Journey to Gotland

Facebook posted this throwback photo from my timeline two years ago:

My response was this: "Just had a wonderful time with her today. As I approached with her bridle, she gaped her mouth open big enough for a grapefruit. When I wasn't fast enough, she made a nipping motion at me and opened her mouth again. She nosedives into her breast collar and tries to get her butt lined up for the shafts. It's so fun when they like their work." and I posted this picture that I took with my IpodTouch:

Pepper, asleep at the trailer. Probably not really asleep, but relaxed. I realized how far we'd come in two years.

It has been a long story of trying to unravel the problems. The disaster of just hooking her and trying to drive her and not being able to turn until we were scrunched up against Terri's new truck and she was rearing.

Training that didn't produce results, just morphed the problem into something else.

Vet visits with expensive x-rays and joint injections that only produced the results of a spunky horse that has been rested and now you can't see the lameness until day two.

Shoeing for foot soreness. It didn't work.

The acupuncturist who couldn't find anything to treat and thought maybe a chiropractic problem in the lower cervical upper thoracic where she couldn't be adjusted and the recommended conditioning that she couldn't do without being beaten, and the recommendation to give her a handful of Tums every day in case she has ulcers.

The follow up on the ulcer hunch that found hindgut ulcers that the Tums wouldn't have helped. Long term treatment for that Showed improvement.

Some practice in a pair with Yndi and she couldn't settle. Working her single, I figured out, with the help of Francois, that the breeching was bothering her. We have been working on that. We are also doing some easy conditioning work around the ranch.

Her coat has improved, her mane and tail are growing better and bushier, her hooves are growing. Her posture has changed. Repeat that again because it shows in this picture, and I'll take a new one today.

HER POSTURE HAS CHANGED. She is not longer downhill from croup to wither. She isn't hunched in her shoulders. The two year old picture shows how wide she stands in her elbows and the her chest is flat. A muscled chest would show an upside down V, but hers was wide and flat.

Now I can see, in the old picture, that she wasn't really present in her body. Today, she stands with her elbows closer to her body. Her chest appears narrower, but it also appears normal.

The chiropractor suspects a fall that injured her sacroiliac, most likely in the hills of Kentucky unknown to any but her and the other ponies. I also suspect that she fell in the trailer while remaining tied by her head. She came out of the trailer in such bad shape. It was a 2400 mile trip and she did not fare well.

It has been a long two years, and I almost gave up, but now I have a brave and loving Gotland mare and it was worth it.