I'm going to keep trying to post updates on the blog about Chrome and his rehab, but they still may be sporadic because of my schedule. I have really been enjoying posting to Instagram and I'm planning to post to it regularly so you might want to follow me over there @chromechevalier to see more regular updates.
Before we get started I have two things to address. One, please don't laugh at my baling twine Vienna reins. I'm going to order real ones, but I'm on a tight budget right now because of the emergency vet bills. I also wanted to see how he would do with them before I spent the money on a set. Second, sorry for the quality of the photos. They are screenshots from video. I don't have time to process and upload the video right now so I just grabbed some screenshots for you.
Okay, next I'm going to update all of you on what we've been doing since the founder scare. I'm still working with the master trimmer to get his feet healthy and he is finally landing heel first!!! I'm so excited because that is something that has bothered me most of his life. I was beginning to think it was a conformation issue that caused him to land toe first. Oh how I wish I had known all of this years ago. I could have saved him so much discomfort and wear and tear on his body.
The main two things I've done to get him landing heel first (diet is always first and foremost, but I've always been careful with his diet aside from grass which he is restricted from now) is backing up his toes to improve his break over and soaking them weekly in Oxine (off brand of White Lightning). He obviously won't always have to be soaked that frequently, but until I get the seedy toe grown out and his white line tight I will keep doing it. It can take a year to grow a new hoof capsule so this is a slow journey!! I'm in it for the long haul, so I don't mind. I'm just so happy I finally know what I need to know to get him rehabbed.
For the last two weeks I've been hand walking him everyday. I'm walking him two days a week on the asphalt roads and the rest of the days in the pasture. I'm not longeing him because of his stifles. I'm hand walking him, but I'm making sure he's walking out and not dragging along like a lazy slug. His walk has improved SO much in the last two weeks!! He used to chronically short stride in his front legs and now he's reaching forward freely (because of the corrected break over). I slowly worked him up to twenty minutes a day of hand walking up and down a slight incline in the pasture.
Over the years of being a pasture ornament and having an incorrect break over on his hooves he has lost all of his top line and is even getting a ewe neck! Ugh!! So in an effort to start very slowly correcting that (yes I know it can take two years) I decided to try him in Vienna reins. Today I longed him in them for five minutes on each side, just so he could learn how they work, but from now on I'll just be hand walking him in them. When I'm hand walking him I'm sort of facing him with my upper body as if I were longeing, but we're going in straight lines to protect his stifles. I'll try to get video or pictures some time to show you what I mean.
I put them on really loose at first, but he wasn't making any contact with them and was walking with his ears in the clouds, so I tightened them up a bit. It took him some time to figure out how to relieve the pressure, but eventually he started stretching down. He was lacking impulsion because he was distracted by this new, weird thing, but it will improve once he relaxes. He was just confused at first. He really started stretching down in the end and his stride lengthened and got more relaxed. I know we have a long way to go, but I'm pleased with how his first session went.
Chrome thought it was hard work and even sweated under the surcingle even though it was only 88F today. It felt amazing outside! Definitely a nice pretty day to try something new.
Once he has more impulsion from behind he will start to round his back better, but he's very weak right now so I'm not pushing him too hard. It is a long, slow process to build the correct muscles, especially with weak stifles. I'm also doing other in hand exercises like massage, backing up with his neck down and relaxed, pelvic tilts, lateral flexion and tail pulls. Just stuff to slowly loosen him up and strengthen his body.
In the above picture you can see how his reach in the front is improving. No more short stepping!
Oops these are out of order, this one should be before the one above it.
The reason the angle is weird is because my hubby was taking the video while standing behind my whip hand, so he's not at the girth line where I was. Makes for some awkward photos, but you can see how well Chrome's figuring it out.
Reaching under with his hind legs better too. The reach and impulsion will get better as his stifles and back get stronger.
He had one minor freak out where he started going backward and fighting the reins, but I told him to whoa and he did. I calmed him and we went right back to work. I didn't get as many photos going the other direction because hubby forgot to start filming. He only filmed about two minutes going to the right. The weird thing is Chrome's stiffer on the right side, but I think he actually did better. Maybe because he was just finally figuring out what I wanted. His shoulder was falling in on this side and his head wanted to turn to the outside, but with the longe line and whip I was able to push his shoulder out. That may be why he improved because it was like applying the inside leg, outside rein. We are SO out of practice with longeing since I generally try to avoid it because of his stifles, that I'm actually really happy with how well we both picked it back up.
That reach with his hind leg! Love it!
I know some horses reach all the way to their girth, but I'll celebrate the baby steps!
Even when his head came up (above pictures) you could see he was giving to the pressure instead of fighting it. I don't want him learning to go behind the vertical though, which is why I will loosen them up now that he knows what I'm asking.
