Echo enjoying a snack after her ride today. I think she thought she was in heaven!
Just a quick post, but couldn't resist telling you what a lovely ride I had this morning. The farrier was here and I wanted to ride before she was shod, as she was ever so slightly uncomfortable for a few hours afterwards last time. However, the really good thing about the farrier being here was that Rocky, the horse who terrorises us when we're out hacking, was up at the yard to be trimmed - so we could hack past their field in peace!
I went a little bit further today - probably more like 30-35 minutes and it includes really quite a steep hill. I have to admit, she really struggled to walk up the hill - there was one point she nearly stopped, as if to say 'I just can't do it!' It's clear she has absolutely no strength in her back end at all at the moment. But hopefully, if we keep doing it every couple of days or so, she should build up some strength soon.
The thing which pleases me most is how much she seems to be enjoying hacking out - we 've been going out alone, as I am super busy at the moment, so not really able to coordinate with someone in advance to hack together, but she seems to be loving it. She's relaxed and calm going out of the yard and today she didn't even mind when the pigs started leaping about, making a bizarre noise and trying to mount each other! She's fascinated, but there's no tension in her body.
The farrier was pleased too - said her shoes have worn evenly, and he had to do even less than last time to get the balance right today. So all good news!
Things have been going pretty well. We are now up to 45 minutes long-reining (which is boring, but we are now doing some trot, rein-back and pole work on the long-reins, so it's not too bad) and 20 minutes ridden hacking.
Echo has been a bit spooky, but thankfully she is back to her old self in terms of how she spooks - when she was lame, she started spinning around or taking off, which I found scary because that wasn't like her at all. She still shies at things, but she just jumps, or stops dead - much more manageable!
I know I always moan about the hacking where we are - I know it looks beautiful, but it is full of scary Echo-eating monsters and so I thought I would make a little video on our hack tonight, to show you what I mean. Bear in mind it was 7.30pm on a Saturday evening, so usually there would be farm machinery all over the place too. Please excuse my rambling on...might not be very interesting, but I got quite carried away chatting to myself and the camera!
But I am pleased with how she is coming on. The physio is happy that she is getting more even in her muscles, although still some tension through her back which she works on every time she comes out. Long may the improvements continue!
Things have been progressing, slowly. After the vet's visit, we have upped the long-reining - we're now at 40mins walk per session, with a couple of short trots (I'm getting fit too!) and I rode her a couple of times bareback in the field too, which was good.
However, on Friday I had a new saddler come out and look at the saddle I got from Jane. It was interesting. She said the saddle is ok, but she said Echo is very uneven. It was quite refreshing, actually. She is the first saddler who has looked at my horse and said - 'yes, she's wonky, so we need to make the saddle fit her,' rather than telling me that it's best to have the saddle even and that will somehow make her even. It doesn't work, and I end up with a sore horse! She described Echo as 'cross-threaded', which is pretty perfect to explain her problems - she has a bigger right hip and left shoulder, and a smaller left hip and right shoulder, so she doesn't move straight through her body - a bit of a problem when it comes to saddles!
So she added some flocking to the right side, to 'fill the hole' behind her right wither - she has quite severe muscle atrophy there and this causes no end of problems with saddle fitting. She put it on her with no numnah, watched me ride in it and said it hadn't moved at all. She wants to see it again in about 6 weeks, after the vet has reassessed her and hopefully before we start building in canter work.
I went to an interesting lecture a couple of weeks ago by Gillian Higgins, who writes the 'Horses Inside Out' books and she explained (among many other things) that when a horse carries a rider, it has to hold its back muscles, rather like us sustaining a squat position for a prolonged period of time. this made me think, as Echo is so weak at the moment. I have, therefore, been only riding her for about 15 minutes at a time so far, and I will break this up with days of long-reining to keep checking her straightness and keep the longer periods of walk.
So I rode her in the field on Saturday for 10 minutes, which was good, then took her down the track for a 15 minute hack yesterday evening. I am trying really hard to believe that the saddle is ok, but it looks to me as if it is STILL twisting slightly to the right. The flocking was supposed to stop that happening. I wonder if I am putting the saddle too far forward...or back...I don't know. She felt a little bit sore on the left of her spine this morning - and when her saddle twists, it brings the left panel across so it sits painfully on her spine. I just don't understand it - it was FINE when the saddler was here!
I am going to long-rein tomorrow, and she is having physio hopefully on Wednesday, so she should be able to look at whether she's sore or not. Then...I don't know. I'll have a play with the placing of the saddle and see if that makes a difference. I also wonder whether it is me that's crooked and I pull the saddle to the right. Either way, it's so frustrating!
