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Under Construction: CT to Tevis

53K views 773 replies 25 participants last post by  Brighteyes 
#1 ·
“I tell people I'm too stupid to know what's impossible. I have ridiculously large dreams, and half the time, they come true.”
--Debi Thomas



I'm always wanted to start a HF journal, but lacked an interesting subject or journey which merited recording. I still lack an interesting subject or journey which merits recording, but I'm starting a HF journal anyway. In an effort to have this make slight sense, I will set a premise for my writings, starting with my dream.

My dream is somewhat large, but they don't call 'em dreams for nothing. The thing I love about mine is that, despite its largeness, it is certainly not impossible. I even go as far as to say it isn't even implausible...Though when I take that liberty, people give me that smile that says, "This kid is gonna be disappointed sooner or later." This dream is to complete one of the big, famous 100 mile endurance runs --preferable the Tevis-- on my mare. Such an endeavor would be accepted with a nod if my mare were an endurance bred Arabian, but she's a few miles shy.


My mare is a four-year-old spotted saddle horse (SSH) -- in simple terms, a spotted Tennessee Walker. She was registered under the name "Flash of Lightening" (spelled incorrectly on her papers), but her former owner simply called her "Baby Girl". She came with a halter with a name tag on it, so I have neglected to change her name. Those tags were just too fancy.

Silly filly seems to think she's an Arab though. (A sign?) She spooks at shadows, leaves, small horses, tarps, black mats, flags, and threatening trees. She hates to stand still. She has a lot of heart, loves to run, and enjoys the trail. She's just as smart as an Arab and highly trainable.

Also, she gives fabulous nose kisses. If nose kisses win races, we got this.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Lengthy premise now aside, I can inform you of our current situation.

As of now, Baby Girl and I are in training for competitive trail (CT). CT is a stepping stone; the rung in the ladder before you step up to endurance. We will hang around CT until we start winning and are prepared and knowledgeable enough for endurance. This may take two years or more.

At this stage in our training, we have logged only one CT ride, in which we claimed a horsemanship score of 95 and a horse score of 88. These scores will have to come up in the future. Our goal for the year is 94+ on both cards.

This time of year is our off season. Our first rides will probably occur in the mid to late spring. Therefore, part one of the journal has begun: "Conditioning"
 
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#384 ·
Yep! :D In the horse world, it's the people you know, ya know? Getting to know someone who does what I want to do will hopefully open some doors for me. Plus, riding with someone new is just fun. I like to ride alone most of the time, but other times (especially during the summer; I lack school socialization) I just want to be around people.
 
#386 · (Edited)
I went out today to feed Baby Girl. It was about 2:00 pm, so she'd been in her stall for a couple hours. I turned her out in the round pen for a couple minutes for release from energy. She trotted and snorted like a crazy Arab while I sat in the middle and snapped pictures with my phone. Two came out okay, so I figured I'd share.



 
#387 ·
6/20


Went on another conditioning ride today! I GPS'd it this time. We went a total of 8 miles in one hour and 15 minutes (excluding a 10 minute break to check P&Rs and a 20 minute warm up walk in the beginning). Crunch the numbers, and that puts our average speed at 6 mph. Seems a little slow, but we did a lot of walking.

Her P&Rs were fine too. She wasn't the least bit stressed. For the next week or two, I'll keep doing rides about that same pace, but maybe spend more time out. I'll try to put in at least two long (three hour) rides a week.

Between those, I might a shorter (one hour) ride with an average speed of 8 mph. That'll require a lot of trotting, some cantering, and very little walking.

I'll put in some arena work too, as well as obstacles. Wouldn't want to neglect the finesse.

That'll be my basic conditioning plan for the rest of summer. If everything goes well, we'll give 'em hell at Heart of Dixie.
 
#389 ·
It's 2 in the morning, and it's been a scary night, guys. Something's wrong with Baby Girl.

At 6:30 pm yesterday, a student and I went on a little ride. She rode BG and I rode Amber. We rode walk/trot/canter for 30 minutes. Light work for BG and nothing I haven't done with her before.

I always walk for the last five or ten minutes, back to the barn. I noticed BG was sweating from head to tail. Even her face was sweating heavily. This isn't normal for her. Amber was hardly sweating. I wasn't sure what to make of it.

Back at the barn, student untacks BG and hoses her off with cold water. It takes 7 minutes on average for BG's P&Rs to come down to normal. After 15 minutes, I was concerned. I really started to pay attention at that point. She was panting hard --absolutely heaving -- and her heart was going a mile a minute.

