Winter Wonderland A Go-Go

So what is on Gogo's Christmas list this year?





Not surprising.



My Christmas list is a little less, um.... food oriented.





A new dressage coat with gold piping and big fat brass buttons, a custom jockey whip, and a Charles Owen J3 helmet. I currently have an International that I feel lukewarm about. I used to have an amazing International that I LOVED and that was slim and fantastic, but then Gogo fell on my head and I had to replace it. The company sent me a new one, but it just didn't fit the same, and didn't have the same low profile. I've kept it around and not gone full-eventer with the skullcap because, quite frankly... the brim of a helmet has thus far kept my nose from getting broken. As it stands, I am sporting a big bruise on my cheek from when Gogo cracked me in the head on Saturday, and she did it again today. Bad news.

For Christmas, I'd also like the aliens to return my sane horse, please. Or for Santa to bring her some BRAINS. Today was just ridiculous. The random bolting, leaping, rearing and spinning is out of control. She was scaring other riders in the ring, and I fear for those legs if she keeps this crap up. She felt great and sound, but STUPID. And I don't want to keep her on a circle at one end of the arena, given her legs. Keeping her over there was working to keep her sane until today, when she went leaping away at the entrance end of the arena for no reason at all, more than once. So tomorrow, no more Mister Nice-Mom. I've been very hesitant to drug her while doing trotwork, because I worry that a) she isn't going to protect her body, b) she's going to take a drugged misstep and hurt herself, and c) she might stumble/fall/kill us. But I don't have another choice at the moment. Heavy sedation, coming soon to a Gogo near you!


And now, a little bit of December Appreciation as well....







It's beautiful out there.

Rehab, The Video

You asked for it, we got it!




A brief video of Gogo's trotwork today. She was very well behaved considering everything. Actually, today she was being bratty more than spooky. She wasn't scared, she was annoyed that we were not going out to run XC. I think the video caught an actual spook though, it's hard to say quite what set her off. That little bounce was hardly a thing though. What timing, that it got caught on video.





Sure, it all starts out peaches:




Annnnnd then... not so much.






Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Does this saddle come with a seatbelt?

Gogo feels awesome. She is also feeling awesome, which is certainly delightful, but remember what happens when she is feeling great? Yea. She can be downright EVIL when she wants to be.

Not to say that she is being evil on purpose. She just has entierly too much energy to know what to do with, and under saddle I am going to have to be very careful that she doesn't end up doing something stupid and reinjuring herself. My problem is that with my go-go-go-go job all day long, I am exhausted at the end of the day and not inspired to get on when it's dark and freezing cold out. So, instead I've been coming to ride first thing in the morning before work. First thing in the morning for a very spicy mare in the freezing 12-degree weather is not exactly a fun time however. When I rode her the other evening and we took our first trot steps, she was totally quiet and relaxed... after she had been turned out and treadmilled. First thing in the morning, however, she is a veritable fire-breathing monster. Take yesterday, for example. Our walk work is a bit scary because while she is behaving for the most part, I can see her exceptionally expressive eyes rolling around in her head. Which usually means trouble. When she's relaxed, she has nice relaxed eyes. When I can see the whites of them popping, everybody put your seatbelts on. She demonstrated her tension by walking by one of the arena doors, spooking at whatever evil monster was hiding behind them, and standing up in a huge rear. She rears.... and rears.... and rears..... and rears. Just stands there on her hind legs, hanging out. I had one arm wrapped around her neck, and one on the reins, and I actually had time to scratch my nose and then start laughing while she was still up there. Seriously. By the time she came down I was peeing my pants laughing. I probably shouldn't find that as funny as I do. Well, she's balanced!
When we started trotting, she felt OUTSTANDING, not like the weak-butt of Tuesday at all. She very very, very even - even better than this summer, maybe - and very forward. Very, very forward. I obviously don't want to be on a circle for any length of time in the trot, so I sort of gulped and made my way down to the far end of the arena to where the scary door is. Miss Gogo Queen of Camels shot her head up in the head, started snorting, and rocketed away from the door, launching herself into a series of leapy-bucks. This mare NEVER bucks, so it surprised me, but they weren't like rodeo bucks. They were leaping-around-with-all-four-feet-off-the-ground-too-much-energy bucks. So we spent a lot more time than I wanted trotting down at the far end of the ring instead. It's only 5 minutes, thankfully, but it was 5 VERY exciting minutes of my life. Especially because every 10 seconds or so she'd spook horribly. Very exciting.

