Trust your gut: Indy's story
Posted: Mon Apr 24, 2017 9:28 pm
This is the end of Indy's story. Some of you may remember her... Stunning Dutch WB x mare who I purchased as a just-turned-5yo project (hah!) at the beginning of 2010. 7 years on, we said our goodbyes. This is a long and hard story to tell, but it's her legacy, and I feel like it's important to tell it.
Indy was very immature when I bought her. She, supposedly, had only been partially broken in with sporadic work (5-6 weeks, intermittently over about 3 months). However, WTC under saddle. When she arrived, I took one look at her and thought "you aren't ready to be ridden" and turned her out for 6 months before I even put a saddle on her. I did a lot of groundwork in that first year. She went for a month of training with my instructor, who did mostly groundwork (I went up at the end of each week and had a ride). She improved so much - going from not tracking up by a good hoof-length to overtracking by half a hoof. She outgrew the saddle that fit perfectly only weeks before.
Over the next 4 1/2 years we had ups and downs - some literal. I was on a mission to fix her, to address whatever was bugging her. I could never get to the bottom of it. Not by improving her feet, the saddle fit, teeth, or multiple bodywork modalities. In 2013 I had a reading/healing programme done which seemed to provide some major breakthroughs in her mentality, and also led me to other treatments and supplements that also helped. Her movement and handle-ability improved masses, she had lovely soft moments of throughness, but, still, 'issues'. Often slightly short step in the right hind, a slight headflick that seemed to be seasonal but wasn't triggered by anything I could pinpoint, and the tendency to explode at random. Almost like she checked out. There was no self-preservation, and while it wasn't aimed at getting me off, it was dangerous. One day I nearly became the filling in a horse-fence sandwich. The final straw was at the end of 2014. She was fine, then something behind a fence scared her and I told her off for the overreaction, which made it worse - she bronced and then slipped. I fell one way and she the other, onto a concrete footpath. I decided riding her was not worth becoming an injury or death statistic for and stopped riding her. She continued to come along on the lead when I rode my other horse, so she got out and about with plenty of exercise. I kept working with her on the ground, even taking her to a clinic for groundwork only, and discussing that she was not my riding horse with my instructor and mentor.
I knew that I had tried many, many things to solve or address whatever was bugging her, and I knew not many people would keep going to find answers. There was the question of how much money I would/could sink into further investigation and/or treatment. I had the feeling that even rehoming her as a paddockmate (a 'job' she did very well) would end in her being passed on, without her history, and someone would try to ride her. I knew she was never nasty, and I felt it was pain related, which was why she was SO good on the ground but so NOT under saddle. It wasn't the saddle, the bit, the bridle (I tried her bitless, treeless, etc). I just had this feeling that someone would try and she, or they, would get hurt. So I kept her. I happened to win a service to a Holsteiner stallion in 2015 and decided to put her in foal (after I nearly turned the service down because my horses are lifetime commitments and I didn't really want a foal then... The filly is now 16 months old).
I decided that, knowing what I knew, I couldn't in good conscience rehome her. I didn't want to lose control of making sure she got regular bodywork, teeth and feet attended to, and I also didn't want anyone to get hurt. She was great, for me, but had her moments of deciding she didn't want to be caught, and was certainly not an "easy" horse. She deserved to be looked after properly. So, other than keeping her forever (she was 12, so could have lived another 15+ years). Life changes meant I needed to be realistic about the time I could spend with my horses and caring for them. The sad decision was that Indy would be put down after weaning the foal.
Separately, my trimming and anatomy/biomechanics interests led me to attending several dissection courses with my vet, and then with an Australian lady, Sharon May-Davis... In 2015 I decided I wanted Sharon to have Indy on the table to try and find out exactly WHAT was going on.
It took a lot - a LOT - of soul searching to reach that decision. I realise it comes across shallowly in words, but trust me, it was not a decision made lightly. If she was going, I wanted to try and find out what had been affecting her to the point of being unsafe, so I could hopefully avoid the same thing in the future.
However, though I'd booked a year in advance, Sharon ended up with time for only one course, so Indy was instead one of the biomechanics examples last October. Course participants got to see how she moved, what problems were present in the movement patterns, muscling, etc, and got to do a little palpation (how to locate certain bones, muscles, etc).
Someone at that course snapped up dates in April for a dissection, and I offered them Indy for the course in March.