I cold hosed that horse for 40 minutes. She was so hot. I've never felt a horse put off that much heat for so long.

I knew there was absolutely something majorly wrong here. I called the Boss over. We took her heart and resp properly: pulse of 22 and resp around 19. After 40 minutes of standing under cool water.

I tried to walk her out of the wash rack. My heart stopped. She couldn't hardly move. Her back end was bizarrely effected. She had a hard time moving her back legs. She dragged them.

We pulled her into the front yard. She munched a little grass. P&Rs roughly the same. No gut sounds. Cap refill slow. Gums sticky. Blood pressure low.

We called the vet. The guy on call wasn't a horse specialist. He wasn't much help. It was too late to take her anywhere.

We called Paula. She suggested BG had been bitten by a snake, but we found no evidence of that. She told us to test the range of motion in her back legs. It was minimal on both legs, front, back, and to the side. Paula guessed it was her back. True, her back did look different than normal. More rounded, but only slightly. You wouldn't see it as abnormal if you didnt know the horse.

After she finally stopped putting off heat all over, nothing in particular was hot and there was no swelling anywhere.

At this point, BG became very lethargic. She was no longer interested in grass. Her eyes were glassy and unfocused. She hung her head and zoned out.

We gave her bute at the vet's suggestion at around 8:00 pm. She showed no improvement.

We put her in the round pen with water and hay. She didn't touch it. No interest. I sat with her for 2 hours. She didn't move from where she was standing. She didn't even move her head.

Since nothing was improving, we gave her a bantamine shot at 10 pm. This helped. She started to regain alertness, but didn't try to walk. She began to nose at her hay soon after, but didn't eat.

Around 11:30 pm. I offered her a hand full of grain. She took it. She was quite alert at this point, but took no steps. She began munching on hay and drank a little water.

Since then, she's been eating hay. Her breathing still hasn't returned to resting, probably due to pain. I'm spending the night at the barn and will check on her hourly. Tomarrow, we are going to see an equine specialist vet and do whatever we need to do.
 
#391 ·
Thank you Paintsrule! It's been working, because she's a lot better today.


At 8:00 am this morning, she was walking around. She was short stepping severely in the back and shuffling. Her butt muscles were rock hard and sore, though not hot to the touch. She didn't appear to be in a lot of pain. Just stiff, a little achy, and not quite herself. She eat her morning grain happily and had finished off her hay during the night. Even though she was so so so much better, I got her a vet appointment anyway. The appointment is for tomorrow at 3:00 pm at Central Georgia Equine Services. Which I'm excited about this seeing. I've never been to a big vet facility.

I went home for a couple hours (finally got some rest!) and came back to the farm around 4:00 pm. Baby Girl was standing in her stall and looking rather sluggish. I took her out for a short walk to eat some grass. Her walking was more fluid than that morning.

Amy came by. She's a believer in homeopathic stuff and energy healing and other "crazy" stuff. I thought it was pretty crazy, but I can't dis it until I try it. She had some little herb pills. I don't remember what the plant's name's were, but they were for treating nerve pain and muscle soreness, respectively. Amy says her horses love the stuff and will pick the pill they need for whatever is ailing them.

Funny thing. I could have sworn it worked a little. Could be a fluke.

I'm not sure about the energy healing thing. Supposedly, a person can make a ball of energy and allow your horse to take it from you and use it. Amy says Baby Girl caught on to the concept immediately and loves taking her some energy.

I was like, "Alrighty then..."

Whether it works or not, I'm going to research it. Knowledge is magic.

I put Baby Girl back into the round pen alone for another night. I soaked her with the hose and put her in there dripping, hoping it would tempt her to roll. I imagine that would help stretch out her back a little. Before I left, she would trot the fence line for a couple strides and toss her head, like she wanted to play. I'm glad she's feeling better.

I still want to know what the hell make her so sick in the first place. So I can make sure it never happens again.
 
#392 ·
Im so glad to hear shes doing better! She seems like such a neat horse i'd hate for her to have something go wrong. I'll continue to think of her and pray for continued recovery and answers about whats ailing her so she can get all fixed up and be back to being your wonderful endurance partner!
 
#393 ·
6/27


Baby Girl is acting very normal. Bright eyed, alert, eating, drinking, moving.

However, today was the scariest day, because the vet told me my horse was lucky to be alive.

Dr. Cook (amazing lady) did a blood panel. Take a look:



That's terrifying.