At least there was no nonsense in turnout yesterday..... and why was that, do you ask?
Oh I dunno. It might be that she's magically come into VIOLENT FLAMING HEAT again:






Oh for god's sake, Gogo.

Today we will be riding in the afternoon. Just because I'd really rather not DIE today, thanks.

Look at me Shrek! I'm TROT-TING!

YAAAAAAAY WE DID IT!
WE TROTTED!

Okay well, it wasn't quite what I had expected/planned. Gogo is set to start her 5 minutes of trot daily on Thursday, and she was being SO good and quite last night under tack that I thought I would trot a few steps in each direction to see how she felt, seeing as she'd have today off anyway and just in case we needed to change plans. She felt very weak - like she had no idea what had happened to her butt over the past 3 months - but otherwise very even and very, very well behaved. She lost her right stifle going right, and her left stifle going left, which to me is indicative of lost-butt-syndrome, and I would expect that with strengthness this will resolve itself. She was remarkably well-behaved, stretching down to my contact and everything, and she did feel quite good. And as for me, I just wanted to keep trotting all day!! I curbed it at about 15 seconds in either direction... no need to rush.

Boy did THAT ever feel good. Remember when you were a kid and you trotted for the first time and you just NEVER wanted to stop trotting EVER? Yea, that was me yesterday.

TROT WIN!



And Evil Gogo gets one more big FAIL: yesterday, she was out in her medical paddock per usual, and I of course being an idiot had unknowingly put the obnoxious grey gelding Query next to her. Gogo and Query do not have a good history together, because they are both hateful. It is an unfortunate juggling act with 31 horses and 7 turnout spaces in the wintertime, and I have to do some serious brainwork every night trying to figure out who is going to go where, and when so as not to conflict with their lessons, and who to NOT put next to who, and who does NOT do well in the AM/PM, and who is hateful towards chestnuts, and who is going to hump a mare over the fence. So anyway, Gogo and Query ended up next to each other, and in our four smallest turnouts, they all share a wooden fence. NOT good planning on my part. There is electric wire running around the tops of all the fences, and in the medical turnout, our maintenance guy recently put up a very low line of electric tape around the lowest boards. It was very ugly and my boss didn't want it there because it was not only an eyesore, but it was so low it would have been easy to catch a leg in. ENTER GOGO. Query had a haypile in his pen, as did Gogo, but did Query go over and eat his hay? Nope, Query had to stand next to Gogo the entire time and go, Whatcha doin? Whatcha doin? Whatcha doin? Until she finally went, I AM GOING TO KICK YOU IN THE FACE IF YOU DON'T LEAVE RIGHT NOW. Well of course, Query being Query, this made him very angry, so he started rearing and making horrible Jurrasic Park noises, which in turn set Gogo off, and she started firing double-barrel kicks at his face. Remember the line of electric tape? When she came down, she got both hind legs stuck in it. Bless her heart, even though it was shocking her to death, all she did was very casually jig away.... and pulled the entire thing down with her. Query is still making dinosaur noises, my boss is peeking her head out of the arena door while on a horse, and I am running mad as a hornet towards the fields, angry at Gogo for bouncing on her legs, angry at Query for being an insufferable asshole, and mad at myself for not separating the two of them earlier. Gogo is no worse for the wear but she did get cold-tubbed and some banamine because I take no chances. I got back at Query by deworming him yesterday. That'll teach him.



Evil, evil mares.

