July Clinic: In-Hand

 

The past few weeks have been pretty busy. Some exciting upcoming news, but until then, it's just been work and more work since one of my coworkers left, so we're picking up her shifts.

But I was able to get the last slot for a clinic at my barn on Sunday afternoon after I finished work. The last two slots were in-hand lessons with a well regarded area dressage trainer and one of those individuals that's shown a large number of stallions for inspections and all of those things.

I first saw him showing some Half-Arabians for another trainer I know and I really liked his style and how effortlessly he showed the horses, so I was thrilled when my barn owner arranged for him to come up and teach.

Screen shot of an in-hand photo from last month

I think everyone enjoyed the clinic day with K. He was knowledgeable and was able to evaluate our horses and give us some tricks to help best show our individual horses.

One thing he noticed with myself and Chili is that I run very close to the triangle and the cones and he wanted to run off of the cones, as in several feet to the left of the cones to give myself more time and a corner to raise the whip to help guide onto the long side for an extended trot. I was taking the corners more as a 90 degree angle and not setting my horse up for the most time to get into a bigger trot.

He also suggested folding my reins up into my right hand and just having my guiding whip in my left. Makes sense. Less for me to putz around with. Bigger points was to look up and to go for it. I have big enough strides, but I would often try and look back or down and then give my horse a bit of a "half-halt" in hand and shut down the expression of her gaits.

In the walk, he said I especially should hold my hand a little bit higher and a little loose so she could swing through her back more. I have a tendency to be a little tense on the reins since she can anticipate and break into a trot. K's suggestion was that he often will take his right hand and even just raise it and pet the horse a little while walking so they relax. There's no rule against petting them or being nice to them and this will emphasize the difference between the relaxation in the walk and then asking for a bigger trot just a moment later.

He also suggested always trying to get my horse's expression up since her neck is a little thick and lower which I know. I think I described her as a "potato".

This horse is definitely a potato

On some horses, just asking them to look for the whip is enough or to poke them in the shoulder with the whip. Others may reach for his hand (especially if he's been hand feeding them in the paddock). Chili is pretty wise to most of these games and he suggested the magical thing of sand. Which apparently worked in the clinic. We'll see if we can keep it working at shows, but maybe I'll try and find novel things to school with and attempt to clicker train the reach up and ears forward and get it on cue. Wish us luck, lol.

Otherwise, sand in the show ring it is.

Other major takeaways from some of the other horses is don't back a horse into a stance. A small circle is better if you need to fix them since most horses will stand hocks closer together while being backed up. A smaller horse could have their front feet placed closer together in their open stance to appear a little bit taller. Sometimes less is more. Stop annoying the horse if the stance is "good enough". Some of the fixing can be done while the judge is on a different side of the horse.

Always look at the judge and move to the offside to show you are ready to start their judging.

What tricks or tips have you learned for in-hand classes?

Even though I've shown a lot, I haven't had an "expert" coach me before so I'm interested to see how these suggestions help!

A New Spring

 

Winter was spent still rehabbing. Chili spent a period of time looking great and then other times starting off the ride extremely sticky on the right hind. I called the vet back out for a lameness recheck and of course, the day of the recheck, she looked absolutely fabulous.

But I'm not really sure what changed. I had still kept her working lightly through the points of being sticky on advance of my vets and maybe we finally turned the tide.

The past few weeks, we have even reached a point where our rides are getting more strength and steadiness and it's just been fun. Simple things like straightness and a steady rhythm have been hard for her and she just can be difficult when she's bored, but we've been chipping away at it.

The current plan is to try and attend a couple of shows this year. It may be a little bit more difficult as one of my coworkers is moving on in a couple of weeks, so I'll be working every other weekend, but we shall see.

So in some ways, I feel so behind the eight ball. Here she is turning 11 and I have yet to master most of the training level objectives with her. But at the same time, still appreciative of the time I have to still ride her and come back from yet another horrifying accident.

What is it with horses and accidents? But her resiliency and willingness to always come back and worth again seems to make it worth it. 

Is it Dawn or is it Sunset?

 

The first few days home were tough. I have the world's most amazing barn owner and we had a plan. There's a very small turnout pen at the barn known as the "penalty box". It's about the size of a stall and there's a paddock adjacent to it so Chili could go outside and stay calm.

My veterinarians at home devised a plan. Stall rest, radiographs, Softride boots, leg wraps inside, and cold hosing. This was to cover the major differentials for her acute lameness. The radiographs taken at the show were extremely poor quality with some artifacts, so several sets of repeat radiographs were taken over the following few weeks.

Dwelling on the poor handling of the situation by the show veterinarian, I called the practice manager to share my experience and how I would have improved that interaction. To my surprise, the show veterinarian actually called me back to discuss my experiences. I doubt any of what I said stuck since she ended the call with "Have a good rest of the 2021 show season." OK thanks, my horse is lame, lame, lame, but I'll get right on that.

 

Video a few weeks after getting home. Significant improvement.

After a few weeks and starting to rule other things out, it was a presumed medial collateral ligament injury. I could take her for an MRI to confirm the diagnosis, however, her lameness was improving with conservative treatment, so we opted to skip that and save the money.

Since she has a known spot of hock arthritis from a traumatic injury in April of 2020, I try and maintain Adequan twice a year. It certainly wasn't going to hurt Chili and to support her while she was in the penalty box. It was tricky because the confinement certainly seems to improve the front end lameness, but then the hind end gets sticky.

Finally at the end of November, I had the OK from my veterinarian to begin working Chili in straight lines at the walk. No lunging, no turnout, and to evaluate if she maintained the same level of soundness.

