Another Birthday!

I missed celebrating the Semi Feral Filly's birthday.

OK she's seven years old, but she's still my silly filly.

Enjoy the photos that I took on May 8th, her birthday!

I had just finished bodyclipping her, hence the really pale look, but not too bad for my first real attempt at a proper body clip!

White with Black Stripes?

“When you hear hoofbeats, it’s most likely a horse and not a zebra.”

Part of my struggle as a rider and as an equestrian in general has been pain related.  I have always suffered from a bit of poor luck.  Growing up, I had numerous dislocations and soft tissue injuries: shoulders, knee, ankles, you name it, I injured it.

This horse is also injury prone

In college, I started having some additional chronic pain issues.  Headaches, GI pain, and exhaustion.

By the time I ended up in graduate school, it had combined with some serious drug and food allergies and I was very sick indeed and not a very pleasant person to be around.

It was a time where I ended up with a lot of testing, not a lot of results, and many vague labels and syndromes attached to my chart.

I brought up my concerns to my previous primary care physician who shrugged and was indifferent about my concerns.  After a switch in insurance, I saw my new primary care physician who seemed intrigued by a challenge.  I ended up in a rheumatologist's office (and by far the youngest in the waiting room) and have the diagnosis which I've suspected for the past six or seven years: Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. 

There are different types.  Some much more severe than others.  I am pretty lucky in the sense that my classification doesn't involve some of the most serious consequences.

I am not sure why I feel a bit relieved to finally have just one diagnosis on my chart with everything else still correlating.  The pain is still difficult, but I find the fatigue to be even more aggravating. There are some days that going to the grocery store, I get to the car and just have to sit there before having the energy to drive home.  Work is often a similar affair with just sitting after a shift is done before my hour long commute home.

Anyone else dealing with similar issues?  I have finally ventured onto a couple of EDS related Facebook pages and there are some equestrians, but many more that are concerned on how dangerous equestrian sports are, which is certainly true.  My last major shoulder injury was from showing two excitable yearlings.  I subluxated my pelvis in a dressage lesson the other year and I am having a very difficult time with SI pain on my poor, crooked little horse. 

But in the end, I can't imagine anything else right now?  Even if I am a zebra, I want to hang out with the horses.

Horse Fair

The other weekend was the Midwest Horse Fair, which is a large equine expo in my area.  Vendors, demonstrations, clinicians, and all the usual equine goodness.

The past few years I have been pretty busy with actually taking care of horses at the expo.  Everyone usually thinks it's a great time to take horses to the expo.  But I disagree.  It's not so fun.  You are essentially tied to 5,284 things you need to do a day that if you get 5 seconds to leave the area to run to the restroom, you are bound to run into one of the five thousand equestrians you know and probably one you don't want to know and he or she will inevitably want to chat for at least fifteen minutes to the point that you will be late for your next adventure and not have time to actually use the restroom.  

Riding with Jec Ballou.  I look terrified.  I basically was, LOL!  

But I digress.  My point is that I had zero horses to care for this year.  I just was helping with the Morab and Arabian breed areas and then the rest of the weekend was mine to do as I please.  I brought my camera for a couple days and shot some images of the Arabian, Morab, and Fjord groups just to play around and see if I can improve my photography.

That being said, shooting fast moving horses in dark arenas is certainly a challenge.

I did a little bit of shopping, but I didn't find as many deals as I would have hoped.  I watched a few different clinicians, including Clinton Anderson, but the nice thing with not having to pay per auditing experience, I didn't feel I had to stick it out so I left after a few minutes of CA. 

Here are a few of my favorites images from the weekend.

What's your favorite part of equine expos?  Do you usually get to watch demos?  Clinicians?  Shopping?