Jailed

A message from Gogo:

"Hi, this is Gogo. I'd like you all to know of something you should not do. Sometimes it seems like a really, really good idea to lunge over your stall gate at passing horses, because sometimes the passing horses are very ugly and you need to move them out of the way quickly. And sometimes the humans forgive you. But then sometimes when you attack the passing horses five, six, seven or eight times, then the humans don't forgive you anymore and they make your human move you to the other side of the barn under the hayloft in the darkest, smallest stall with no gate or anything. So then you're in horsey jail and it's so dark and caca that nobody even knows you're in there because nobody can see you. And then you feel pretttttttty stupid. But those horses needed to be bitten and scared anyway, because they were ugly. And mom says that if you behave yourself then when the boss lady goes away to Florida you will get to move back to the big fancy barn with the big fancy stalls. But until then, you will be stuck in the jailcell until you learn to stop taking chunks out of the boss lady's very expensive horses."

Party on Wayne

Sorry I've been missing for long - I am TOO BUSY! But there you are, that's life at a big barn for you!



As December wears on I am feeling increasingly excited for the upcoming year. When the clock rolls over to 2010 we'll be just beginning 10 minutes of trotwork (if she continues to be sound, of course), and I'll be able to really put my goals for next year all in order. I have some pretty lofty ones, but if she continues to be sound there's no reason to think we can't achieve every one of them. I've got eyes for all the bigger events around here - Groton House, Millbrook, Fitch's, GMHA, Stuart - and of course, hopefully the 2010 AECs. That is a bloody long way to go for a show but that's the hopeful plan, if everything goes well. I feel a little behind the ball due to the fact that as of January 1 this past year, we were gearing up for heavy dressage work in anticipation of the earlier start to the season. The old saying is that shows are not won in June, they're won in January, and I completely agree. We won't have this chunk of time to work on new things and advance like we normally would be able to. As that stands, it may put us back a season but that's all right. You never know how these things work out.

Dr. A came out today to work on Gogo and one of my boss' horses. Even by Dr. A standards he was a little weird today, and I think my boss wasn't totally sure what to think because he told her that Athos had liver qi stagnation. I don't even know what that MEANS! Well, I mean I get the idea of qi (and my own qi is... seriously off) but I had to look it up to understand it better than how he explained it. But it does make sense - I guess this is responsible for soft tissue issues, digestive upsets, and the like... all things this horse is displaying currently. It was very interesting to see Athos standing in the crossties totally covered in acupuncture needles! Poor kid. As for Gogo, there was less crazy Chinese medicine and more chiropractic work to be done with her, but it was surprisingly less than I thought. As predicted, her SI had some pain, but not nearly what I expected. She had mild soreness around her withers as well, which surprised me until Dr. A mentioned that her posture was pretty bad. That hadn't occured to me.... I guess it makes sense though. Standing around in a stall for 3 months like a bump on a log will definitely bring out your weaknesses, and if your topline isn't strong to begin with, well... you start to sag around the middle! Here's where Dr. A got a little weird again... he took three polos and made a sort of body wrap that I cannot describe with words - I will have to get a picture of it! This supposedly makes her more aware of her body and that she has a butt and that she needs to bother using it. She'll wear this 3 or 4 times a week on the treadmill. My suspition is that she is going to get used to it and not care, but you never know. We did some belly lifts with her and BOING! Her back went right up to where it's supposed to be and she actually held it for awhile. We will need to do PLENTY of those to re-engage her abs as she gets back to work.

All in all I was pretty happy with the news. Athos did not fare so well. We'll be keeping an eye on him... he is his own mystery. We actually have a couple mysteries and I would like to write about some of these horses some more when I have time. They're all fabulous but some are just... odd.


The progress we're making is fantastic. She went out yesterday in the medical paddock for the first time without Ace (which was actually a staff miscommunication and my guys went to go bring her out for me before I could get over there with drugs), and she was GREAT. Obviously this is not going to work every day, but there you are. The blue mullen mouth bit of this past year has been switched out for a big-girl bit again, the double jointed loose ring, and she is going fantastically in that, as I thought she might. The blue bit was a training device and it served its purpose. Nevertheless, as it was blue, I am of course sad to see it go. Work under saddle is GREAT, and she is behaving herself - hooray! Or well, mostly. ;) And the best part is that we are finally starting to wean her off wraps. She is going in them nightly only, and during the day those legs have stayed very tight and cool. I LOVE THAT!