Fast forward to what we found...
I didn't take photos or write anything down during the days so some of the details are a bit vague or incomplete. It was a total overload in terms of how much was going on.
Ovarian cyst (ovary 50% larger and inflamed). Super strong/thick skin and canine tushes = high testosterone levels (she was a very alpha mare).
Her foal (born 10/12/16) was carried in that horn (left, I think - same side as cyst).
She shouldn't have been easy to get in foal, though the cyst could have been post pregnancy.
Malformed liver. Congenital, ie just grew that way. Of no 'obvious' consequence in terms of the fact she was a great doer, not hard to keep weight on etc. The liver had two and a half lobes instead of three; the half lobe had odd serrations.
The "best stomach [Sharon] has ever seen" ie completely healthy, no signs of ulcers or damage at all.
Minimal worm burden (low level of tapeworms, nothing else visible, no damage from encysted kind ie bots).
Very very tight muscles and fascial connections in the neck and shoulder area. Rhomboids were like tight little cigars. The bracheocephalic (?) that sits over the jugular vein was thick and slightly higher in position than "normal". One of the shoulder muscles sat much further back than "usual" - still within normal, but not as common positioning.
Scars on her muzzle from a drop nose band or other tight rope/chain - I can categorically state I never used these on her.
On the right side of neck (didn't look at it on the left) the sterno-mandibular connection had a branch to the occiput near the ear. The tension on that branch was pulling the ear into an oval shape. Possible link to ear shyness and noise sensitivity. Sharon has only seen the sterno-mandibular branch off in four horses to date (I was at the dissection where she saw it the very first time). The cartilage around the base of the ear was misshapen.
Now we start on the skeletal/bone/joint findings.
She had 17 ribs plus an extra cartilaginous set at the back. Not "floating", but definitely not correct/normal. We can feel these on her foal also. They link to the end of the costal arch, and the muscle that should go from last rib to (??? somewhere further back) instead stops at this extra set of ribs. That muscle helps with breathing under heavy exertion. So, if she had been in heavy work, she may have been somewhat less able to breathe fully, or may have been one of those horses who needed more recovery time.
There were loads of old/healed fractures. Broken first rib on right, part of sternum crooked (to one side), broken wither / dorsal process, damage to right shoulder cartilage. One of the lumbar vertebra (L5) was off to one side also, not centre.
Fused fibula on one hind leg (right - the leg she stepped short on).
Something missing on one of the processes of the pelvis (ie it was shorter than it should have been, compared to the other side). I'm not sure which part, this was day 3 and I was at the end of my brainpower.
The wither was one of the first things we observed, and Sharon asked if Indy had reared up and over (not that I know of, but doesn't mean it didn't ever happen). As we found more damage, it started looking like she had a major crash at a young age. Speculation – hit fence at high speed and somersaulted.
Blind splints (on the inside of the splint bone ie invisible).
Check ligament tear, right next to one of the blind splints.
There was oc, ocd, djd in every limb joint.
Ocd in stifle, shoulder.
Djd in fetlock, left and right carpus, hip, elbows.
Elbow and hock joint damage from riding (load not method, Sharon sees it in all ridden horses, and no horses that are unridden). However, it was far worse than it should have been given the relatively light riding Indy got (she was not ever in much work). Suspect the other compromised joints complicated the effects on the elbows.
Ocds are concerning, esp. given history (only very lightly ridden). They were huge. Major cartilage degeneration, in every single joint in limbs.
The ocds and djds were so bad there were parts about to chip. In a ridden horse that could have happened due to increased work and load = catastrophic injury / lameness. She was lucky she got to mooch around under her own speed, as the way she unevenly loaded her joints was causing enough damage.
Her feet, though some deformation due to loading unevenly (due to injury/damage elsewhere), had a great connection. I didn't have any need to look at her feet but the farrier attending was keen, so we did. The connection was so strong we pulled the corium off the bone instead of pulling it apart from the white line when we pulled the wall off. No bruising or damage to the WL or sole corium was evident, no bruising or damage to the bone from the bars. Thick and strong digital cushion. The wall was definitely over a centimetre thick, the sole nearly that thick. There was a crena in both front coffin bones (notch at the toe) however there was no evidence of this on the outside, I found that fascinating (the strong connection meant I didn't observe anything in the WL or the wall at the toe from the outside). It was great to see a good example of feet, the cadavers we normally see through trimming are usually terrible examples of hooves. I wish some of my trimmer friends could have seen her feet.