I have, however, been keeping up with the yoga and she is getting much better at it. The physio was also pleased when she watched her trot up a couple of weeks ago, saying she looked much more sound now and she isn't lifting her right hind higher than the left any more.
Here are the before and after photos from Saturday evening.
Before yoga - just snapped as she was standing:
After yoga - again, just taken as I saw her standing. Note how square and straight she is (except being a big poser for the camera!)
The vet came out yesterday afternoon to reassess Echo. So far she has had three lots of shockwave treatment, two weeks apart, three lots of physio and two set of lateral extensions, as well as three weeks of long-reining and yoga. He watched her trot up on the concrete and felt along her back (where she is still quite sore). He then watched her lunge in the school and on the grass on both reins. She was rather excited to be on the lunge again after so long walking in straight lines so she had a bit of a buck and a charge around, but settled very quickly. And my goodness. The difference in her hindleg action is astounding. I had studied her movement so closely in the weeks leading up to first getting the vet out and yesterday she looked like a different horse. Whereas her hock action was jerky, with her snatching her hindlegs up each time - yesterday it was beautifully smooth.
He then watched her trot up on the concrete again and said that she was better after exercise than she was before, which apparently is a good thing. Her back soreness was also better after exercise, which, equally, is apparently a good thing.
The vet said that if I had called him out to assess her for the first time yesterday, he wouldn't have bothered nerve blocking her and would have said she's pretty much sound. When he first cam out, he said there was an obvious right-hind lameness and he could clearly see where he wanted to nerve block. So that's rather encouraging!
However, as the vet explained, we are not even half way there yet. She has shown as much improvement as we could ever have hoped for over the last 8 or 9 weeks - now he wants to see how she maintains that as she comes back into more work. He still doesn't want us to do any work in the arena, as he thinks that may well have contributed to her lameness originally; so we keep doing the straight line work, but he wants me to build her up to an hour of walk at least every other day, starting to introduce some trot after the first four or five weeks. I can vary this with long-reining and ridden work.
So we are back to the saddle fitting problems.
I don't want to ride her in the saddle I have until I am absolutely happy that it fits and is not going to make her sore. In the meantime, while we are still walking, I might ride her bareback - I have been long-reining her up and down a long paddock at the yard, so I may ride her bareback to begin with in there. I don't much fancy hacking out bareback, as she will undoubtedly spook...and I would either fall off or have to grip really hard - which doesn't exactly help!
I am going to try a new saddler that has been recommended. It's so difficult, because she is virtually impossible to fit a saddle to - her right shoulder is considerably smaller than her left and she has much more of a muscle atrophy behind her right wither, so saddles tend to twist, which is very uncomfortable for her. I am trying to get to the bottom of why this might be - I wouldn't be surprised if it is linked to the soreness she has in her right lumbar region too.
One thing that was quite interesting - I was asking the vet why he thought she had got this injury - cobs don't usually get hind suspensory injuries - it's much more common in big-moving dressage horses. I was trying to explore whether there might be anything in her pelvis or stifle causing her to load the suspensories. He said that her build of horse is designed to move with their hindlegs stuck out behind them, pulling themselves along. It's rare, he said, to find a horse of her type with movement like hers. She's also well schooled and will try to do what you ask of her, so if you ask her to sit back on her hindlegs like a dressage horses, she will try, even if it is not comfortable for her.
Just before I moved to Lincoln last year, I had several lessons with a dressage trainer who got Echo much more 'up' in front and sitting on her hind legs. I wonder whether this was too sudden a change - I was asking quite a lot more of her quite quickly. Perhaps that caused the suspensory problems...I don't know. I'm not sure what I think of what he said, because if I believe that entirely, it suggests that Echo will never be able to do dressage again, which would be sad. It's an interesting idea that some horses are more able mentally and in temperament, than they are physically to cope with the demands of what we ask them to do.
Perhaps I just need to take things slower with her - do more hacking and only (eventually) ask for more collection in short spells. I don't know. I guess first of all, I have to concentrate on keeping her sound as she comes back into work. The vet will come out again in eight weeks to have another look. I will build up her exercise, keep up the physio and the yoga and see how we get on.
It seems a bit silly to write this post now, as later on this afternoon Echo will be seeing the vet again, who will reassess her lameness and see if the shockwave treatment has had any effect. But there have been some improvements that I thought might get lost in today's events if I didn't write them down now!