Kind of fat and definitely out of condition

Now, I understand the idea of straight line rehab and the goal to build up her strength before turning out, but has it's winter here, she's a dragon, and she hasn't been turned out in three months.

But I've had some amazing barn mates and friends that have been willing to serve as an emotional support human. Our first rides were definitely on the end of a lunge line to ensure she stayed quiet and didn't torque that front right foot. When she's been quiet, we've been able to be let off the line and we've even built up to a little bit of trot now.

So while the past few months have been filled with a lot of uncertainty about the future, there does seem to be the dawning promise of a return to schooling and training once again, fingers crossed.

Off to the Vet School

 

As previously mentioned, Chili has had some lingering soundness issues since an accident in April. It's perplexing. Some days, she feels great and is developing a lot more push in the trot.

However, I have noticed if I am standing around chatting and ask her to move off again, she can be a little bit of a crab and not move off my leg. After some observation, I realized that she was actually more stiff after moving off than if we keep going the whole ride.

If we go over cavaletti or ground poles, she's more sound.

It's perplexing.

So insurance approved Chili to receive a bone scan, so today's the day. I woke up at 3:15 this morning, abruptly nervous and the whole ordeal. I'm not sure why. She's headed to my local university, but it's a three day ordeal and I obviously am not permitted in the building. It's a lot to surrender control of my horse for three days.

Apparently the first day she will receive meds, tomorrow will be the actual scan, and then Friday she has to urinate out all of the radioactive contrast before we can pick her up.

The theory is that if there are areas of bone remodeling, it should show up brighter on the scan.

Wish her luck and hopefully he get to the bottom of her discomfort.

Adventure with the Lameness Locator

As previously mentioned, Chili had an accident in April. Initially vets had hoped the tincture of time would help with most of the initial contusions and injuries.

Then after radiographs showed no real issues, I put her back into work, which helped some secondary issues that had cropped up after she had been sedentary for a while.

But there was something still not quite right. She was a little bit shorter on the right hind and toe dragging at times. After a bit of schedule rearranging, I booked her in for a secondary lameness evaluation with a veterinarian I have previously worked with and really liked. This veterinarian does primarily lameness work and has some nice equipment to aid in her work, in addition to additional training in complementary modalities like VMST (veterinary chiropractic) and acupuncture.

One piece of technology that this veterinarian utilizes that I was interested in was the Equinosis Q Lameness Locator system, which was created at the University of Missouri and then eventually spread into a format that trained veterinary practitioners could utilize in the field without a treadmill and slowmo cameras.

This system has a poll sensor, a leg sensor, and a croup sensor. The sensor on the leg is a gyroscope and the other two sensors measure X and Y axis in space relative to the start of the stride. The data is streamed to a tablet, run through an algorithm, and converted into a visible graph.

It is meant to be used in conjunction with a thorough lameness exam. The vet had Chili trotted on a straight line, slight serpentines, on the circle, and after flexions.

Being trotted after a flexion

More straight line trotting

Trotting on the circle

The scientific nerd in myself thoroughly enjoyed seeing the data, in addition to have more quantitative evaluation of the lameness. For Chili, she had a hip hike, which correlated with a right hind limb lameness. She did not have additional severity of lameness after stifle and hip flexions on the right hind, which indicates more of a likelihood of a SI pain or higher above the hock pain on the right side.

In the trot photo above, you can also see the right hind lameness as indicated by the toe drag and the broken trot on the circle.

For Chili's case and with her case history, we decided to proceed with several shockwave treatments of the right side of her gluteal muscles/hamstring and see if that improves her lameness. If that doesn't generate improvement, then onto plan B and C.

For those that want to know more about this system, I found this video to be quite helpful!

The Accident

The last few months have certainly brought change and stress to many of us. The pandemic, riots, protests, strange weather, and more.

In April, Chili had an accident which has left a lot more uncertainty into our daily life.

The story from what I've been able to piece together goes something like this. Chili was wearing a turnout blanket due to the crazy Midwest weather. She was turned out in a small drylot which was split in half with round panels and a walk through gate. Perhaps she decided to itch up on the gate. Who knows. But one of the pins that holds the panels together went through piping on the edge of her blanket and she got caught. She was apparently pretty calm about it at that point and time, but when someone noticed she was stuck, they jumped into action. Unfortunately, this startled her and she set back.

Well, the panels weren't anchored to much very solid and flipped up over and top of her. I do think it is a fairly typical horse response by this point to bolt if one is wearing a gate after something jumped over a fence at you.

Unfortunately the next fence in question was high tensile wire, which she hit and broke. Fortunately, it didn't severely lacerate anything.

I came out about forty-five minutes after the initial accident and she just looked upset and sore. She was in her stall and then she just started looking even more lame and was hopping on three legs. I may have cried at that point and called the vet out.

She was pretty bruised. A big hematoma on her neck and wire marks where she hit the high tensile. Scrapes on her hind legs where she must have kicked off the round pen panels. She was lame.

The original verdict was to just give her time to rehab and heal. Unfortunately, as of this point, she still isn't quite sound. A few vet visits later and there is still nagging lameness and a very sore pelvis. She has a few white hairs that have grown in over her croup which I can only imagine came from the trauma of the panels.

The current game plan is to start her back lightly under saddle with an emphasis on trying to mobilize the pelvis to see if favoring one side for a couple months created more of a mechanical issue, rather than a pain related issue. The vet also suggested additional chiropractic and/or accupuncture work.

I am also planning on adding in some PEMF sessions and whatever else I can scrounge up. At this point, I don't think it can hurt.

It's been quite an interesting adventure so far. Some horses just seem to make poor life choices.