The positive way to spin this: another fork in the road...

When to give up?

That’s what’s been going through my mind a lot lately when it comes to Deli. Not to give up on her, because she’s going to get my care for the rest of her life whether she is a pasture puff or something else. But whether to give up on doing endurance rides with Deli. To retire her to easy-going trails without a goal other than moving along.

Endurance riding is something I’ve been trying to achieve with this horse for six of the nine years we’ve been together. Because I think she would both enjoy it and be good at it (barring the obvious soundness problems) and I also enjoy and could be good at it. I love being outside on a trail with a horse I love more than anything but the element of goal-setting (not necessarily winning a competition, but the idea that there is some mountain to climb) to endurance riding really appeals to me.

I have that one LD under my belt and that was enough to make me realize I really really want to pursue this sport. I can’t remember doing something that was so hard and yet so fun ever before in my life.

I was all set to take Deli to her first LD (Bandit Springs) at the end of June. She was doing awesome during conditioning rides. So awesome. She was getting obviously more fit and seemed to be enjoying moving out more on the trails (more forward = more fit and confident for this mare). She was ready, too. She was strong and getting stronger. The couple successful intro rides we have under our belt meant I was pretty confident her brain could handle it as well.

Just over a week before the ride I go out early in the morning to sneak in a ride before the blistering heat set in only to find her pawing in her paddock, not wanting to move. She was 3-legged, the right hind leg had a slightly puffy fetlock, and her distress was obvious. I made an emergency vet call. I found the barn owner down in the barn and asked if I could cold hose her where she stood (and create a big mud puddle), and she expressed surprise because when she’d fed Deli about a half-hour earlier she was walking around acting normal.

It was bigger than this, I kid you not. This was taken later when she was comfortably putting weight on the leg again.

I don’t need to go into all the details but as I waited for the vet Deli’s leg got bigger right before my eyes. She got a fever that kept climbing past what would be normal for a horse in pain (eventually getting to 103.7 before the vet was able to administer a nice cocktail of drugs). Concerned about the level of pain she was in – to the point she was almost panting – and knowing the vet was still at least an hour away, I called her to let her know I was giving Deli the last of the painkiller I had left from her last badbad injury.

The final diagnosis was lymphangitis, but based on the circumstances it’s likely that Deli was bitten or stung by a spider or other insect. The vet thinks a black widow bite somewhere on that leg is a possibility. We also have scorpions in the PNW, though I’ve never seen them around the barn. The weird and bad weather we’ve had this year had meant the proliferation of all sorts of insects we don’t normally get much of. 

The swelling was bad. Horrific, one might say. The whole leg from hoof to udder was grotesque.

For non-horse folks... the left leg is normal.

Deli hanging out in a stall the day after the "event".

Deli’s compromised lymph flow in that darn right-hind from her old scar and many bouts of celluitus probably contributed. As did her allergy to insect bites (a hyper-immune reaction which started after she definitely had a bad spider bite on her chest about 3 years ago – her skin melted off that time).

Lymphangitis is essentially inflammation and/or infection of the lymph system. The vessels swell enormously. Lymphangitis can be caused by many things – one of which is the introduction of a toxin. Things get inflamed, lymph gets constricted, that gets infected and… everything goes downhill from there. 

Everything I’ve read and heard now says the same thing: Lymphangitis is a frustrating condition to treat."

In all the articles I've read they end saying something like: it’s a good thing it’s such an uncommon condition. To that I say: no sir, because that pretty much guarantees my horse is going to get it.

Deli went through a long round of antibiotics, and me trying to find something, anything, that would work to abate the swelling. Her leg got huge and nothing helped. It got so huge the pitting edema (meaning you can press a finger into it and it stays like putty) was draped over her hoof. Nothing helped. 

A sweat wrap. Which helped not at all.

I played around with different things. Supplements to help cleanse lymph. Infared light therapy. Cold hosing and icing. 

Topical medication. Anti-inflammatory medications and even herbs of various sorts. Bandaging and sweat wrapping and massage. 

I'm still considering other therapies, too.

Trying some feed-through assistance.