I haven't been doing the yoga quite every day, but not far off - and I am quite pleased with the results. As my last post showed, she is standing much more square, much more frequently, which has to be a good thing. She quite enjoys the exercises, particularly the one where I hang off the end of her tail. She doesn't much like the butt tucks, but she is getting much more responsive in them - and the belly lifts. I've noticed that when I do the yoga then long-rein her, she is much straighter on the long-reins, which is interesting. She had physio last week and Ella said that she definitely feels a bit better - she's still a bit sore through her lumbar region on the right hand side, but it is more localised now and she was able to loosen it off fairly easily.
So that's good.
And the most interesting thing has been the developments with her feet. As you know, the first diagnosis of any problem was done by the farrier, who told me that her feet were very unlevel - each hind foot had about an inch's difference, as she was loading the outside of her feet. He assured me that it was down to poor shoeing when I was in Lincoln and that getting her feet level would solve the problem. He then worked with her for eight months before I got a vet and he confirmed she had suspensory damage that was probably causing the foot balance problem. The vet advised lateral extension shoes, and, knowing my farrier, I knew that he wouldn't be prepared to work with the vet on this. He had been treating her unlevel feet by putting a stud in the outside of each shoe to lift the outside heel. This didn't really do a lot, and I knew I had to listen to what the vet wanted to do, since I was going down the vet route.
So I changed to the farrier that shoes most of the horses at the yard; he's a really highly respected farrier round here and, more importantly, he phoned my vet personally, to discuss her feet and decide on a plan of action. He also knows Echo's physio, as he shoes her horses (which is a good sign, as she's REALLY fussy!) and last week, when they were both at the yard at the same time, they both watched her trot up and had a discussion about her lameness. Amazing.
And EVEN more importantly, having had lateral extensions on for the last six weeks, the outside of her hoof has now grown enough for him to get them pretty level. He said that the stud she had in, while he could see the logic, would have probably made things worse. Because it was protruding out beyond the shoe, it would strike the ground first and in fact concuss the heel, preventing it from growing. Also, as a stud's purpose is essentially to provide grip, having a stud in meant that any residual movement had to go up through the leg, which was why I was seeing such hideous twisting in her hocks as she walked. New farrier has brought her toe back, so that she is not sitting so much on her heels and when I have been long-reining I have seen a lot less twisting in the hocks - her walk is starting to look much straighter.
But none of this really matters if she is still lame. Which I think she is. She's much better in walk, but I can still see that she is holding her right hip higher than her left. In trot, I don't know what she looks like as I am always the one trotting her up, but Ella says she is still snatching the right hind higher when she trots. So I don't really know what is going to happen. I think the vet will probably suggest surgery on her suspensory ligaments, but I'm not sure whether I want to do this yet. I think he will have wanted me to work her a bit more before today, but I don't want to ride her at the moment because we still have all the unsolved saddle fitting issues and I REALLY don't need any additional problems right now. I don't really want to operate on her suspensories unless I know for sure that there isn't a higher up problem causing her to load the suspensories too much. It just seems weird that she would have chronic wear and tear - I can't help feeling that there might be something else going on.
So the vet is coming out this afternoon and I will hopefully know a little more then. There are lots of things to be pleased about though - this is the most relaxed she's been when out of work and stabled - I have her on a nupafeed calmer, which seems to have done the trick. She isn't a zombie and she's on a pretty low dosage, but it just seems to be keeping the edge off her.
I have a much more detailed post, telling you all about Echo's yoga, her shoeing and her physio (with some rather interesting developments...) but I just wanted to share this very blurry photo. Since doing the yoga with her, I am catching her standing like this a lot more - much more square behind than she has ever chosen to stand before. This is just how I saw her standing while eating her hay. I think she just looks more solid now when she stands. It's not all the time, but it's definitely more.
And right now, I'll take ANY sign of improvement as something to be over the moon about!
Echo was a little more grouchy this evening, but I persevered with the yoga and she was really good in the end. She really enjoyed the front leg stretches, but she doesn't like the 'butt tucks' very much at all, and without someone holding her, I can't get her to stand still and hold the stretch.
We did get some good stretches though - here are the photos.
Before:
After:
We then did 15 minutes long-reining and she was starting to relax much more - until it started hailing! This was taken just before - you can just about make out the rainbow by her right ear!
Well...today I spent all afternoon with Echo and it was really lovely. It was nice to spend a bit of time at the yard - I always seem to be rushing somewhere else at the moment and today it was just Echo time.
I started off giving her a bit of a groom as she had got filthy in the field, and then got rained on. Then I took a photo from each side. The idea is that I will take photos as regularly as I can to see if the yoga is having any effect on her body shape.
