MAJOR Chiropractic Work A Go-Go

WOW. So I knew my horse needed to be worked on by the chiropractor, but I never imagined that it could be quite this much. Yesterday, Gogo was lucky enough to get to go out for almost 6 hours (a big deal in a barn with 16 horses on almost totally individual turnout and only four paddocks), and that helped a little with her chest edema - I figure her moving around on her own, choosing how to move in the way that is least uncomfortable for her for as long as humanly possible is way more productive than forced handwalking exercise, which could potentially continue to make the area raw and sore, for now. Dr. A showed up at around 1pm or so, and my horse was the second to go. He ran his pen down her spine and her eyes bugged out of her head and she scooted pretty far underneath herself. Uh oh. I knew she needed chiro work. I figured she probably needed it pretty badly. But that was NOT the reaction I expected out of her. "Oh boy," Dr. A said. Oh boy indeed.

Basically, her entire body was torqued a little out of whack. She needed moderate adjustments in her poll, which was a spot I thought would be huge, but it was less than I expected. Her jaw was totally locked in place, so he adjusted that too - no big surprise there. He took a peek into her mouth, even though she did NOT like that and pretty much tried to lift him off the ground several times, and noted that she's starting to get some small hooks on the inside of her lower jaw - ugh, she just had her teeth done in November! Small adjustments were made on both sides of her neck, and he also worked on her withers - all areas that were worked on last time she was seen by the chiro in Ohio, last July. Interestingly, he also adjusted her right knee, with an enormous 'pop' I might add - the exact same knee was adjusted last time too. That is also her flatter front foot (as opposed to the left, which is more upright), so I wonder what that has to do with it. And then, there was her mid-back region, specifically the area where her lumbar and thoracic vertebrae meet. You can see where that is here, right where the ribcage ends. (I'm completely fascinated with the equine skeleton, btw, and spend a lot of time drawing and painting and studying it. Yes, I did those by hand!). The saddle fitter had come out some weeks ago because of some concerns that the cantle of my dressage saddle has been rocking a little, and had basically said my Prestige was designed to move a little bit in back, simply because Italian saddles apparently do that. I blogged about that awhile ago, but for whatever reason, I can't figure out which post it was, so when I find it I'll link back to that. Anyway, so in that area, there's some loss of the integrity of her hair where the saddle sits, which was worrying me, so Dr. A had me bring my saddle out, girth her up, and walk her around, just so he could see what the saddle does. He's a bit concerned that it might be twisting a little to the left, which makes some sense because I feel like I'm usually a little bit twisted to the left - but I thought that was just me. He injected the area with vitamin B12 and lidocane, which will help to keep that area relaxed and determine if this is a saddle problem, an it's-just-Gogo problem, or something more severe, like kissing spines (which he said was quite unlikely, thankfully). On top of alllll that, her entire pelvis was rotated left, and both her SIs were locked down. This he likened to standing with your butt pushed way out - try it, and notice how it hollows out your lower back and locks up your knees. Because of this, he also had to adjust both her stifles. Some more stuff about pelvis adjustments can be found here. It was very obvious that she felt MUCH better after her adjustment - he moved down her body with his pen in the same way he did before after the adjustment, and there was a markedly improved response. Today, she was standing MUCH more square and comfortably in the aisle - she had been starting to stand with her right hind out behind her, and she was comfortable and square all this morning too.

Her funky chest edema is just too weird to be true still. She's going to have at least four or five days off, given the rubbing and her discomfort... and did I mention that we had a few minor chiropractic adjustments done, lol. This morning we had a 500lb dose of banamine and a half-hour of icing, which looked a bit like this:



Silly mare. She's so good about all this crap. The edema looked like this this morning:



Gravity pulled it even closer to the girth area. Oye, Gogo....

So we'll be doing handwalking, icing, and pain meds for the next four or possibly five days, until the swelling goes down enough for her to be comfortable again. Hopefully we'll be better soon, because our first little schooling jumper show is on the 14th, which is one week away. Obviously if we're not ready, we're not going, but I HOPE we're okay to go! At least her having a few days off gives me time to go get my tall boots repaired (zipper broke AGAIN, ugh!) and also gives me a chance to blog about some of the topics I promised I'd talk about but haven't had the time to yet - modern eventing was Daun's request, someone else (who was it?) wanted me to talk about stretching your horse, and I wanted to talk about BCS too.

Poor little mare...