session yesterday when he relaxed and decided it was perfectly ok for me to be on his right side, and got right lead canter on the lunge four times  in a row.  I think his new friend Bravado told him that if he is good he might get to do this cool thing called foxhunting where you get to see all sorts of new things and meet new horses.  And now that Howdy has a friend, he has all those endorphins that will help his eye healing.  That’s my story and I’m sticking to it, anyway.

And finally a bit of, “hey, that’s not a bad trot” for the dressage geeks in the group.  I suppose the galloping, sliding stop, and rollback won’t go over as well, but we take what we can get.  LOL:

The story with Howdy is all about eye treatments.  Four times a day to be exact, so we are seeing a lot of each other.  This is pretty ok.  Oddly, I’m learning that he really doesn’t like to be handled from the right side.  I mean really objects to it, so you know what I am doing – handling him from the right side as much as possible.  I lead him from his paddock on the right side, I fuss over him on the right side and on an on.  Despite the daily treatments, the eye has not changed much and I admit I am getting a little frantic about wanting to see a positive change.  The steroids should help and it has only been 3 days.  I have faith, but I could use a little show for encouragement.  Here’s your daily eye picture:

I’ve been continuing to work Howdy in-hand and on the lunge.  Much work to the right.  It is coming along.

Meanwhile, Bravado, the other 5 year old OTTB went on his first hunt on Saturday.  (Technically hunt number 1.5 because he did one a few weeks ago but it was cut short due to baby horsie Bravado becoming a bit overstimulated.) Here is a picture of his ears on the hunt. Jay is the guy in red on the bay horse – and the bay horse is the magnificent Eddie:

The fact that I was comfortable enough to be riding one-handed snapping a picture is an indication that things went pretty well.  That is not to say that there were not some exciting moments.  For instance, at the first real check, he was behaving beautifully, just standing and being relaxed – enough that I decided to have a beer from the whoopi wagon.  Apparently, I have never opened any sort of beverage while near him as he found the sound of the popping top quite alarming and sort of ballooned from a relaxed halt to a moderate canter in about 5 strides.  I had taken a glove off to pop the top, and now I had a loose glove, an open beer and the buckle end of the reins in my hands and the 17-hand OTTB was ramping to something close to a gallop, and the conditions on the wet gravel road were most decidedly fast.  So I ended up unceremoniously jettisoning the glove and the can in order to get my reins in order, and hopefully get him back.  This took a little while, so Bravado covered a good bit of ground on the gravel road before I had much influence.  He was pretty relaxed, he just happened to be cantering, of his own volition.  My friends were car following, parked at the check, and saw the whole thing and mused that it brought to mind the OJ Simplson car chase, “I think she is getting run away with.  Or is she?”  “I can’t tell, he’s sort of just cantering along…”

If you look closely at the picture, you can see the awesome sticky velcro strip on the top of my helmet.  I meant to wear the helmet cam, but the chance of rain argued victoriously against it.  The OJ Simpson Mini-bolt would have been great video.

On Sunday after I worked with Howdy, in-hand, I introduced Howdy and Bravado to each other, and the budding bromance came into bloom.  Not one squeal, and two minutes after I set them loose together they were mutually grooming each other’s withers.  It was darling.  You may want to light some candles and play some Barry White while you view the following pictures:

And then an afternoon of hay munching and sharing the run in.  Awwwww…

The other 5 year old off track tb, Bravado, (who is not Thoroughbred Makeover eligible because he hasn’t raced since 2014, when he was three) was having drilltec put on his front shoes this morning in anticipation of going on his second hunt, this weekend.  The first hunt, a few weeks ago, was at times very good and at other times very tense. I’ve done some more work at home so I’m hopeful that the next hunts this weekend will be better.  He was getting drilltec (aka borium) put on his shoes for traction in case frozen conditions develop within the next shoeing cycle.  This weekend’s footing will mostly be mud, and drilltec is helpful for that too, so all good.

As I was walking back out to the barn with a cup of coffee for the farrier who had just arrived, I noticed that he was mentoring a young man.  Turns out that the young man is Angel, who worked for Bravado’s previous owners.  Angel put the first few months of riding training on Bravado.  Nice guy who was glad to see Bravado doing well.  Small world.

Then it was off to Howdy’s eye appointment with the ophthalmologist at Iowa State.  I am so grateful to be near the U’ with so many specialists.  Huge veterinary brain trust, and affordable to boot.

I dropped Howdy off and went to work at my job in the Office of Biotech on the other side of campus. I could not be there for the exam, but the vet school vets always write a report and Dr. Wehrman was kind enough to call me afterward with a synopsis.  Long story short, Howdy’s eye has improved, but there is more work to do. The ulcer has healed (yay!) which means that we can use steroids to help with the uveitis, which we need to get a handle on.  The downside is that I now get to do eye ointment four times a day and keep track of giving banamine and atropine as well for the next two weeks.  I had been directed to give treatments twice a day prior to this. I am grateful that we are on the right track, and for the medicine that is available, but I have to admit, I’d hoped the next part would be easier.  I gave myself a little time for an internal whine about Howdy’s having to go through this and about me having to treat him so often. I had some moments of real malaise while I hung out waiting for Howdy’s meds to arrive from the pharmacy.  The vet students put a serious damper on my whiny mood by showing up with a bag decorated like this:

Gotta love vet students.  That’s good stuff there.