And here she is from the other side:
There is nothing major to see here, although on that video I posted yesterday April Battles talks about how a comfortable horse should naturally stand square. I find it nearly impossible to get Echo to stand square, and she certainly doesn't do it of her own accord. You can also sort of see some of the muscle wastage on the right side of her body.
So - the first exercise I did was the one where you lift a front leg and bring it across the other one and encourage the stretch right through the shoulder and withers. She really enjoyed this - she found it a little more difficult to bring the right leg across the left one, but once she let the stretch really work, she enjoyed it and stood with her front legs crossed for a minute on each side. We then did carrot stretches (although she is used to these, followed by a tail pull. I had to pull her tail from side to side to get her to stand square (although this didn't really work that well) then once she was square, I got hold of the end of her tail and pulled fairly hard - with most of my weight - at the angle that the tail comes out of the body.
This movement is designed to stretch the lumbar region and this is where Echo was really sore when we first noticed her feet being unlevel. She let me do this once she worked out what I was after and really pulled against me, meaning that the stretch was more effective. The next stretch was more uncomfortable for her - a series of what April Battles calls 'Butt tucks' (!) followed by belly lifts. I had to find the spot on her quarters that gets her to reflex through all the muscles along her back. She was quite resistant to this on the right side, which makes sense given the muscle wastage there. Once she had pulled through the back, I then lifted her back from under her belly. I wish I had taken a photo after this, as it was fascinating. Her back looked a totally different shape after doing this. I will definitely try to get a photo at this point tomorrow.
Having loosened her up, I then took her into one of the paddocks to have a go at long-reining. She has been long-reined twice, although never by me, and she hasn't done any exercise for nearly two months now. I had bought some shiny new long reins and started by just leading her in hand. She was ok, but she doesn't totally understand hand-walking - she gets a bit competitive about getting in front of me.
So I just put her straight onto the long reins and got on with it. And she was great! She plodded along happily. What was interesting, was what I could see from being directly behind her and watching her walk. There is something very strange still going on with her back end. If I can get some video one day next week I will, as it is very odd. also, her right hip is much higher than her left as she walks. It's a bit exaggerated in this photo due to the stride she is on, but it is definitely held higher in walk.
This might become a rather familiar view over the next few weeks!
I had an interesting chat with a girl at the yard just before I left, whose horse has had many many problems, and I got talking about my thoughts on Echo's injury. I will write more about this when I have thought things through a bit more, but she has a sort of physio person working on her horse who I am very interested in...but as I said - more about that later!
I think Echo enjoyed her yoga today though - this is how she was when I left her this evening!
It has now been six weeks since Echo first started having the vet look into her lameness. She has had three doses of shock wave treatment and has been turned out every day, but has done no more exercise than that. She now has lateral extensions on her hind feet, at the recommendation of the vet, and is starting to look like she is moving a little better behind.
She has also had two physio treatments; in the first, the physio found she was very sore on her right side (the right hind suspensory is the more damaged) and she loosened that off quite carefully. She came out to treat her again on Wednesday and found that she is still sore on the right side, although this is now much more localised.
However, the physio watched her trot up and didn't really think there was much improvement in terms of her lameness. I think this suspensory injury has probably been the problem all along, which means that it is pretty deep-rooted. She has had a good deal of rest over the last year and that doesn't seem to have worked. I am mulling over the possibility of surgery, although I will wait for the vet to reassess her before I make any decisions. However, I have been thinking over the last few days about a slightly more...holistic approach to her problems.
Some of the people at my yard have become very interested in a lady called April Battles, and I have spent a long time this evening watching her videos on youtube. It really is fascinating. I haven't completely got my head around it yet, but she seems to suggest that a lot of hind end problems start off further forward and that problems in the first eight ribs, where we think of as being the horse's shoulder, can be the root of many hind lamenesses. I can't explain it really without getting it wrong, but the thing that is really interesting is her 'Yoga for horses', which she uses as both a diagnostic tool and a treatment. It involves releasing the horse through the areas that will often be tight and the areas that cannot be loosened by any kind of surface manipulation.
Here is the long video - it's really really long but well worth watching if you have time.
Now, I know Echo's problem is medical and will need fixing, but I can't help feeling that I am going to have to do a bit more if I am going to get her sound again. I have been watching videos from my lesson a couple of months ago and really looking at the whole of her body and how she is moving and I know it's easy to tell with hindsight, but she looks terrible! I could hardly watch.