There was something with a ligament in one foot, not the impar ligament, another one, I forget the name, sits under/near the navicular bone somewhere. Possibly the distal digital annular ligament. The damage was active ie constantly being overstressed (the tendon was inflamed/reddened).
The caveat to all of this is that any one thing in isolation might not have appeared to affect her, or might not have been a problem at all. One of the things, ie the ribs, may have been the thing that caused the exploding. Or maybe things just twinged and tweaked and hurt all over the show which would fit with why I couldn't work out a consistent "thing" that caused her to react.
So. A huge journey, a massive learning process. I'm still processing the facts and findings and what they mean as I talk to various people or have reason to think of things in client horses that I am trimming, or friends' horses. People who have watched or helped parts of Indy's journey are the most interested. I must say it was reassuring to know the things I had control of were perfect (feet, teeth, saddle fit, diet/nutrition/digestion and parasites). Also that she must have been trying so much harder than we all realized to be a good girl.... a credit to the training and our bond that she was so well behaved despite all that was going on.
It was hugely helpful that she was a "history" horse for Sharon; some of the people who attended the Biomechanics last year were also at the March course so they could correlate the things they saw in the horse with the findings on the table. It gives logic/reason to the things we found - I could correlate them to things I'd experienced. I could say, yes this occurred, or no that didn't, and 'this makes sense'. No matter what came up, I kept saying "are we surprised?" - its *this* bad - "are we surprised?" Sadly, no, we weren't.
The question I kept asking is "how do I find this in the live horse, and how do I treat it?" ... I want to know how to do it differently, do it better, if I come across it again. I want to know how to better diagnose and treat these things. I want to know what limitations exist in a horse that might mean we can't achieve the ideals we would like to, but understand and know how to manage the horse and the movement to get the best out of them and keep them functional and happy and sound.
If every person who was there learned one thing from Indy and can help another horse, that is her legacy, that is what makes her story and our journey together even more valuable. I have definitely learned to trust my gut, to 'know what I know' and not let people try to sway me out of believing it. She is also now part of Sharon's on-going research, as not just a number, but "Indy from New Zealand," and her teachings will be part of something bigger, in time.
Indy was very immature when I bought her. She, supposedly, had only been partially broken in with sporadic work (5-6 weeks, intermittently over about 3 months). However, WTC under saddle. When she arrived, I took one look at her and thought "you aren't ready to be ridden" and turned her out for 6 months before I even put a saddle on her. I did a lot of groundwork in that first year. She went for a month of training with my instructor, who did mostly groundwork (I went up at the end of each week and had a ride). She improved so much - going from not tracking up by a good hoof-length to overtracking by half a hoof. She outgrew the saddle that fit perfectly only weeks before.
Over the next 4 1/2 years we had ups and downs - some literal. I was on a mission to fix her, to address whatever was bugging her. I could never get to the bottom of it. Not by improving her feet, the saddle fit, teeth, or multiple bodywork modalities. In 2013 I had a reading/healing programme done which seemed to provide some major breakthroughs in her mentality, and also led me to other treatments and supplements that also helped. Her movement and handle-ability improved masses, she had lovely soft moments of throughness, but, still, 'issues'. Often slightly short step in the right hind, a slight headflick that seemed to be seasonal but wasn't triggered by anything I could pinpoint, and the tendency to explode at random. Almost like she checked out. There was no self-preservation, and while it wasn't aimed at getting me off, it was dangerous. One day I nearly became the filling in a horse-fence sandwich. The final straw was at the end of 2014. She was fine, then something behind a fence scared her and I told her off for the overreaction, which made it worse - she bronced and then slipped. I fell one way and she the other, onto a concrete footpath. I decided riding her was not worth becoming an injury or death statistic for and stopped riding her. She continued to come along on the lead when I rode my other horse, so she got out and about with plenty of exercise. I kept working with her on the ground, even taking her to a clinic for groundwork only, and discussing that she was not my riding horse with my instructor and mentor.