Luckily, other than the pain of having her skin stretched tight Deli’s serious pain went away within a day. Her skin itself wasn’t hot or painful like I saw when she gets cellulitis. Up around her groin/udder area it was more painful and inflamed – there are a string of important lymph nodes in the area. The skin on the inside of her leg from stifle upward got weird bumpy skin, almost like hives, and the lymph system in the area became ridged and hot. That particular area hurt a lot when you poked it. It made me consider that Deli may have been bitten a bit higher up and the first swelling just appeared in the fetlock because of how the fluid circulates.

But I’ll probably never know exactly what happened. The spider bite is our best speculative guess based on the whole set of facts we do have. Her temperature being so elevated so quickly, for example.

I finally found that movement seemed to help a little, so she went back out in the big pasture with her buddy. I went out two times a day (meaning over two hours of driving every day for two weeks) to give medications and hand walk her. The FatLeg remained stubbornly persistent. It would go down a little, but only a little. 

She didn't seem very uncomfortable so I hopped on her to do our walking. I even gave my husband a short lesson on her one day to serve two purposes at once.

Lesson pony?
Haha... no. Only for my husband, who she adores.

When we knew we were not dealing with infection anymore, it was time to try steroids. Adding the corticosteroids dexamethasone had an immediate positive effect. She was on that for 10 more days, ending last Saturday. During which time I obsessed over watching her feet for founder – something that luckily didn’t happen (she’s pre-Cushing’s and Cushing’s horses are more prone to founder. And a side effect of steroids can be founder).

Steroids are a magical thing in some circumstances!

Despite all these drugs and enormous time commitment on my part there is currently a residual swelling left. Longer exercise (the longest so far was an hour and a half trail ride) gets the leg looking almost normal, but I can feel a difference. There is still some pitting edema left. This is pretty common – basically the leg will be permanently FatLeg to some degree. Unfortunately this also makes the severe lymphangitis more likely to recur in a previously affected leg.

Yesterday she was stung by a bee on the neck and today the FatLeg is a little fatter. Antihistamines helped that, so now, on vet advice, we are playing with a large dose of Zyrtec that we will taper off.

A more recent shot of the problem leg before a workout, which takes away some of the puff. Much better, but some residual fibrosis (especially around her fetlock scar). Welcome to the world FatLeg.

I’m exhausted and trying to ignore the stress caused by already-substantial vet bills because there is nothing I can do about that right now. I feel like I don’t have the right to complain, sometimes, because this has been a hard summer for many of my friends (and fellow bloggers) when it comes to pet health. We all seem to be struggling. One friend of mine had to put down her old guy recently due to neurological issues.

Further conversations with my vet highlight that endurance isn’t necessarily off the table. Ride her, work her, my vet says, she how she holds up and watch how she feels. Movement is the best thing for Deli if she can tolerate it. Deli is sorta-kinda sound. If the FatLeg is fat she is a bit inconsistent. As it goes down she moves more smoothly. The stretched skin is no doubt uncomfortable, but a short period of discomfort means more comfort later. And since Deli isn't resisting being worked I know she is not really in pain. This is an advantage to sensitive horses I think: I KNOW she's not hurting if she's telling me she's fine. Not a stoic pain-hiding horse, this one.

So we head back out again to wander at a walk. Happy ears = happy me.

My vet – who also vets endurance rides – also said that having some permanent FatLeg does not necessarily preclude competing in endurance. She is not surprised edema is sticking around in Deli’s scarred fetlock or that there is some stubborn fill in the tendons on that leg. She sees horses with “war wounds” all the time during vet checks – what’s important is the horse vets in sound and stays sound, and that the leg doesn’t get bigger during the ride.

But.

Honestly competing Deli in endurance is not something I’m going to worry about anymore this summer. It’s a hot miserable summer. I need to sell my saddle for various reasons, the main one being that I need the money. And it’s not what I want, going forward, even if non-goal oriented trail riding is all that’s in our future.