So, I am planning to do the yoga stretches in April Battles's video every day for a month. I will take some photos along the way so you (and I) can see if there has been any improvement. Everyone at the yard who has been doing these has said that it really is working. In the longer video, she talks about measuring the horse from the centre of the poll to each corner of the mouth - I am quite interested in this, as Echo's bridle always looks a little odd - I wonder whether (as April Battles suggests is the case with lots of horses) she has different lengths. I am also thinking of getting her a new bridle. Perhaps I am going soft, having been out of the dressage world for so long, but I am struggling in my mind to justify my clencher noseband and fairly tight fitting bridle. Echo's comfort has to be my priority and so I shall look into better alternatives.
I've been having a careful think about the whole blogging thing, and as I really enjoy writing about our (lack of?) progress, I will keep doing it. I have been a bit put off writing on the internet in general recently, as it has been evident that people's agendas for reading are not always that positive. I think, with blogging, you need to feel that you can write what you want to write - when it seems like you can't, it becomes a less pleasant experience. I'm aware that I sound a little cryptic and that explanation was rather convoluted...but I was just feeling a bit 'on show' in the very public world of blogging - people can be rather judgemental and in the horse world everyone has different opinions on how things should be done.
I don't claim that what I am doing is right - in fact, I will often ask for advice from all of you, as I regularly don't really know what to do... I have learnt a lot over the years from reading other blogs and asking questions. I really hope that if someone has any queries about what I'm doing they would ask - either in person if they know me, or via the comments section on here. I moderate comments, only because the internet is a funny place and, hiding behind the cloak of anonymity, people can say some mean things. In the end, we are all just trying to do the best by the horses that we love.
I don't know if I've fully made the point that I intended to...but enough of that.
Tomorrow we start the yoga and we start long-reining - so I will endeavour to take photos and tell you all about it.
These are the exercises I will be working on with her for the next 30 days.
Sorry about not following up the last post about Echo's lameness. I have been feeling a little undecided about the future of this blog and writing on the internet in general...but that's another story.
Echo had another session of nerve blocking and we determined that it was definitely in the low hock area on both hind legs, but she had no improvement when the joint was blocked. The vet was pretty sure it was suspensories, so he scanned both hindlegs and, sure enough, the suspensory ligament right up at the top, near the hock, was inflamed on both. The right leg suspensory was bigger than the left, hence the increased lameness on theright hind, but both were fairly large and grainy on the scan.
The vet said that it isn't a specific tear, but wear and tear of the ligament. Its official name is apparently 'Chronic proximal suspensorydesmitis'. He said that surgery is an option, but he wants to try using shockwave therapy and controlled exercise first, then if that shows no improvement we can consider surgery. This seems like a good idea - I was really worried about the prospect of box rest and, this way, she could keep on going out in the field for now.
I've been going over and over the last year's events, trying to work out when this could have started, but it's really hard to tell. It could be as long ago as October 2010, just after I moved to Lincoln, when she first started going badly and I found that the saddle didn't fit. It could have happened charging around in the field when she was in Lincoln....it could have been the feet being imbalanced that put too much strain on the ligaments...or it could have been the ligaments being sore that made her load the outside of her feet, causing the feet to be imbalanced. It's pretty impossible to tell.
So, for now, we are doing...not a lot. She has had two lots of shockwave treatment, two weeks apart, and has spent her days munching hay in the field. It's been good that the weather has been nice, as she's been pretty relaxed and chilled. She can get a little strong going to the field, but once she's there she doesn't run around or anything. I think, if she did, we would probably have to restrict her grazing to a small pen - but I didn't opt for this as she is better off keeping moving- the shockwave treatment is designed to stimulate blood flow and cell growth in the damaged area, so moving about is good for it.
Sh has her last session of shockwave tomorrow, followed by two more weeks of turnout, then hopefully the vet will re-scan the ligaments and we can go from there. If there is a significant improvement, we will be able to start working her - in walk and in straight lines. Although the vet said this could be ridden, I think I would start off with long reining her in one of the long paddocks. She won't be able to go on an arena surface for a long time, but I wouldn't want to take her out to begin with, as she can be really spooky and I wouldn't want to waste all the progress. If we long-rein, there is also more of a chance of building up the muscles more evenly, as her right side is much less muscled than her left at the moment. I have a feeling that if I were to put a saddle on her as she is, it would just sit wonky and make everything worse. Not to mention how utterly impossible it is to find a saddle that fits my horse.
So that's where we are! We'll keep plodding on and see how it goes. Luckily, Echo doesn't seem to mind all the time off - we've had no breakages or naughtiness and she's enjoying doing all the carrot stretches that the physio has recommended. She's having more physio next week to keep her comfortable and so I'm pretty confident. Or at least trying to be!