Happy, happy progress. Of course now that it is December, it is 17 degrees... that's the crappiest part of the whole deal.


Off to see a horse off to surgery (yikes).... enjoy the awful weather!

End of November Analysis

A few days late, but hey, better late than mever ;) I've not been keeping goals since this injury because quite frankly, I only have one goal: get Gogo sound. And I can do the very best that I can but sometimes it's just up to fate in the end. However, with things looking brighter, I am going to go ahead and do my December goals, and hope that all of them will come true:


December Goals:

1) Continue successful walk work under saddle, building to 30 minutes and working on very simple on the bit work
2) Take our first trot steps in 3 months and not be lame/freak out
3) Fully plan out rehab schedule for the next 3 months
4) Start looking ahead to next show season and make very tentative plans
5) Have Gogo chiropractically adjusted


Dr. A's wife literally just called me right now as I was typing out "get Gogo chiropractically adjusted" and we set a time for this Saturday at 10am. Thank GOD for that too because boy does she ever need it. Now that we have bone scan images that show definite asymmetry in her pelvis we need to really do something about it!!

I'm counting down the days not only until Christmas, but to when I get to start trotting again. 11 days!!!


Guess this is a short post. But that's all right because any news about Gogo is always good. ;)

When Big is TOO BIG

Prior to having Gogo, I used to love having a big horse. Metro was solid and meaty and I wanted something over 17hh for a long time. And then I found Gogo and went wow, 16.1 is really the perfect size for everything. But I still appreciate a big, powerful horse when I see one.

Until I find one that is TOO BIG. Meet the aptly named Crane, our newest boarder horse. He is a solid 18.1hh, broken at the age of 9 due to a prior career as a big eq horse, bloodlines, and well, being 18.1. He had recent bilateral pastern fusions in both hinds due to his crippled-ness, and guess who gets the fun task of walking the beast? That's right, me. They warned me that he only walks with a gum chain and he rears like a maniac. So far, I've found him to be a complete sweetheart and a goon who is just too big for his own good. He respects authority completely and hadn't put a toe out of line with me, and I've only used a stud chain on him. However, I've seen him run over a couple other people, so it's hard to say.



You really can't appreciate how gigantic he is unless you're standing next to him. That picture makes him look tiny compared to what he's really like. It's funny, for such a big guy he's really quite delicate. He has a very dainty face and body.... his legs are just a mile long. Literally, the point of his elbow is at my belly button. I'm 5'7", just to give you some sort of idea of height.


Bigger isn't better in my opinion. Just ask Nicole, who tells me the tales of the horses in her barn that have named like Greyzilla and Jurassica.





Think I'll be sticking with 16.1hh, thanks.

Let's Talk Stifles

Gogo's bone scan results came back Thursday. I actually called Tufts midday in a total panic, very nearly cancelling it and making the other vet very angry, but we decided that since she was already there and already injected with the isotope that we would just go ahead with it. I felt much better after telling him exactly how I felt about it though. He called me back later in the day to confirm that the effusion in her right stifle was indeed showing up on the bone scan, and she also had left SI pain, which didn't surprise me given her chiropractic history. They found the two SIs to be asymmetrical, which Dr. A had mentioned when he looked at her last. They blocked the stifle yesterday and she jogged sound. It appears that along with the tendon hyperextension she also jammed her stifle while sliding. As the other stifle was sparkling clean, this appears to definitely be an acute injury versus long-term degeneration, so we opted to treat the stifle with Vetalog and Polyglycan to get any last inflammation taken care of. That's of course not ideal in my mind, but I want to take care of this right now - long-term inflammation CAN lead to joint degeneration and that's the last thing I want. By taking care of it now, we can prevent that from happening, and it's likely that we've had to do this joint (and only the right one, I might mention) and then never have to think about it again. All in all, I am glad we ended up doing the bone scan, as it gave me peace of mind, like a few of my readers said.