While I market my saddle (to help pay for those vet bills!) I’ve returned to my trusty Skito bareback pad. Ironically I am much more comfortable on the bareback pad than in my dressage saddle for long walks. Since my own accident my conformation in my hip seems to have changed such that the dressage saddle really pains me. We’ve been back out around the fields near our barn and Deli seemed happy about that – even asking to trot in the places we have been trotting for conditioning. The footing is still pretty terrible around the fields and I’m not that inclined to tackle it while bareback.

I have mentioned my horse is wide, right?

 My main worry right now is the management nightmare this is going to be. Deli needs movement. Lots of movement. She’d probably do better in a much bigger area than she has now (which is about 1.5 acre pasture without much grass this time of year). She also can’t be in mud past her heels due to issues with skin infections which will only be more serious now that she has lymphangitis. 

Ideally she needs 2x a day supplements fed to her (which the current barn won’t do) so I don’t need to drive out daily to ensure she gets her medications when she needs them. Since she is likely pre-cushings, her being on grass may become problematic sometime in the future. So far she seems okay in that respect, but I have to admit the grass this year was minimal compared to a normal Portland spring and summer. She has always done great on pasture in the past and I’ll likely have to juggle the grass issue with exercise issue. The more safe space she has to move and the more movement she is actually getting, the less grass is going to be an issue (probably). Otherwise, how is she going to have all the space she needs while ALSO being on a dry lot (ideally with slow feeders giving her forage access 24/7)?!

Add to those management considerations her insect allergy, her need to have a fly mask put on and taken off, and her need to have certain fly sprays applied but not others (because she's allergic to some fly sprays, too). Oh, and her social needs which always have to be balanced with the fact that she gets harassed and badly injured so easily when put in with poorly socialized equines. She’s in with two bossy brat mares right now and has never had a mark on her from them – but they are also well socialized. Boarding barns have never cared much about such things from my experience and it’s always me that ends up with the bleeding broken pony and the vet bills to boot.

I feel like I could deal with a lot of these things much more easily if she were on my own property. That has always been the dream, anyway. But life and my career are not working out even remotely as planned (so far) and I’m currently in a limbo that does not give me the option of having my own place. I also dislike driving to the barn so it’s not just a desire to work out the management issues myself that makes me want my own horse place. I’d rather commute to work than drive to the barn.

Another thing I’ve run into many times at many boarding barns is that management knows much less about horse care than I do. Multiple places feed poor quality hay or don’t feed enough of it (one place refused to feed a horse more than 10lbs of poor quality hay a day – when board was upwards of $500!). It seems to be the rule rather than the exception that herd turnout and/or pastures are managed very poorly. Overcrowding is very common as well and the land is usually destroyed and knee deep mud by the time the rains come around.

This new hitch in our plans means I am discarding plans altogether that this point. Screw you, plans. The ever-increasing problems of horse-management considerations for my Deli-pony have left me discouraged and looking for solutions I’m not sure exist. At least not where I currently live where boarding seems to be very poor quality for what is paid and the economy is very bad in comparison to the rest of the United States.

I just have to work on that moving forward thing – it’s the best thing for all of us. Even FatLeg.

Next time: Don't sweat the small stuff...

June 2015: Deli’s health and conditioning update.

Some signs have been alerting me to the possibility Deli has something hormonal going on – the unusual fat deposits, a change to her heats where she is even lazier than normal, and being slow(er) to shed out this spring. She could be experiencing early signs of cushings (an equine disease of the pituitary) or have something going on related to her reproductive organs. Or it could be a hormonal issue related to her metabolism (like insulin resistance or equine metabolic syndrome).  Several of these conditions are inter-related. It could also be something else entirely. She has always carried fat in certain places without a hint of metabolic issues. She does not seem to have one of the first signs of cushings: excessive thirst and urination (though she is pastured, so it’s hard to follow those things) and the pot-bellied appearance without being able to gain weight. She is shiny and has energy and her feet are in good shape – especially now that it is reliably dry.

I’ve put her on chaste-tree berry because that herb has good properties of balancing hormones and is often used for horses leaning toward cushings syndrome. I’ve also put her on a liver cleanser at my horse masseuse’s recommendation. Luckily none of these things are on the AERC banned substance list. We have also switched her and her pasture mate (who is also a fatty) to a lower-quality hay.