Such a good boy! I ended the longeing session on a nice downward stretch. We finished his last ten minutes of hand walking moving around the pasture in straight lines. Hubby didn't get any video of that (he was busy building something and I interrupted him, so he was impatient to get back to it). He did really well and was relaxing a lot more with our familiar routine of hand walking (longeing is not familiar for us!). I didn't take him up and down the incline we normally work on because he needs to build strength on flat ground before I ask him to do that with his head down. Pushing uphill with his rear end is what will strengthen his stifles, but I have to be very careful not to overdo it.
I'm really proud of how well Chrome has done during the last month or so of rehab we've been doing. I'm so excited that he's landing heel first and we're able to work in hand again. His feet will improve the more miles I can put on him, but I have to take it slow because of his stifles. As they get stronger we will be able to do more. For now everything is in walk only. I've asked him to trot a few times just to see that he's sound, but I don't want to stress his stifles with too many circles and I can't keep up with him on straight lines at the trot. We might have to start ground driving again... eventually.
I'm not looking forward to the cold, rain and mud of winter, but I'm going to keep working him every day that it's not raining when I get off work and I'll update you guys on the weekends when I have daylight to get pictures. I hope you all are doing well and I want to thank Chrome's loyal fans who have stuck around during our long absence. Fortunately the over time at work has been cut back drastically which I'm very thankful for so that I can rehab Chrome and give him the exercise he needs and deserves. I'll update again soon!
I have sad news that I learned about last week. Lady, the pony I grew up with, died last year at the age of twenty eight. She was the first horse I fell in love with and the horse who taught me how to ride (and fall). I had her from when I was nine until I was twenty one. When I moved to a property without a pasture I decided to give her to a friend (I was too big for her anyway and her job in life had always been to make little girls happy). He kept her until she died last year in a freak accident that caused a broken leg. It happened out in the pasture so no one knows for sure how it happened. The sad thing is she was in great health and was still happily being ridden by kids fairly regularly. It wasn't her time to go. The bright side is she had a long and happy life. That's the important thing.
Below are pictures from her time with me.
I hand stitched the bells on her breastcollar. We thought we were fancy!
Below are pictures from the last time I visited her when she was twenty one years old. I regret not visiting her more frequently...
August 12 2019 was one of the scariest days of my entire life. I walked out to the pasture after work to feed Chrome and he was dead lame. I had never in my life seen him in so much pain. He wouldn't walk at all unless I was pulling on the lead rope with all of my weight. I only had him walk a couple of steps to get a video to send to the vet. I have uploaded it so you can see it. It still makes me sick to my stomach to see it.
If you can't watch a video here is a screenshot of how he was standing when I found him. I immediately knew something was wrong from his stance, his expression, the fact that he wouldn't follow me with a feed bucket and the bloody spots where the horseflies had bitten him and he didn't try to remove them.
This picture makes me so sick.
To be honest when I saw him walk I thought his shoulder was broken (I realize now how dumb that was, but at the time....) because of the way he was swinging his leg out. I sent the video to my emergency vet and he immediately said founder. I thought I was going to die of shock and terror on the spot. The vet said he could come out and treat him or we could give him pain meds and wait a day or two, but I asked him to come out (even though I had to max out my emergency credit card) because I was terrified that his coffin bones would rotate if I waited to treat him. Please keep in mind through all of this that I had never had any experience with founder other than what I've read. Reading can't prepare you for the hell of it in reality.
The vet came out and treated him. I honestly can't recall what all he did except for taking x-rays (which showed no rotation) and running an IV. He had to nerve block Chrome's left front hoof just to get him to stand on it long enough to wrap the other foot. Three grown men were trying to prop him up and pick up his other hoof and he almost fell several times, which is why he decided to do the nerve block. They wrapped both front feet with some gel and heavy cotton padding. He also put him on various medications (thyroid meds and pain meds).
His wrapped feet the next day. You can see he doesn't have as much weight on his left front.
When the vet left and I was sitting there with Chrome hooked up to his IV I was in tears. I remember thinking, "I bought a horse trailer and I'm never going to get to take him anywhere on it." I honestly thought I was going to have to put him to sleep. It was one of the worst days of my life, maybe THE worst.
Running his IV medication the next day.
Doesn't he look miserable?
We gave him IV medication and fluids for two days before switching to paste and powdered medication. We kept him in a stall (well it was corral panels under his barn since I don't have a stall). This all happened on a Monday evening. On Friday evening the vet had me take his wraps off. To my amazement he walked off sound........