I knew that I had tried many, many things to solve or address whatever was bugging her, and I knew not many people would keep going to find answers. There was the question of how much money I would/could sink into further investigation and/or treatment. I had the feeling that even rehoming her as a paddockmate (a 'job' she did very well) would end in her being passed on, without her history, and someone would try to ride her. I knew she was never nasty, and I felt it was pain related, which was why she was SO good on the ground but so NOT under saddle. It wasn't the saddle, the bit, the bridle (I tried her bitless, treeless, etc). I just had this feeling that someone would try and she, or they, would get hurt. So I kept her. I happened to win a service to a Holsteiner stallion in 2015 and decided to put her in foal (after I nearly turned the service down because my horses are lifetime commitments and I didn't really want a foal then... The filly is now 16 months old).
I decided that, knowing what I knew, I couldn't in good conscience rehome her. I didn't want to lose control of making sure she got regular bodywork, teeth and feet attended to, and I also didn't want anyone to get hurt. She was great, for me, but had her moments of deciding she didn't want to be caught, and was certainly not an "easy" horse. She deserved to be looked after properly. So, other than keeping her forever (she was 12, so could have lived another 15+ years). Life changes meant I needed to be realistic about the time I could spend with my horses and caring for them. The sad decision was that Indy would be put down after weaning the foal.
Separately, my trimming and anatomy/biomechanics interests led me to attending several dissection courses with my vet, and then with an Australian lady, Sharon May-Davis... In 2015 I decided I wanted Sharon to have Indy on the table to try and find out exactly WHAT was going on.
It took a lot - a LOT - of soul searching to reach that decision. I realise it comes across shallowly in words, but trust me, it was not a decision made lightly. If she was going, I wanted to try and find out what had been affecting her to the point of being unsafe, so I could hopefully avoid the same thing in the future.
However, though I'd booked a year in advance, Sharon ended up with time for only one course, so Indy was instead one of the biomechanics examples last October. Course participants got to see how she moved, what problems were present in the movement patterns, muscling, etc, and got to do a little palpation (how to locate certain bones, muscles, etc).
Someone at that course snapped up dates in April for a dissection, and I offered them Indy for the course in March.
Fast forward to what we found...
I didn't take photos or write anything down during the days so some of the details are a bit vague or incomplete. It was a total overload in terms of how much was going on.
Ovarian cyst (ovary 50% larger and inflamed). Super strong/thick skin and canine tushes = high testosterone levels (she was a very alpha mare).
Her foal (born 10/12/16) was carried in that horn (left, I think - same side as cyst).
She shouldn't have been easy to get in foal, though the cyst could have been post pregnancy.
Malformed liver. Congenital, ie just grew that way. Of no 'obvious' consequence in terms of the fact she was a great doer, not hard to keep weight on etc. The liver had two and a half lobes instead of three; the half lobe had odd serrations.
The "best stomach [Sharon] has ever seen" ie completely healthy, no signs of ulcers or damage at all.
Minimal worm burden (low level of tapeworms, nothing else visible, no damage from encysted kind ie bots).
Very very tight muscles and fascial connections in the neck and shoulder area. Rhomboids were like tight little cigars. The bracheocephalic (?) that sits over the jugular vein was thick and slightly higher in position than "normal". One of the shoulder muscles sat much further back than "usual" - still within normal, but not as common positioning.
Scars on her muzzle from a drop nose band or other tight rope/chain - I can categorically state I never used these on her.
On the right side of neck (didn't look at it on the left) the sterno-mandibular connection had a branch to the occiput near the ear. The tension on that branch was pulling the ear into an oval shape. Possible link to ear shyness and noise sensitivity. Sharon has only seen the sterno-mandibular branch off in four horses to date (I was at the dissection where she saw it the very first time). The cartilage around the base of the ear was misshapen.
Now we start on the skeletal/bone/joint findings.
She had 17 ribs plus an extra cartilaginous set at the back. Not "floating", but definitely not correct/normal. We can feel these on her foal also. They link to the end of the costal arch, and the muscle that should go from last rib to (??? somewhere further back) instead stops at this extra set of ribs. That muscle helps with breathing under heavy exertion. So, if she had been in heavy work, she may have been somewhat less able to breathe fully, or may have been one of those horses who needed more recovery time.
There were loads of old/healed fractures. Broken first rib on right, part of sternum crooked (to one side), broken wither / dorsal process, damage to right shoulder cartilage. One of the lumbar vertebra (L5) was off to one side also, not centre.
