In August of 2007, after a year-long haitus from horses, I decided that it was time to get back to riding again, and needed a horse to do that with. I stumbled across him online, and while I didn't think too highly of him from his photos, I figured I would take a look at him, since I was going to be ten minutes away trying another horse, anyway. When I arrived at the barn, I was confronted with a skinny, leggy, scruffy gelding, but he had a sweet look to him, and seemed to be pretty quiet. His owner informed me that she had gotten him off the track the previous december, and after turning him out for six months, she had begun trail-riding and taking him over some of the local hunt jumps.
I got on him to discover that he didn't really know how to steer, only understood the leg in regards to signalling the walk, trot and canter, wouldn't bend, and couldn't or wouldn't take the correct lead most of the time. However, he tried hard, was a cute mover and seemed to have potential in the jump department - if he could get past the geekiness induced by youth and ineducation. I left with the feeling that for the price, he might be a good candidate for a re-sale if I could fatten him up and put some training into him. He passed the pre-purchase and I hauled him home the following weekend.
We spent all winter learning how to steer, bend, move off of the leg and pick up the proper lead on the first try. We also worked on producing a jump that was less extravagent, doing gymnastics religiously. I quickly decided that this was a seriously talented horse, and threw out the re-sale idea, deciding to keep him for myself.
Around February in 2008, he bagan presenting with a mystery lameness in his left front. It would come and go and was never accompanied by heat or swelling. By April it was occuring more frequently, and I took him to see the vet about it, no longer convinced that it was something that bute and a lighter work-load were helping. The vet did several nerve blocks before deducing that the pain was in his right hind hock and left front hoof. X-rays revealed minor density loss in his navicular bone, but no change in shape. While he was skeptical that this was causing SO MUCH discomfort, he nevertheless prescribed bar shoes and bute.
Ever the intermittent lameness, I managed to take him to King Oak in May for his first event where, despite a tantrum at the mandatory water-crossing, he was an absolute star...
Despite that success, however, the lameness continued and I called the vet back out. After watching him jog on the lunge and in hand, she couldn't detect any lameness (he had had a week off at this point). Due to his history, though, she decided that it was probably a good idea to inject the joint.
That done, I still didn't have a sound horse. My trainer suggested that unless I wanted to take him to Tufts to get "the works" and figure out what exactly I was dealing with, I should probably just sell him as a trail horse, since he seemed to be ok on minimal work. After much hemming and hawwing, I decided that it might be for the best to sell him to someone who didn't want to do much with him.
I had one or two people come out to look at him, but watching him go, I was dismayed to see that despite virtually no workload, he was still sore. After calling up Stephie Baer, the MA-based trainer that I was a working student for and still rode with when I could, we decided that not everything was adding up to navicular. He didn't move or act like a horse who had sore feet, the lameness was worse with a saddle on and manifested in an unwillingness to stretch the left leg out completely, but out in the paddock, he had to qualms about tearing around like a lunatic. Stephie suggested that I take him to see Mary, a vet that deals more in holistics and chiropractics, to see if she could find soemthing else going on.
I trucked him up to Littleton, MA for Mary to look at. She quickly found that his left shoulder muscles were extremely sore and told me that this would not only explain the increased lameness under saddle, but also the reason that the other vets had thought it was in his feet, as the muscles were pulling in the tendons and ultimately agitating the navicular area. She worked on him for an hour, injected some homeopathics, took blood to check his vitamin levels (since he was eating a TON and not really gaining weight or looking 100% healthy.) and sent us home with some Platinum Performance.
All of his vitamin levels came back normal, so on our next visit a month later, she pulled a Lyme titer. He was looking much more sound, but I felt that he had become more listless and had begun to look generally dull. The Lyme test came back VERY positive, so on the Doxy he went! In February of 2009, he finished up with his doxy and I finally put him back into work.
Of course, by the end of march I found myself sidelined with a back injury, so poor Tango was back out of work. I've finally wrangled a few friends to ride him while I nurse a torn disc back into riding shape. I plan on dedicating this thing to the progress that we're both making. Here are photos from his first time back undersaddle last week:
Whew! Long first post!!
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