As for the SI asymmetry, I am calling up Dr. A right away to have her adjusted. I knew for a fact that she needed one (he put his hands on her and told me so), so we are opting to treat the SI issued chiropractically for now. If we need to address them again in the future with antiinflammatories we will, but I hope not to do that. Dr. A is nothing short of a miracle worker in my mind so I expect he will be able to help greatly.

(For those of you unfamilar with nuclear scintigraphy, here is a little write-up of what it is. Essentially, the theory is that when bone is injured it repairs itself by adding more bone to an area and increasing its activity, a term called remodeling. The isotope injected into the horse is radioactive, and accumulates where there is a high level of bone activity. Essentially they measure the radioactivity of areas of the horse - the areas that accumulates the isotope in high levels is essentially measuring inflammation. It's useful over radiographs for things like joint degeneration because a horse might have clean x-rays but still have joint pain, or often times vice-versa. However, it doesn't do more than tell you which areas of bone are inflamed - it's up to the doctor to determine what exactly is causing the pain and why.)

Of particular note is the fact that her hocks were, and I quote, "pristine." Either they were not the trouble I thought they were, or injections greatly helped. Which is very comforting to hear. We ran the ultrasound over the fat hock and found nothing of particular importance, and when it showed up clean on the scan, we can only deduce that for whatever reason, she developed some mild cellulitis (bug bite? trama?), which may or may not go away. Seems to not be a problem, so we'll just wait to see what it does.

One last thing to note is that we no longer suspect this is an issue of Lyme. The other vet said that something about Lyme shows up in a certain way on the bone scan, and they didn't see that (he explained it to be but I couldn't make heads or tails of it). So at least there is that. Now we know she's just a nutty event mare on stall rest in December. Not surprising!



Here are a few of the images from the bone scan:






It's always very interesting to see because I dunno, those stifles look the same to me!


And a quick ultrasound image:



Coming along very nicely. I guess there are still small margins of where the lesion was but they are so unremarkable that they weren't even pointed out to me on ultrasound.



Gogo's rehab program continues as thus:

Dec 5: Strict stall rest (and grooming), 2g bute
Dec 6-11: Treadmill 25 minutes once a day, 2g bute daily for 3 days then 1g bute for 4 days
Dec 12-18: Tackwalking 30 minutes, treadmill 25 minutes
Dec 19-Jan 1: Tackwalking 30 minutes, trotting 5 minutes, treadmill 25 minutes
Jan 2-15: Tackwalking 30 minutes, trotting 10 minutes, treadmill 25 minutes
Jan 16-29: Tackwalking 30 minutes, trotting 15 minutes, treadmill 25 minutes
Jan 30-Feb 13: Tackwalking 30 minutes, trotting 20 minutes, treadmill 25 minutes
And then we can begin canterwork, if all is going well. We'll talk to Dr. Chope in 6 weeks to see about another ultrasound if we need it, but I'll probably just have Dr. C do it here.


Hooray!

Recheck at Tufts

Gogo's 2-month recheck at Tufts was at 9:00 this morning. Technically, this is three months out from her injury (a little less, actually), so I was not expecting the news I received for such a short time out from the injury. Gogo's tendon is HEALED. There is nothing at all to be found on the ultrasound anywhere. The only thing of any remark was that on ultrasound both tendon sheaths of both SDFTs has slightly hazy margins, which essentially means nothing at all. Maybe it's residual, maybe it's just how she is. Either way, it is doubtful that it is or ever will be lameness causing in the present or future.