If I don’t see some changes within the next two months I’ll be having the vet out to test for cushings and do a metabolic/hormonal panel on Deli. Cushings in particular is an “old horse” disease and can be managed various ways. Obviously, I’d rather something less serious is going on but I’ve slowly learned to take things as they come with this horse.

Sometimes I wonder if Deli is having a sympathy-pregnancy/foal. We just had a foal born on the property and Deli is oddly interested in it when she has never given foals a second look before.  And the day after the filly was born her udder puffed up slightly. I mean, it could have also been a fly bite to her udder but… it is kind of suspicious, isn’t it?

If she does have cushings it is still in the very early stages and I have a viable plan.

 

Overall Deli has been doing really well, I think. Up until this week, where I have been sick with the flu and not riding her at all, she has been getting regular conditioning. I worry that we should be doing MORE and that I’m asking for too much at the same time. But she seems unaffected by the mileage increase in a bad way. She LOOKS more fit, she has more energy. She’s still a lazy pony in many respects (she says: I conserve energy for when it's IMPORTANT, human!), but she certainly prefers hitting the trails to anything else we could be doing. She can walk all day. If we had better footing to contend with I bet she could trot a lot of it too. The fact that the last time we went out to ride 10 miles she offered to canter up a hill shows she’s more game than ever.

Deli’s skin is doing really well too – I’ve figured out supplements that seem to help her hot-spot flare ups from insects. When she does have a flare up I have developed a system of topical applications that calm down the inflammation. This includes some of the previously mentioned creams/medicines (T-ZON, Tricare, my coconut oil concoction) and now just plain old aloe vera gel. Aloe is just another one of those things that I should have everywhere as it is absolutely essential for my OWN skin care (having red-dead skin, I burn TOO easily). It’s just another Deli-maintenance thing I needed to figure out and keep on top of!

My saddle-future is still up in the air. I AM getting a demo saddle in early July and have saddles I might be able to borrow from folks within the lovely endurance community. Still, I can’t afford to get a new saddle right now unless I am able to sell my current dressage saddle and use that money to get something new. There is still part of me flinching at the idea of making another huge investment when I don’t know if Deli is going to be able to (or want to) to the kind of miles that will make her a successful LD horse. Of course, to most endurance riders LDs are just the easy stuff. Not “real endurance” and pretty insignificant when it comes to distance riding.

It’s still a huge hurdle for Deli. And having her complete an LD in good shape is a huge hurdle for me, too.

I can see myself doing LDs easily. My fitness level is the best it has been in YEARS. I'm not saying I'm the most fit person out there, but I'm on the right path and I intend to stick with it. I am also the lightest, weight wise, that I have been since I was hit by a car and forced into a sedentary lifestyle by injuries in 2009. That feels great, too, though I am still not done with that journey either.

As long as I watch out for heat stroke and dehydration being on a horse for 6+ hours just sounds fun. (The heat stroke and dehydration is a big deal, but it’s also another management problem and not a deal-breaker.)

I am committed to going to the Bandit Springs ride with Deli in mid-July now. I haven’t yet committed to the idea of doing an LD, but it is a possibility. If something doesn’t feel quite right (or it’s in the 90s that weekend), I can opt to do another intro ride. I hear the trails are beautiful there and I don’t want to miss it either way!

My friend from the East coast riding the piggy pony in May.

I’ll have a demo saddle at the time, so I could possibly use that for the ride. I don’t know that it’s going to be a great fit though (it IS just a demo) so it will really depend on Deli’s opinion of the whole thing.

At least there is forward momentum of some kind in horse-life even when most everything else in my life is stagnant right now. Deli, as always, is a bright point. 

She may be a "cupcake" horse (a term I've heard endurance riders use to refer to their accident prone "special" horses), but she is my soul-horse. After all, I'm kind of a "cupcake" human in the same sense. 

We are probably too alike, Deli and I. 

(Except she's the looker.)

Klickitat Trek – Part 2

This post is all about our “test” of other things that pertain to going down the trail with a healthy mind and body. And my long-winded thoughts, of course.

