New Barn #2!!

So it was time to move the Sammy-monster again. I went around looking and found the perfect place. My lesson teacher would come there, the grounds were clean and beautiful, and, best of all, the roundbales were clean and dust/mold free. Not only that, but they didn't use roundbale feeders, so the hay would easily get spread out and the horses wouldn't be burying their faces in the holes. So Sammy could stay in the herd all year round and no worries about heaves.

The new barn was a lot smaller, only on 20 acres. Very few boarders=very little barn drama=perfect!! The facility was older, but very clean, with super safe fencing, and nice sandy soil. No mud anywhere to be found. The outdoor arena was the perfect size, and the indoor was well maintained. So very nice.

The New Barn Owner and her SO came to load Sammy, and I was bit leery. After all, our last attempt to load him didn't go so well. I put shipping boots on him and got him set to meet his new caretakers. They greeted him enthusiastically, and we headed into the chilly December morning over to the waiting horse trailer. They led him onto the trailer quite easily, but he quickly shot back out. In, out, in again. Then they led him on and backed him off quickly before it was his idea to leave. And then we couldn't.get.him.on.the.trailer.again. Not for two hours.

 

Thankfully, the New Barn Owner was ridiculously patient and wanted to make it a good hauling experience for him.  So she took her time, and finally he was standing calmly in the slant, not flipping out or anything.  It took two and a half hours in the freezing cold, but it was so worth it.

 

We got him to the new place and unloaded him.  He took everything in and seemed much calmer than I would have expected.  This is the beautiful driveway that pretty much sold me on the place right away. 

The new indoor arena

The roundpen, where he was quarantined for 2 weeks



 

The pasture side of the barn as seen from the roundpen

The gelding pasture where Sammy is now

Sammy's new stall

Sammy's stall on the inside, complete with welcoming hay :)

The outdoor

 

The driveway from the barn looking down toward the road



 

Heavey horse? That's heavy, man

Now I should probably go back to an episode Sammy had that summer in the paddock.  I came out one day to hear him coughing and groaning, really breathing hard and just looking miserable.  I called the vet out and of course in the lapse of time, he had recovered.  It was determined that he probably had encountered some dusty hay and had a tiny heave-like episode.  Of course, by the time Dr. Frederickson got there, he was completely normal.  Of course he was!

So we got back from England, and he had been on the questionable roundbales for a couple of weeks.  He was now so bad that putting a saddle on and girthing it up caused him to drop his head to the floor and groan and cough.  It was heartbreaking. 

So I called my good buddy, the vet, out again.  She listened to his lungs and yes ma'am, he has heaves.  He had fluid in all four quadrants of his lungs.  The prescription, get him off the roundbales.  Great!  Going into winter and no roundbales.  What to do?

We put him on a course of Dex and Aeropulmin, a brochodilator syrup to knock out the inflammation.  He went back into a paddock.  And this time, rather than take a chance on bad hay again, we bought Chaffhaye, a haylage product in a bag.  We had to drive a few hours to pick the stuff up, but we bought a whole truckload.  We had to rent a trailer to bring it back on.  He went through a 50lb bag every 3 days.

It was one of the coldest winters we had seen in years and years.  I was used to Sammy being able to graze at will and stuff himself with hay as needed.  Having him on a strict diet, which I was totally controlling, he quickly began to lose weight, as seen in that second picture above.  During this time, the hubby was laid off and unable to find a job.  He went up to the barn every 3 days to weigh out and mix Chaffhaye and supplements in a bag to totally idiot-proof Sammy's feedings.  Even so, there were times he was missed.  By the end of May, he looked pretty rough.  We put him back out in the pasture, only have to pull him out again in July, since there was no rain and the grass wasn't growing.  They had to put out roundbales again.

Going into his second winter in a paddock with no shelter, and up to his fetlocks in mud in the spring, I knew we had to make a change.  Sammy was depressed alone in the paddock.  I wanted to find a plac where he could be a part of the herd year-round.

Time to move again.  After nine years at this barn, it wasn't easy to tell Barn Owner I was moving.  She took it hard, but I was relieved to find the new place and know it was totally willing to care for special needs horses.

And oh boy, is Sammy special needs, let me tell you!

The Lameness Chronicles--Part 2

So here we are, all the way up to Fall 2007.  Wow, getting caught up to the present now. 

Sammy was all better from the abscess.  Going just great.  Then, about October of 2007, I noticed it again.  At first, it was only because my posting felt off, just a slight "swing".  But the swing progressed to a faint head nod.  I talked to the farrier, I talked to the vet.  The concensus was that it was likely a pulled muscle.  I gave him a few months of just being in the pasture, no work really.  I would just pull him out and longe him to see if the head nod was still there.  Yup, still there.  So many people would tell me I was seeing things, it was so slight.  As he would work longer, though, it would become more evident.

Finally, in February, it became obvious that it wasn't going away.  We made an appointment to haul Sammy to Anoka Equine again, but this time, the Barn Owner didn't have a trailer we could borrow anymore.  We had to rent a two horse straight load, which was nice, new and roomy.  We spent all morning and all afternoon trying to load Sammy into that trailer, and it was a complete no-go.  He could stand with 2 feet in the trailer and still reach me at the front, so he didn't need to get in the trailer all the way.  He knew as soon as he got in, we were going to slam the door on him and go.  Finally, I was convinced it wasn't going to happen.  So I called Anoka Equine and cancelled the appointment.

The next course of action would be to find a vet who had a portable XRay and could bring the testing equipment out to Sammy, since I couldn't get Sammy to the equipment.  Enter then Dr. Voigt (now Dr. Fredrickson) with Sunrise Equine.  She was so patient with Sammy, putting up with all his weird quirks.  She nerve blocked him, and he went sound off the heel.  Great, it's in the hoof again.  She set up the XRays, fearing navicular, founder, or arthritis.  The XRays were clear.  Stumped, the only thing she could think it might be was a strained impar ligament, possibly from slipping in the October mud on the steep hill in his pasture.  The prescription was stall rest and lots of handwalking on the straight, no turning to the left to avoid torquing that left front. 

Of course, Sammy, being the ADD poster child, was not going to survive stall rest, so we had to build a paddock behind the barn for him.  It was about 24'x24', not quite enough room for him to get running around.  It only took a few days for him to settle.  We gave him a giant bucket for water and another for hay.  It looked like a potentially great weightloss plan as well, let's face it, Sammy was fat from all that pasture grass.


Here is fat Sammy.

So the paddock rest and weightloss program began in about March 2008.  Here he is in his paddock behind the horse trailers for a windblock.

And then began the loss of his topline.

And here we are handwalking, once he had been in the paddock a few months and the vet had ok'd the use of ground poles to try and improve the fading topline.

After about 5 months, he trotted sound on the longe.  I started him back under saddle in mid August.  He was obviously very weak at first.  Watching him shuffle along on the longe at first, his bones all looked like they were rattling together.  He was so out of condition.  My new lesson teacher was amazing though, and gave us lots of good, low key things to work on.

By October, he was sound and his strength was built up enough to turn him back out in the pasture.  So we turned him out and went to England for two weeks.  We came back to a terrible coughing and groaning horse. 

Enter the heaves!