Slowly. But Surely

When I wrote this installment, it had been 14 days since we started treating Stella for ulcers. 

If you remember from my last post, we were hoping to see a little improvement by day three, and real improvement by day five.

You can imagine my disappointment when, on day three, there was no improvement whatsoever.

Day four? About the same. 

Day five brought a pony who was still too sensitive to be groomed, and couldn't even tolerate being in the indoor arena, let alone doing any work (her first trip back into the arena began with a series of rears, and when I let her off the leadline to see if she would play a little bit, she stood dejectedly by the door with her head down).

I was just about to give up hope.

Then, on day six, something changed.

Nothing big.

Nothing that anyone else would even really notice.

On day six, when I went out to her paddock to bring her in, she came over to the gate to greet me.

Which she hadn't done in... well... ever.

After that, there were some signals (obvious and not-so-obvious) that she was on the mend. She was a little bit of a happier pony. She was a little less reactive to every. single. thing. (although she still had moments where she seems very nervous in her stall, or coming in from the paddock).

In the arena, she was coming along. We "worked" her about every second day (and by "work" I mean a combination of free lungeing, lungeing and ground work, in a halter or her bridle, without a saddle). She was pretty tricky to bring along in those early days. Her first instinct was still to go up on her hind legs, although that seemed to now only happen right at the beginning of a lungeing session, and I don't think it was necessarily pain related, because once she got going, she seemed pretty happy to keep going.

Her stride had improved, and was almost back to where it was when I first got her. She stretched her head and neck down a lot, and really started to relax after she'd been working for a few minutes.

If you didn't know something was wrong, well, you'd never have known something was wrong.

The only real left-over from the stilted, painful 'ulcer-trot' was that she never really relaxed her tail. During the worst of the ulcer pain, she held her tail out stiffly and cocked off to the right. Now it was straighter, but it took a while for her to relax it, and it didn’t really "swing" the way it used to.

Of course at this point it was still very early days. We were only at day fourteen of treatment, and it actually ended up taking over fifty days of Gastrogard to get this ulcer gone. Which makes me think it was a bad one, and that it had been there for awhile.

I wasn’t even thinking about riding her at this point. Heck, I wasn’t even thinking about putting a saddle on her. I refused to do that until I was relatively certain that the pain was gone.

The thing that mattered most (scratch that. The only thing that mattered) was getting this pony pain-free.

The difference in demeanour between ulcer-pony and non-ulcer-pony would break your heart. For her to go from a pony who was standing at the back of her stall shaking with nervousness, to the sweet, loving pony that she is now... well, like I said, the only thing that mattered was getting pain-free.

I knew we weren’t out of the woods yet with Stella. And even once the physical pain was gone, a whole lot of re-training had to happen to get her back on the right track. Once she was pain free, we went right back to the basics to begin the long, slow process of starting over. 

But I knew that we would get there. And this pony would lead a calm, happy life. That was my promise to her.

A couple of things I learned from this whole blasted experience:

1. You can have all the big plans you want, but in the end, you need to do what's best for the horse. Period. I will never allow this pony to be in a position ever again where she is stressed to the point that it threatens her well-being. Her entire life, and all of my plans for her will now revolve around her being happy and healthy. She is too important to me to have it any other way.

2. Always look for a physical problem before you assume something is behavioural. It really worries me to think of all the horses out there who have been labelled "bad", but are probably just in pain. Horses are very good at telling us that something is wrong. We just really need to learn how to listen.

3. Young horses need exposure. Babies need to be allowed (or sometimes taught) to be curious by being quietly introduced to everything under the sun, right from the start of their lives. They need to learn to go on trailers and walk over tarps and play games. They need to learn that going somewhere new is a normal part of life. That there's a nice, big, fun, beautiful world outside the pasture fence, and that it's really nothing to worry about.

Loved hearing Stella’s story?

Head over to the Horse & Human Wellness Project to keep up to date with her progress.

This was written by Pam Levy, who is an equestrian blogger and the creator of The Horse and Human Wellness Project, a blog that chronicles her quest to create a stronger connection with her horses. She is currently living her dream on the small farm she owns with her husband in rural Nova Scotia, on Canada’s east coast. Their herd includes three horses (Sunny, Stella and Q) and two cats (Jack and Arthur). Visit The Horse and Human Wellness Project blog or Facebook page.

The U word

After Tuesday's bucking bronco debacle, I wasn't too keen on putting a saddle back on Stella anytime soon.

It was very obvious to me that there was something about it that she couldn't tolerate, and I was really starting to second guess whether or not her new saddle really did fit her.

In my heart of hearts I really didn't believe that to be true. I'd been so careful about the fit, and had tried so many saddles that didn't fit, I felt certain this one did.

But the difference between "pony with saddle" and "pony without saddle" was so obvious, I started tentatively (and half-heartedly) thinking about another saddle shopping excursion.