Fused fibula on one hind leg (right - the leg she stepped short on).
Something missing on one of the processes of the pelvis (ie it was shorter than it should have been, compared to the other side). I'm not sure which part, this was day 3 and I was at the end of my brainpower.
The wither was one of the first things we observed, and Sharon asked if Indy had reared up and over (not that I know of, but doesn't mean it didn't ever happen). As we found more damage, it started looking like she had a major crash at a young age. Speculation – hit fence at high speed and somersaulted.
Blind splints (on the inside of the splint bone ie invisible).
Check ligament tear, right next to one of the blind splints.
There was oc, ocd, djd in every limb joint.
Ocd in stifle, shoulder.
Djd in fetlock, left and right carpus, hip, elbows.
Elbow and hock joint damage from riding (load not method, Sharon sees it in all ridden horses, and no horses that are unridden). However, it was far worse than it should have been given the relatively light riding Indy got (she was not ever in much work). Suspect the other compromised joints complicated the effects on the elbows.
Ocds are concerning, esp. given history (only very lightly ridden). They were huge. Major cartilage degeneration, in every single joint in limbs.
The ocds and djds were so bad there were parts about to chip. In a ridden horse that could have happened due to increased work and load = catastrophic injury / lameness. She was lucky she got to mooch around under her own speed, as the way she unevenly loaded her joints was causing enough damage.
Her feet, though some deformation due to loading unevenly (due to injury/damage elsewhere), had a great connection. I didn't have any need to look at her feet but the farrier attending was keen, so we did. The connection was so strong we pulled the corium off the bone instead of pulling it apart from the white line when we pulled the wall off. No bruising or damage to the WL or sole corium was evident, no bruising or damage to the bone from the bars. Thick and strong digital cushion. The wall was definitely over a centimetre thick, the sole nearly that thick. There was a crena in both front coffin bones (notch at the toe) however there was no evidence of this on the outside, I found that fascinating (the strong connection meant I didn't observe anything in the WL or the wall at the toe from the outside). It was great to see a good example of feet, the cadavers we normally see through trimming are usually terrible examples of hooves. I wish some of my trimmer friends could have seen her feet.
There was something with a ligament in one foot, not the impar ligament, another one, I forget the name, sits under/near the navicular bone somewhere. Possibly the distal digital annular ligament. The damage was active ie constantly being overstressed (the tendon was inflamed/reddened).
The caveat to all of this is that any one thing in isolation might not have appeared to affect her, or might not have been a problem at all. One of the things, ie the ribs, may have been the thing that caused the exploding. Or maybe things just twinged and tweaked and hurt all over the show which would fit with why I couldn't work out a consistent "thing" that caused her to react.
So. A huge journey, a massive learning process. I'm still processing the facts and findings and what they mean as I talk to various people or have reason to think of things in client horses that I am trimming, or friends' horses. People who have watched or helped parts of Indy's journey are the most interested. I must say it was reassuring to know the things I had control of were perfect (feet, teeth, saddle fit, diet/nutrition/digestion and parasites). Also that she must have been trying so much harder than we all realized to be a good girl.... a credit to the training and our bond that she was so well behaved despite all that was going on.
It was hugely helpful that she was a "history" horse for Sharon; some of the people who attended the Biomechanics last year were also at the March course so they could correlate the things they saw in the horse with the findings on the table. It gives logic/reason to the things we found - I could correlate them to things I'd experienced. I could say, yes this occurred, or no that didn't, and 'this makes sense'. No matter what came up, I kept saying "are we surprised?" - its *this* bad - "are we surprised?" Sadly, no, we weren't.
The question I kept asking is "how do I find this in the live horse, and how do I treat it?" ... I want to know how to do it differently, do it better, if I come across it again. I want to know how to better diagnose and treat these things. I want to know what limitations exist in a horse that might mean we can't achieve the ideals we would like to, but understand and know how to manage the horse and the movement to get the best out of them and keep them functional and happy and sound.
If every person who was there learned one thing from Indy and can help another horse, that is her legacy, that is what makes her story and our journey together even more valuable. I have definitely learned to trust my gut, to 'know what I know' and not let people try to sway me out of believing it. She is also now part of Sharon's on-going research, as not just a number, but "Indy from New Zealand," and her teachings will be part of something bigger, in time.