Your daily Howdy eye picture.  Not much change to report.  Hopefully, with the new meds, things will pick up soon.

In the evening I taught a dressage lesson at Hickory Grove in Madrid, and both of my students and both of their sweet horses did excellently.  Then I rode an old friend of a horse who is with a new owner. Then the new owner got in the tack and I had the pleasure of explaining to him where the buttons were.  Pretty fun. To top off the night, my friend gave me a belated Christmas present, and the sentiment could not have been better-timed.

I’ve been waiting.  And watching.  And it finally happened.

Helmet cams got small and cheap!  This is a Mobius Action Cam and it measures something like 1.5″ x 2.5″ and sells for less than $100.  I bought one knowing that:

• It may or may not work well because nobody I know has one, so I have no real-life recommendation.  It got decent reviews on the site I bought it from, though, so it wasn’t a complete shot in the dark.
• Attaching it to a helmet is done with sticky-backed velcro – which sounds like a dubious plan to anyone but Red Green.
• Downloading or editing the video is unknown territory.  No fancy software package comes with the camera. This actually may be what attracted me to it – the thrill of unknown tech challenges.  I’d like to say that I am not being serious here, but um well, I’m being serious here.

So, tra la la, I went ahead and bought it.  After the initial trial when I stuck it on the side of my helmet and recorded sideways video of me ponying Elliot from Sammy in their tendon rehab walk workout this afternoon (you’re welcome for sparing you having to see that.  It is stomach churning), I subsequently dropped my new camera on our grill (which was closed and off, thank you Universe) but the impact still managed to ruin the plastic thingy it is supposed to rest in if you want to attach it to a tripod (as if – this 2″ thing on a 4′ tripod would be such an embarrassment that it begs a Donald Trump small hands joke, but I digress.)  So, instead of attaching the sticky velcro to the tripod holder, I white-trashed it and slapped that sticky velcro right on both the camera and the helmet, joined them up and voi la!  helmet cam.  You will see the downside of this plan momentarily.  

Experimentally, I took the dogs for a walk at dusk with my helmet cam, which, yes, means that I, like a huge dweeb, walked the dogs wearing a riding helmet.  Rockin’ it loud and proud, I was.  But the brilliance of living in central Iowa is that the likelihood of seeing another person when you don’t want to see another person actually approaches zero.  Cheers to living in a state with a declining population.  At any rate, during the dog walk, I learned that the camera doesn’t work that well when I am scanning forward into the sunset at the young dogs tearing off, and then looking back, away from the sunset to keep an eye on the one-speed newf bringing up the back of the pack.  Maybe that test would be a little hard for any camera. So I threw the data from that failed experiment out.

I got back home and settled the tired dogs (“A tired dog is a good dog” ~ Kate Hladky) in the yard and set about working with Howdy.  First I let him prance about the arena a bit.  Now, before you look at the following clips, note that I didn’t see any of them until I saw all  of them.  I didn’t know that:

• The music sounds egregiously loud.  It really wasn’t that loud, this camera just picks up everything.  (That’s my story anyway.)
• The camera is aimed too high.  You will get to see a lot of horse body and very little of horse legs.  Sort of like watching a duck on a lake.  This is the downside of the white trash-esque attachment of the camera to the helmet – you have to do some experimentation to get it right and how I am going to reproduce it when I do get it right remains mysterious to me.  So I have that to look forward to.
• I cluck and kiss at horses a lot and I have no idea why I apparently have begun to think that the word “trot” has two syllables.  Oy vey.

He doesn’t have bad movement for a horse with a slight club foot, an osteochondroma and stifle effusion.  No horse is perfect and if you look hard enough with enough technology and quality vets, you can scare yourself silly.

Then I put him on the lunge line and went to the left.  During the first minute of the video there are a couple of somewhat exciting horse antics.  Wheeee!  5 year old thoroughbreds.

Now if you are looking for some fun, compare going left to going right.  Also, side note, the dogs are apparently not that tired, since halfway through this video they start barking/howling with the local coyotes. Pfffft.  Not a-one of them would survive two days in the wild, but, like a 40 year old man who stumbles upon a high school basketball open gym, they’re gonna put it on and throw down what they got.

And then there is your daily eye picture.  Recall how it started out and you’ll see that it is improved today.  And thanks to the miracle that is Mac Photos and the included extension Markup (did I mention I’m a techie girl?), I present this: 

And tomorrow we’re off to ISU ophthalmology for a check up.  Wish us luck, please.

We only made it to around 19 degrees today, and with relatively high humidity for winter, it was a day for doing indoor tasks.  That’s ok, because Howdy has some healing to do with his eye yet and I want to give him time to work into his new hoof angle on the right front, and maybe get over some of the RF heel soreness we found on Monday in his PPE.  I got out a winter blanket for him, as this was the first day that he mentioned he might need one.

The eye treatment continues and he is being good for it, but he also mentions that it kind of is not fun.  But the results are encouraging:

Meanwhile, the other resident 5 year old bay off track thoroughbred gelding has developed a bromance with Howdy. They have adjacent stalls on nights that they stay in due to weather and apparently Bravado has recognized a kindred spirit.

Waiting for the ophthalmologist