As I was taking off the wrap (excuse how nasty it was, we put down a TON of hay for him to stand on so it was soft) I immediately spotted the problem.... an abscess. See the lighter gray part? The hole in his hoof is a whole inch wide!! I've never seen an abscess that big! I know that horses will sometimes act like they are dying with an abscess, but I honestly never believed it would make a horse walk like Chrome was in that video. He had me convinced he was dying! In hindsight I realize that part of the problem was his locking stifles which makes him look like he's moving weirder than a normal abscessed horse would.
A picture of the abscess after I cleaned his hoof up.
I'm still not 100% sure that he didn't have mild laminitis, but there was no rotation, no heat, no pounding digital pulse, so maybe not. It's hard not to be bitter about the misdiagnoses since it wiped out my emergency credit card, but I'm trying not to be because I learned a LOT during all of this. I would rather be safe than sorry and perhaps prompt treatment prevented things from being worst than they could have been. It also prompted me to make a change in his hoof care, which I'll go into more below.
Five days after the above video he was pain free and happily helping us build temporary electric fences. We blocked him off most of the grass (because we thought it a grass induced founder) and off of the pond (because him being in the pond all the time was causing hoof infections).
Before I found out it was an abscess I had reached out to professional barefoot trimmers trying to find someone close to me that is experienced in rehabbing foundered horses. I was unable to find anyone who would come to my area, but I found a master trimmer who trained the Pete Ramey method and he is helping me learn to trim Chrome myself over the phone and email. He has been absolutely amazing!
We are taking it slow and doing it in stages because he doesn't want to confuse or overwhelm me. It is obviously working because he is back to trotting in his pasture and he's landing heel first on three out of four hooves. The trimmer said the abscess was cause by seedy toe (an infection in the hoof wall which is why we fenced off the pond; some of you may remember he had white line a year ago from being in the pond too). I had never experienced seedy toe, so I didn't realize that's what was going on. I thought his hoof had just cracked from his walls being too long. Seedy toe can also cause laminitis, so that's why I'm taking this all very seriously. I feel really bad that his feet got in this condition. I thought his hooves were fine because he was never lame, but you live and learn right? Below are pictures of his hooves.
8-17-19 - These were taken the day I sent photos to the trimmer. He was about five weeks out from a trim and I forgot my hoof pick so they are dirty. My bad! I just want you to have a baseline from where I started.
Left Front (the one with seedy toe and the abscess).
Right Front (note the very stretched white line?)
Right Hind (the other one with seedy toe)
Left Hind
9-3-2019 - It took me a while to do his first trim because I sprained my ankle, which caused back pain from compensation. Once I was able to bend over again I trimmed him and sent pictures to the trimmer for an update.
Left Front Below
Before Trim (see the hole where the seedy toe is?)
After Trim
Right Front Below
Before Trim
After Trim (almost looks like he wants to get seedy toe in this one too, but he didn't)
Left Hind Below
Before Trim
After Trim
Right Hind Below
Before Trim (horrible seedy toe...)
After Trim
I forgot to mention during all of this time I've been soaking him in Oxine (off brand of white lightning), medicating the seedy toe and using durasole.
Below is his most recent trim which has him landing heel first in three out of four hooves. The right front is being stubborn (trimmer said I need to back his toe up more to correct his breakover), but it does land heel first sometimes and flat the rest of the time, so we are well on our way. Before all of this he was landing extremely toe first.
9-19-19 - I only did his fronts this day because my back was sore. I will do his rear hooves again soon. I also have to make some corrections on his fronts per my trimmer. I forgot to get before pictures.
Right Front
Left Front
Right Front (see the event lines? Makes me think he's had laminitis issues before)
He also had some coronet jamming that is looking much better and he's standing more square. As soon as I can get him landing consistently heel first on all four feet I will be able to put him back into work (I've been hand walking him during all of this because the stall rest had his stifles locking again and exercise is very important for correcting hoof issues).
I'm feeling very optimistic at this point. I went from thinking my horse was going to die to feeling very empowered taking his hoof care into my own hands. I'm so happy that he is landing heel first because long time followers of this blog will know how much it's bothered me that he has chronically landed toe first most of his life. I have learned so much and I'm happy that I get to keep learning. I love this horse so much and I can't even imagine him not being in my life or not being happy or healthy. I'm ecstatic to have my happy boy back. Below are some pictures I took on Saturday.
My handsome boy enjoying the small amount of grass I will allow him.
Look at how flea-bitten he is getting!!!! Just like his dam!
He is so happy again, ears forward, stride long, forward, eager. Love him!
His stride in the front has gotten so much longer as I've slowly improved his breakover.
One last artistic shot of the turkey vulture feather my husband found and propped up.
Also I just want to say thank you to those of you who have stuck around during my absence. I feel bad for not updating my blog and I'm going to start doing better because it's important that I can track the progress of his feet. For those of you who are not hoof nerds I'm sorry if this is boring! It's just a really good way for me to see our progress. Thanks guys!!