Tack – pads, saddle, and boots (oh my)

My current tack setup seemed to work fairly well. Deli’s back felt great after the ride and stayed in good shape in the following days. There is still some backwards-forwards sliding of my saddle so I have endeavored to tighten my crupper another hole. It really needs to be tight with this saddle, but so far that doesn’t seem to bother Deli. I’ve been smoothing coconut oil her tail and working it into her tail-hair roots after rides to keep the area happy.

Deli loves my new pad – the ThinLine Endurance Sheepskin pad – that I got for my birthday. It’s sad how quickly the sheepskin gets dirty, though, and ThinLine recommends I don’t wash the pad more than 3 times in its 10 year lifespan. Yikes! I did (and continue to have) issues with the pad sliding back which I’m not sure how to fix. Perhaps sewing billet keepers onto the pad is something I should look into doing.

More like "A+"...

My saddle is still painful for me to ride the miles with, but doing more trotting at the Klickitat Intro Ride confirmed that trotting is far more comfortable for my various bits than long hours of walking. The trotting issue shouldn’t be a problem when it comes to endurance competition…

Speaking of hoof boots, her boots stayed on and worked well for the entire ride. But I was foolish and agreed with my trimmer to get a smaller size Easyboot Glove than I thought would work. I got them on, But Deli’s wide heel bulbs and heels and general made it way more of a PIA than I ever want to struggle with. I went back the Renegades I’ve been using on her hind feet on a trail ride yesterday and I think for the time being (until I can afford another set of Gloves – anyone want to buy the basically new 0.5 wides with powerstraps I was convinced to purchase?). I’ve been using the Gloves on her fronts successfully for YEARS, but have never been quite satisfied by any boot on her hind feet, which are more irregularly shaped and have that fat fetlock scar on her right-hind to contend with.

Vetting in – before and after our intro trail ride

The front of our ride card.

Dr. Foss was the ride vet who checked Deli in and out and he had some valuable comments for us. Our starting evaluation she wasn’t as forward for our trot out, which is easily explained to the somewhat rocky area to trot on and Deli freshly trimmed feet. She’s always very careful about stepping on rocks and it seemed like that was the case here. The weird weather we have been having seems to have made Deli’s soles more sensitive than usual anyway – but since I boot her for pretty much all of my trail riding and she moves out comfortably with them on, I wasn’t too worried. Once it dries out more and stops being hot AND wet, her feet will be more comfortable.

And the back of the ride card.

 I’m sure many other Western Oregon/Washington folks can agree that standing on damp soil all day long is never the best thing for horse feet. I like the rain and the cool weather, but it’s not a natural condition for our horse beasties.  

With her boots on Deli trotted off for our final vet check big and sassy. 

The A- in attitude at our vet-in is related to her not being super forward on our trot out and her fussing some for having her capillary refill checked. We have been working on THAT quite a bit at home and she is loads better. As in, he was actually ABLE to check it this time unlike the vet-in at our Grizzly Intro ride.

At our finish, I did ask the vet what he thought about her ability to do a slow LD since we were the only ones there at that time. He asked some questions about my pacing for this intro ride, how stressed she seemed, and our normal “conditioning” regime. He concluded that he thought she could do a slow LD and recommended I work a little bit to increase her cardiovascular fitness in the meantime if I was worried. As it relates to that the vet said our mostly-walking trail rides at home did seem to be getting her in decent shape muscle-wise, and her heart-rate was in a good place for having trotted into the vet check, but that some added cardio work would make an LD less tiring for her (probably).

He also commented that she was a bit chubby, but that I probably knew that. Yessier, yessir I do. Both Deli and her pasture mate are on a sort of-diet. Their hay ration was decreased and they are eating down what they have in their small grass pasture area.

Deli's favorite thing is eating...
which I hear is good for an endurance horse.

As for the “B” on gut sounds coming in, the vet said not to worry about it unless she SEEMED off. He added that many horses have “Bs” on their gut sounds coming in from the first loop – which is essentially what we were doing. My endurance mentors concurred with that statement and Deli immediately began attacking both food and water at our return to camp.

The vet also stated with respect to us TRYING an LD: you won’t know until you try.

