Official AEC Countdown: 15 Days!

The AECs are now only 15 (almost 14) days away. Gogo has had the past three days off due in large part to a major chiropractic adjustment that she had on Monday. It was a sort of last minute thing, but I am REALLY glad I got it done. Something was telling me she needed this one last little boost to put her fully back on track, and it looks like I was right. Score one for me (score zero for my pocketbook).

Dr. A is seriously awesome. I mean, seriously. Gogo was pretty tired and butt-sore as hell on Monday, which was understandable as it was her first big effort since the Doxy took such a hard toll on her a few weeks ago, and the courses were tough. She had some fill in all four legs despite wraps and poultice the night before, and since she's found she has a right leg after all post hock injections, and is figuring out brand new ways to unload it, her left side needed some major work. In fact, when Dr. A ran his hands down her scapula on her left side, she turned around and almost bit him! Gogo, biting a human! I think that's never happened before in her life, I didn't know she had that in her! Her neck and shoulder were pretty locked up on her left side, so he did some major work there, and various points down her mid to low back needed work as well. Her sore, sore butt had some serious acupuncture and B-vit injections done to it, on both sacral points and on several varying places on her left side including points on her low back and hip triads. Those muscles worked very hard, and while there wasn't much to adjust there, it needed a little love. The part that surprised me was that he needed to adjust her navicular in her RH (I didn't know you could do that!), and that there was some crazy stuff going on in her LF that very easily could have turned into a major injury. Her accessory carpal bone (the big one at the back of the knee) was out of alignment, putting stress on her suspensory. As a result, she was sensitive to palpation there (and I about died when that happened... having lost my last one to a neverending suspensory, it's an evil word to me). Dr. A was quick to calm me though, and said that he would see what we could do chiropractically. As it turned out, once he adjusted her accessory carpal bone, the sensitivity went away. Her navicular was also jammed, so he adjusted that too with his funny chirpractor hammer thing. I was SERIOUSLY relieved and eternally grateful to both him and my funny little intuition - as Dr. A said, a misaligned accessory carpal bone is a common way to stress out - and injure - a suspensory, which I didn't know. To play it safe, we decided to give her the following two days off and to ice, liniment and wrap her. Good news - the following day, I palpated the crap out of that suspensory, and she wasn't sensitive in the slightest to anything I did. She also jogged out sound as could be, and the fill disappeared. I feel as though we may have narrowly avoided something that could have turned into a very bad situation. THANK YOU DR. A SERIOUSLY. As per all the other things he adjusted, she's been standing with her head and neck lower than normal, especially when she wasn't feeling well, and after all that adjusting he did, her head and neck were back to the height she always used to hold it at when she scared non-horsey friends for looking so tall (she's barely 16.1 and a half so looking tall really means something... she's a shrimp compared to everybody else here!). I think she is feeling good and comfortable all over now, given her improved posture, but I'm seriously glad I had that adjustment done. She needed it. It cost a little more than he usually charges me, given the tons of acupuncture he did, but I see it as such - I'm not shelling out $400 for shoes every 6 weeks, so $150 every three months is a good trade off!!

The other really interesting thing he did related to the kinesiology he and his wife do. You can read a little more about the kinesiology he did last time here. (And I like that post because it talks about everything falling into place before Groton House, and how I felt like we were ready to play with the Big Boys there and how we had a good chance of doing well. Yea we did!!) I told him about the Lyme, the Doxy, and the aloe juice, and he asked about her diet. Then he did something I didn't expect - he checked her through the kinesiology to see if each feed was actually agreeing with her GI system. Gogo, as of Monday, was eating 2.0lbs of Gro N' Win (Buckeye's ration balancer) and 1.0lb of Triple Crown's Complete, spread out over 3 meals. The Complete, I told him, was just a source of empty calories and could be replaced with anything. The Gro N' Win was the only important part. He took a handful of the Gro N' Win, placed his cupped hand over her croup, checked the energy through his wife, and found it to be good. He checked the Complete through the same method, and found it to be in disagreeance with her system. We checked the other available grains that we feed that I would consider giving her as a source of empty calories, and found Senior to be in disagreeance as well, but the Safechoice was good (it's a low starch medium fat Nutrena product... even though I'm not too keen on it because it's a "least cost" product, which essentially means that as long as the company gets in the required percentage levels of whatever they promise on the feet bag, they can use whatever ingredients they want to achieve those means. And they can and do change without warning, and from batch to batch of grain. For instance, during the beet pulp shortage? Beet pulp disappeared from it. This isn't something specific to Nutrena, any feed company can be guilty of it. I would TOTALLY chose Nutrena over Purina any day, just so you know, I'm not ragging on them at all!) I wasn't really keen on any of them, but figured I needed to go with the one that agreed with her system. He tested the aloe juice as well, and found that to be fine. I know it sounds REALLY weird, but hey, I believe in a body's energy flow so I think there's something to it.
As it turned out, Shannon had been talking about barley as a product that a woman she used to know swears is great for putting condition and topline on horses, and I've heard similar comments elsewhere. While barley itself doesn't have anything particularly glaring in it that would bulk up a topline (lots of carbs, not too much protein, about 11-13%), and as a stand-alone grain isn't good without other supplementation, we figured that on top of the Gro N' Win, why not? We'll give it a shot and see what it does. As a whole, unprocessed grain (except for being crushed prior to bagging), it's simple on the GI system, it's a decent source of energy, and it's inexpensive. If it doesn't work, we'll just pull it easy as pie. I used to feed Metro barley to go along with his Prime... poor guy needed nearly 15lbs of grain a day and as much hay as I could shove into him to keep condition when he was showing. Gogo, not so much! 3lbs of grain and she's likely going to balloon. I'm keeping my eye on that!

So we'll see what they barley does. It's gotta be better than the Complete, anyway! She is now eating this:
6am: 1 flake grass hay, 0.5lbs Gro N' Win, 0.5lbs crushed barley, sprinkling of electrolytes, DMG, raspberry leaf, 50 Doxycycline
6:30am-12pm: Turnout... as much hay and pasture as she can eat! (If she is for some reason in at 9am or 11am, she'll also get a flake of hay at each. We feed hay 6 times a day)
2pm: 1 flake grass hay
4pm: 1-2 flakes grass hay, 1.0lbs Gro N' Win, 0.5lbs crushed barley, sprinkling of electrolytes, Cosequin ASU, 50 Doxycycline
8pm: 1-2 flakes grass hay, 0.5lbs Gro N' Win, 0.5lbs crushed barley
She also often gets grazed at night on the really good stuff, mmmmmmmm.


We're back to work tomorrow with a nice relaxing hack (or maybe not so relaxing.... she has had three days off, you know!), and then back to dressage Friday and Saturday. Sunday we'll go on our conditioning hack, Monday we'll gallop, and Tuesday-Thursday we're back to dressage. I'd like to get just one last XC session in with her, but we may not be able to swing that. I want somewhere with a nice water complex with banks in and out, and I don't think I'm going to be able to find that with Town Hill now closed. We shall see!


15 days and counting!!!!!!!!!!!!!




(Gogo being a ham after winning a combined test at South Farm last summer.)