My coach, Wylie hadn't been at the barn the last time I'd lunged Stella, so I went back out on Wednesday so I could show her how things were looking. While I groomed, Stella was definitely still showing signs of a sore stomach, swinging her head back with a stern look whenever I touched behind her elbows, or around her sternum. This gave me a little bit of hope about the saddle fit - there was still absolutely no pain anywhere along her back or loins.

I took her out without her saddle, and it was pretty obvious that the pain was not saddle-related. My poor pony, who had stunned me with her beautiful, forward, flowing trot the first time I met her, was now not even tracking up. She looked dejected, her eye seemed troubled, and she was short-strided and tight in front and behind. The way she was "holding" her belly (you could see her ab muscles working to try to keep the belly still) made it very clear. This was not saddle pain. This was a gut issue.

Wylie said, "she's getting weirder". And that was the truth.

I took her temperature, pulse & respiration (all normal). She was eating, drinking and pooping. This was not colic.

This could be... gulp... the dreaded U word.

I fed her a treat (yes, I know. No treats for Stella. But if there was any time for an exception to the rule, this was it) and tucked her in.

I felt horrible.

It was killing me to see my pony in such pain.

Friday afternoon, the vet came. He did a quick examination (during which she almost bit him when he touched her sternum area). Not surprisingly, the pain response seemed as bad as, if not worse than the last time he'd seen her almost a week and a half earlier. If you recall, at that point, we'd suspected ovary pain, or some sort of heat-related issue. Obviously that was not the case.

He asked to see her lunged first without the saddle, then with. I brought her out to the arena and sent her out on the end of the lunge line. She immediately exploded and started bucking. So things had gotten worse (last time I lunged her without tack she was definitely not bucking). She also demonstrated her short-stridedness, as well as a new tendency she'd developed of, post-explosion, lowering her head and shaking it as she trotted along.

We took her back to her stall to put her saddle on (which almost killed me. I couldn't believe I was doing the thing to her that hurt her most... again. But we had to get to the bottom of it, so I petted her, apologized, and did up the girth).

She was obviously not happy with the process.

I had a bad feeling about taking her back out into the arena tacked up. Nonetheless, off we went, me and my little trouper of a pony. As soon as I tried to move her out away from me, she spun to face me and started running backwards. This was not going to happen. I couldn't bear it any longer.

I looked at my vet and he said "Take the saddle off. I don't need to see any more."

When I took the saddle off, Stella seemed a little more comfortable, but she had a dull, pained look in her eye and she just seemed... tired. Like she was waaaaaay over this. I scratched her forehead and fussed with her forelock and ears and she leaned her head into me.

It was time to fix this.

We started her right away on Gastroguard, an orally-administered paste which should reduce the production of stomach acid. According to my vet, if the issue really is ulcers, she should start to feel relief in about three days, with peak-effectiveness at the five day mark.

As you can imagine, I'm counting down the hours until my pony starts to feel better. At this point, I'm actually hoping it is an ulcer, because at least then we can get to work on healing it. And if it's not, then we don't know what the heck it is, and I just need this pony's pain to stop.

It used to be that people thought only race horses got ulcers. Now, however, there is quite a bit of research to show that they can be caused by as little as the act of exposing horses to weekend show conditions. If I think of all of the changes Stella has been through since I got her last summer, it really wouldn't be surprising if she had developed one as well:

• For the first six years of her life she lived a low-stress life, mostly outside, with her herd

• Her first trip off her farm was a three hour trailer ride to a brand new barn, leaving her herd behind

• Three months later we moved to her current barn, including some fairly intense trailer loading training, another trailer ride, and another new herd of friends to get used to (plus, for the first time, being stabled at night and out in a paddock during the day)

• Her training started in earnest a month ago, when we finally found a saddle to fit her

• She moved to a new paddock a little over three weeks ago, with a new paddock mate and a new group of friends

This little mare has been through more changes in the past five months than many horses go through in years.  So if ulcers really can be brought on by stress and change, then it would be no surprise to find that she had one.

I think that some horses are much more capable of handling changes than others, and having spent six years of her life with very few changes to begin with probably made it all the more traumatic for Stella. She is a surprisingly sensitive little horse, and it's entirely possible that this was all just a little too much for her.

If ulcers are truly the problem, then it will become my mission in life to bring Stella along to her full potential with as little stress as possible. She will require constant, careful monitoring and some small adjustments to her lifestyle, but I know we'll be able to make it work.

This was written by Pam Levy, who is an equestrian blogger and the creator of The Horse and Human Wellness Project, a blog that chronicles her quest to create a stronger connection with her horses. She is currently living her dream on the small farm she owns with her husband in rural Nova Scotia, on Canada’s east coast. Their herd includes three horses (Sunny, Stella and Q) and two cats (Jack and Arthur). Visit The Horse and Human Wellness Project blog or Facebook page.