Look at the potassium (K+). Normal is 3.5. Hers were almost off the effing chart. Her muscle enzymes were also so high they were off the charts. So high the vet's machines couldn't give us a number. They had to send it off to UGA to get a real number.

That's 48 hours later. Imagine what it was when she was really sick.

Dr Cook was amazed she lived. From the symptoms I described, this was severe Rhabdomyolysis. Commonly known as tying-up or azoturia. The vet said on a scale of one to ten, this was a nine. And that's only because all the ten horses were dead. It was one of the worse cases she's ever seen.

Horses die from this. Baby Girl almost died in that round pen two nights ago, right in front of me.

Vet said if I had just left her alone and not cared for her like I did, she wouldn't have made it. Everything we did -- the bute, the banamine, holding food and water up to her nose, staying with her all night -- saved her. Especially the water. Something as easy as holding water up to her nose to drink was a deciding factor. That's how tedious the situation was.

Another deciding factor was that fact that she is a tough, badass little fighter.

It's a amazing she got away without permanent kidney damage and didn't go into renal failure. With those blood test results, it's a damn miracle.

It wasn't a text book case. We aren't sure what triggered it. Light exercise for 30 minutes. That's all we did. What happened. What was different. Why that ride. Why not when I went 60 miles? When I galloped the last three miles in at Uwharrie?

The vet suggested this Rhabdomyolysis was genetic rather than from a lay off or high grain diet. The triggers aren't well known, but something set it off. Once you have one attack that severe, you know your horse is prone to it. The rate of recurrence is higher now.

Her whole diet has to be changed to protect her. That's what the vet said; I had to protect her now. We have to cut out carbs and sugars. Baby Girl now has to draw all her fuel from fat. She'll be consuming one pound of oil or other fat source daily, split between two meals. There isn't a "treatment" for Rhabdo after you get out of the danger zone; only prevention.

We're going back to the vet for more blood work in about two weeks. Until then, no exercise for Baby Girl. Once her enzymes are normal, the vet will give me an exercise program to slowly bring her back. Consistent exercise if important for Rhabdo horses.

Baby Girl is now two kinds of special... A special miracle and special needs.
 
#396 ·
I'm glad she improved these past few days. It's so effing hot over there, the poor dear.

6/27
Dr. Cook (amazing lady) did a blood panel. Take a look:



That's terrifying.

Look at the potassium (K+). Normal is 3.5. Hers were almost off the effing chart. Her muscle enzymes were also so high they were off the charts. So high the vet's machines couldn't give us a number. They had to send it off to UGA to get a real number.

That's 48 hours later. Imagine what it was when she was really sick.
How do you read the bloodwork panel? How do you know what's normal?
I have to get one done for Sky soon because he's exhibiting really scary symptoms. Hives and red blotches on his back (like sunburn) so gotta see what's up :/
 
#394 ·
6/28

Didn't do much today (since we're not allowed to :wink:), but just wanted to update and say Baby Girl is getting her personality back. She's starting to act quirky again and is trotting around the pasture a bit. I'm having a hard time getting her to eat all the oil she's suppose to be getting... Anyone have a favorite dry fat source? Is rice brain a good choice?
 
#395 ·
6/30

Baby Girl didn't act like she was feeling well today. Probably because of the heat. It was 106 degrees. She was standing in her stall sweating. I went back mid afternoon and rinsed her off with cold water.

"This week has really sucked."



She's gone on strike and refuses to eat her oil/grain mixture. She ate it under protest when I added soaked alfalfa pellets.

Barn life has been so boring since I'm not allowed to work her. :-| Meh.
 
#397 · (Edited)
Welcome to blood panel reading 101! :D In COLOR.




The black arrow is pointing to the column of names/chemical abbreviations. Pop any of them into google to get the full names. NA+ stands for salt, K+ for potassium, CK is a muscle enzyme, ect. Immediately next to the names is the level of each in your horse.

The blue arrow column is a lot of science-y measures. You don't need to know the exact levels you are looking at; just if they are normal or not. Basically, ignore.

The gray arrow tells you where your horses numbers fall in a scale of normalcy. Look at the purple dot. NA+ or sodium. Baby Girl had a 140, which is normal. You can tell if it's normal at a glance by seeing if the little black bar (highlighted here in purple) is within the thinner black bars/brackets (circled with purple). If it's outside to the left, it's too low. Outside to the right and it's too high. All of Baby Girl's values I haven't colored are within the normal.