However, it's not so simple as a hop right back to work. She was still ever so slightly off RH. It was so slight that to me, she looked sound. Dr. Chope didn't seem that concerned about it, but had another vet that I wasn't familar with come over for a second look after she ultrasounded clean and I was getting ready to have a new rehab program outlined for her. We had already run the ultrasound over her fat hock and found some very mild joint effusion (possibly from recent trama?) but it wasn't bothering her that we could tell. When this other vet poked around at her, he also found she had very mild effusion in her right stifle - again, something I neither noticed nor could hardly see unless I got in there and felt both stifles several times, and even then I wasn't totally sure. What did concern me was how seriously reactive she was to palpation of both SI joint. She about sat down when he palpated her. THAT to me is indicative of a bigger problem, something I've actually long suspected given her chiropractic history. When we jogged her again and flexed her, she flexed positive to both full flexions on both hind legs. And again, I couldn't see any difference between any of the jogs. Me being a worried horseowner with insurance and this vet being a macho vet at a high-tech school, he "highly recommended" a bone scan and gave a long list of why exactly I wanted to spend about $2000 doing that. My concern at this point is whether or not Gogo's insurance will continue to cover her at all after this year. We've already been cancelled from another company, Markel (and I use the name so that you will all know to never use them), for making a single claim on Gogo - we scoped her for ulcers and she was clean. They made an exclusion, and then bam! Cancelled when the policy came up for renewal. What's the point of insurance if you CAN'T USE IT. We are with Broadstone now, and hopefully they will do what a sensible insurance company would do and make a temporary exlusion for a length of time, and charge me ridiculous amounts of money. Very irritating. Anyway, so I got some sharpness from my mother about it, got some more pep-talking by this vet who I am now convinced I don't like anymore, and decided to go ahead with it. I mean, it does make sense to me - we'll be able to know exactly what kind of bony trama we are dealing with in her entire back end, and know what we can rule out and what is/is going to be problematic. What irritates me is that this guy essentially is playing with my money by putting me in an emotionally unstable situation where I obviously want the best for my pet and will do what I have to to secure that for her. I could have said no but... what if there really is something going on that simple blocks and radiographs couldn't have told us? It just kills me that it's SO subtle I can't hardly see a thing. Are we finding problems that weren't there to begin with? I don't know. I mean really, she looks fine and sound to me, but I'm not an expert.

Dr. Chope is great. This other guy, not so much. I make it a point not to use male farriers/vets for this reason.

Likely what is going to happen is that something will pop up on the bone scan, they'll recommend a course of injections for Gogo the Pincushion, all my morals will go down the toilet and I will come back with a much happier and sounder horse and a much more miserable me.

We do what we have to, I guess. But this is the bad part of fancy diagnostic work. Would I have ever even bothered to have this looked at if I never knew it was there? Woudn't we be home and getting back to work already tomorrow morning if that other vet hadn't happened to walk through the room? Does that make it right or wrong?


I've written about all these morals before and I still feel the same way. There are plenty of horses doing just fine with way worse problems that we have. Hell, if they were to run me through some fancy diagnostic machinery they'd probably tell me I shouldn't do physical labor ever again. But I still seem to be getting along just fine. I hurt really badly some days but I do it anyway.




Anyway, in short, the news is essentially great. Gogo's tendons have healed and she is *almost* ready to start trotwork again. We just need to figure out if this is some sort of mild low-level joint pain or something else, and address it as needed. You still wonder though how and when this all happens, and why we continue to do what we do if this is what happens to our bodies and our horses bodies in the end. Are we creating problems where there aren't actually any at all? She could just be stiff from standing around in a stall for 3 months. That sure as hell would make ME stiff. It's quite likely we're just looking into this way too much and I'm spending ridiculous amounts of insurance money for no reason at all. We'll know tomorrow.

I guess I'm doing the right thing. Maybe. I don't know if I'm doing the right thing or just wasting time and money. All I know is that I really just would rather have her home than sitting radioactive in the ward at Tufts until Friday. That's just... creepy. And it makes me feel dirty, in a way.



Yes. That's how I feel about all the vetwork that has happened in the past year versus any other year for any other horse in my entire life. I feel dirty. I just hope this all gets over and done with quickly. I just want her to be able to go back outside and get filthy and run and just... be a horse.