I’ve heard that quite a few times from people that have been in this sport for a long time.

Deli’s skin issues and allergies

A couple days after the ride Deli had another flare-up of her dermatitis in her chest and between her front legs. All the classic signs: inflamed skin leading to skin peeling and sometimes-scabbiness. I treated it with my normal methods which have seemed to work so far, including skin soothing shampoo, antihistamines, and one of several various topicals I use. So far there has been no infection or hair loss, which is what I battled with all last summer. The inclusion of chamomile and spirulena into her diet have seemed to help with her recovery time, as have some other supplements like apple cider vinegar and MSM.

I do have some concern about her skin flare-ups making this sport impossible. I don’t like riding her when she’s having a flare-up (because her skin hurts, obviously), and they are unpredictable. I have started riding her when she is recovering from a flare-up without ill effect so far, which is helped by none of the typical inflamed zones interfere with tack.

The skin issue is another thing that I won’t “know until I try” whether it will keep us from competition. Oral antihistamines that have been helping the severity of the dermatitis cannot be used at an endurance ride so she couldn’t be on that medication before or during any LD. She’s not on them all the time – I just give her a round when she has a flare up.

Insect bites and activity still seem to be the root cause of flare ups, so I’ve been religious with fly spray as well. But it only does so much! This year, given our warm weather over the winter, the flies and insects are particularly bad. Bring on the barn swallows, I say!

Thoughts on our next steps…

I am a bit wary just given Deli’s history of injury and her allergies, but I think the vet and my mentors are right… I won’t know if we can do an LD until we try. And this is the first summer in a long time we have actually been able to do meaningful conditioning and rides. I evened out her one-sidedness in a big way (she still clearly has a weaker side that is weaker than what I've felt in her in the past, so this is ongoing) over the rainy months and now my focus needs to be on MILES.

The trails at my home barn are somewhat limited, but I can access a few nice trails if I suck it up and ride up a road. Apparently I have PTSD when it comes to cars and I battle anxiety when it comes to riding among traffic despite Deli being a champ around moving vehicles of all sorts.

No REAL surprise there, since a lot of my own health issues stem from being HIT by a car while riding my bike. 

The best horse ever, but I'm biased. Deli prefers grass to stupid humans.

On the third day after the Klickitat Intro ride I took Deli out to see what we could see. The beginning of the ride it poured and so we stayed off a lot of the slicker trails. We were able to find some nice access that, if I’m creative, should provide the miles we need to increase Deli’s cardiovascular fitness though steep climbs (to walk up) and a few places we can move out. We still have the problem of not having long tracks to trot on, but I’m hoping as long as we can do the miles and trot where we can, a slow LD will still not be a stretch. During this ride I also trotted her on part of the road, having padded her front boots. That actually worked out rather well.

So the very tentative plan is to take her out on long trail rides at least 2x a week and ride a faster shorter ride at least 1x a week. Given my unpredictable work (and need to take on any work I’m offered) I hope we can still manage this. I’ve decided for both our sakes that we will only ride up the road when we can plan our rides in the middle of the day. All the crazy and dangerous drivers seem to come out near commute times and that’s just too stressful for me.

I even took some short video of our 9 mile trail ride on a rainy day this past week. Deli felt good and raring to go, which was great to feel after working her harder than she has done for quite some time at Klickitat.

Here’s the video:

Yesterday, finding myself more limited on time, I opted for a shorter but much faster ride. I tried to see what kind of pace I could manage in the loops around the fields across the street from my boarding barn. We were able to keep a pace of 5.2mph over our period of 3.5 miles of “work”, allowing for a much slower combined warm-up and cool-off where we walked through the more suburban neighborhood back to the barn that totaled 1.4 miles altogether. It was a hotHOT day and Deli got quite sweaty, but she felt good and happy to move out where the footing was okay.

I’m not going to make definite plans, because if I do Deli (or me) will get hurt. That’s just the way it works in Red Mare land. (But I’m thinking we might try for our first LD in early July if everything is going well.)  

We won’t know until we try…

Last time: Klickitat Trek Intro Ride - Part 1 (wherin I talk about the trails and horse camping).