On this blood test, abnormal levels have a black box around their names and levels. Look at K+ (potassium). See how the black bar is way outside the thinner black brackets? Way too high. The exact number of the reading (8.5) is next to the chemical's name.

The black dot (GLU or Glucose) is the same way!

The green dots are muscles enzymes. Look at the squiggle in the green boxes. That means it's too high to get a reading. Notice there is no thick black bar in the gray column boxes.


I hope you find out what's happening to Sky and can get him better! It sounds like an allergic response to me.
 
#399 ·
7/2


Dr Cook got Baby Girl's blood panel results from UGA today. You know the results are extreme when your vet uses multiple exclaimation points.

Normally, CK level is anywhere from 300 to 500. Her CK level was 62,097. (Cue multiple exclaimation points from the vet...!!!!!) Normal AST levels around around 300. Hers was an "alarming" (as the doctor said) 12,810.

"To make this even more impressive the samples were drawn 2 days after she became ill."

CK has a HALF LIFE. So double that.

So I lay down and cried at this situation's alarming and ever growing level of insanity. What the hell am I going to do.
 
#401 ·
7/10

Good news! :D

Baby Girl went to the vet yesterday. The blood panel was (miraculously) good and she is cleared for light riding! :happydance:

By light riding, I mean 30 minutes a day (I can ride every day if I want). Gait for two minutes, walk for two, gait for two. No cantering. I can add five minutes a week until I get to about two hours. By Septemeber, she should be about back to where she was.

Also, she is on her special diet for life. And is going to make every day of the rest of that life hard, apparently. Because she will not eat it.

Nothing is working any more. Alfalfa pellets, rice bran... Molasses helped a little, but she isn't suppose to have sugar. If she doesn't get her pound of fat a day, her body won't covert over to this new source of energy. And I might get a sick horse again.

She'll eat if I give her a little more grain with her fat sources. But finding low starch/high fat/low sugar grain is a wild goose chase. I've tried a dozen feed stores. The only thing available locally is Omegatin. Which comes in 20 gallon buckets and is extremely frickin expensive. :?

RAWR.

But I rode her on a 30 minute trail yesterday and she was fine! Today we went over to Amy's and did a lot of ground work. I'm learning to move all four of her feet by just looking at them and tugging the halter slightly. It's a real mind game, but kind of fun. Homework for me!
 
#402 ·
oh my gosh! Your week has been terrible, I am a firm believer that our horses try their best for us and it sounds like she tried her best to live with your help because you were there trying your best too. yikes!

On a feed note, have you looking into Step Right - Level 8 (i think... yellow bag anyways) it's hi-fat. I have to be careful what I put Sable on because carbs make her crazy ... she goes from steady eddie to a horse whose had 8 cups of coffee twitching out, on them.

Anyways I know it is hi-fat but maybe it has some carbs in it...worth looking into as it is a dry feed and palatable, could make the oil go down better if it would work for her.
 
#403 ·
I feed a low starch/sugar feed by ADM ,called Ultra Fiber . Its not that high in fat though . But it did put the weight back on Dreamer . Text me I'll give ya more info . Maybe make her a mush ? Thats what I do ,because Charger got kicked in the neck by a horse 4 hands taller than him .(He's a shrimp compared to that mare .) Anyway he tends to choke easily ,so he gets a mush of feed and beet pulp . Maybe up your hay quaility if you can like Timothy or REALLY good grass hay ? I'd also up her fiber ,it adds energy .(not Hotness ,just good ol' stamina ) lol
 
#404 ·
subbing! :)

I hope she continues to improve and starts eating!
I know when Lacey had her most recent major bought of ERU, her appetite was super gone for a couple of weeks. Then it miraculously re-appeared. I hope Baby Girl is playing that same game...
 
#405 ·
Thank you everyone! It really has been kind of a rough week... It's getting better though. Rode again today, 30 minutw walking trail again. She had energy to burn after we were back and wanted to gait some, unlike last time. Riding is probably stretching out her sore muscles. But I also think she just likes being ridden. She's beem acting so much happier since she started getting worked again. I wonder if a horse can honestly miss work...

She's started eating again! I finally found a combo I think is going to work. Two cups of rice bran, two cups of Omegatin, and half a cup of oil. (I think... I have the amounts of each written down somewhere. Bad memory for numbers.) Feed that twice a day.

At least, it's worked for a while. She might get sick of it again!

Gonna keep riding every day and hope she keeps improving. :)
 
#406 ·
7/16


Baby Girl and I have been living the slowwww life. She's feeling great. Still eating, enjoying light work, working on lunging... Just chillin'.

We've trail ridden a couple more times since I last posted. Hardly any trotting. She's gotten into the habit of trying to trot without permission on the trails, so I figured we're going to walk until she no longer wants to trot.

It won't hurt, since I've been looking forward and it feels like time has stopped for us. It's the weirdest thing. We're always going somewhere. The last two years, it's felt like we're always moving. But that feeling of urgency is gone.

Maybe it's summer heat. The humidity pools around you and almost drowns you.

My entire motivation in riding is to win. I admit it. Doesn't seem like a good source to draw power from, huh? I like winning more than riding.

But with our competitive future uncertain (it really hurts to type that)... I'm having a hard time riding anymore. That sounds terrible and shallow and selfish, but this is a journal made of honesty! And admitting is the first step!

So here I am, stuck in limbo. Trail riding for 30 minutes a day. Not really looking forwards to anything. Weirddddd.

Gonna make some new goals to survive this mood I've been in recently. I think I'm going to start training for barrels. :lol: What? Seems like good exercise. Lots of bending and circle work. 30 minutes is the perfect time frame! 10 minute warm up, 10 minutes of circles walk/gait, and the last few minutes walking the pattern perfectly?

My mom got me a book of western arena exercises and told me to work through it. Heck, maybe I will. I've gotten pretty soured of trail riding recently.
 
#407 · (Edited)
7/18




This has been a Baby Girl's really long mane appreciation post. :lol:

It's thin at the bottom (the picture makes it look worse than it is), but it looks nice in person. It's twice as long as it was last year!

I left it down when I rode her today. Ick. Got caught in my reins and all tangled. Her neck was covered in sweat. Yep. Braided it back up after that. Totally impractical, manes. :wink:

Also, look at my fat horse.



Ewww. What a whale. :lol:


Anyway, I rode trails today. Added a little more speed. Did some gaiting. Pretty meh gaiting, but yeah. She was fine. She enjoyed doing something that wasn't walking. We refreshed our obstacles on a fallen tree. She sidepassed onto it and backed off of it very pretty like. I was riding in a rope halter, so our communication wasn't all that refined.


I was going to start my promised barrels today, but the arena was trashed. The grass was knee high. So I did some basic lateral flexing from a stand still (she's gotten super stiff recently) and will practice circles and bending in the pasture until I can get the boss to mow the ring.


Okay, here's a thing:


I was going to go on a trip to Leatherwood first of August. I was going to take Baby Girl, but then she got sick. The boss offered her horse, Amber, a few days after BG got sick. I was like, "Thanks! That's sounds great!" That is a push button, easy horse. But today she got all in my face. "You need to be riding Amber! Do you want her to tie up on the top of mountain?"

This really ****** me off for some reason. If she knows anything about conditioning, she would know that two weeks isn't going to do much for this horse's fitness. If she knew anything about azoturia, she would know it's actually pretty frickin hard to tie up a horse that isn't genetically prone to it.

(If she knew anything about manners, she would know if you offer someone a horse you don't make them work for it.) *cough cough AHEM*


Maybe it's less that, and more the catty way she acted about it. Some days... Some days...

Anyone, the point of that story: I think I might just bring Baby Girl. I'll ride the beautiful Leatherwood mountains for... One hour a day (she'll be up to an hour by that time). I would rather ride my own horse for an hour than someone else's all day anyway. Plus, this is vacation. I plan to watch TV and eat wheaties for the rest of the day.
 
#408 ·
7/21


Baby Girl tied up again today.


It was really mild. She was short stepping in the back, her butt muscles were hard, sweating, and she took 45 minutes for her breathing to return to normal. She was reluctant to move and acted a bit lethargic. She was, however, responsive and fairly alert. She ate when offered a little rice bran to test her appetite and grazed. It was at its worst about two hours after the ride and slowly got better.

I called the vet. She said to Bute her, and use Ace if she was acting terrible uncomfortable. She wasn't acting terrible, so I held off on the Ace and just did Bute.

The ride that caused this mini flare was 40 minutes, a lot of walk with a little bit of gait. Exactly what we had been doing for several days now. The only difference was a 30 second canter. Like, legit. 30 seconds. Not sure if this was what caused it, but I suppose it could have. Doc said some horses are amazingly sensitive.

The vet said to take it slower. I told her what I had been doing. "Well... Make it a slower slow," she said. Doctor also tossed in the idea of a muscle biopsy, to try and see exactly what's up.

I'm really... Disappointed. Frustrated. Worried. Mostly the last one.
 
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