Halloween Throwback: A photo essay

Picture, if you will, a decade younger me. It was 2008. I was living in Florida, recently married, just out of grad school, looking for a job, and spending time with my friend Cheri.

She had four horses, Stella, Blanche, Gwyn and Nyx at her house. We had met through the equestrian group on Livejournal (remember that?) and hit it off immediately. Her husband was a NASA engineer, mine was a NASA engineer. We were both flighty, horse obsessed and despite the fact that she is literally old enough to be my mother (her daughter and I are the same age) we were best friends and still are to this day. We had a standing TV and dinner night together at their house every week to watch House and Lie to Me and we played Dungeons and Dragons on the weekends. She and I would ride together at night because that's when it wasn't ridiculously hot and we lived for the full moon nights to ride through the lovely scented orange groves. I would ride Stella and she would ride Blanche, and eventually we'd pony the babies (Gwyn and Nyx) during the rides too.

Life was fantastic.

Below  this cut is lots of medical talk, euthanasia and very very graphic images

Actually: VERY GRAPHIC IMAGES BEHIND THIS CUT.

I don't want anyone to be taken by surprise.

May 27 ride 3.95 miles

I had a good ride on Wednesday. I wanted to get pictures of Gwyn's eyes to track the redness and see if anything that I'm doing is helping her out. 

The snakebite side. Still red, but it actually is not as bad. Every time I go out I've been using artificial tears in her eyes and she's wearing a fly mask now to go out. Hopefully that will keep damage to a minimum. When I have her at home the eye drops will be an every day occurrence prior to turnout. 

You can see in comparison to the two photos that she has drooping of the lid compared to the non-damaged side. 

Noms during the ride

She was a bit of a goosy girl on this ride. I worked on listening to steering, especially when we are traveling toward the barn and then turn away from the barn, especially at a canter. She was finally getting it on our third attempt. I really want to get out to a cross country course to evaluate away from 'home' to see if this problem still exists but it's still an issue. Correctable, but can't continue. Also frustrating that aside from consistency I don't see any quick fixes. I do welcome advice. Usually if she starts getting stubborn I'll do a quick one rein stop and then turn in the direction I originally intended and carry on. If I try a circle and she starts ignoring me we'll keep circling until she's soft and listening.

She also, in a fight with steering almost fell into one of the ditches between the hay fields and corrected at the last minute. I decided to send her through the ditch once my heart beat calmed down and she crossed it really well! I was actually a bit surprised. No hesitation and no crazy leaping. 

2.07 miles! And some videos

I was feeling under the weather today so I decided to keep the ride simple. We just walked, but we worked on seat aids and contact in the bridle. Also steering. We worked on lots of steering out in the hay field since Gwyn likes to turn for home randomly.  I worked on sitting evenly in the saddle and also worked on really having a strong right leg when I didn't want her to turn right. 

Testing out a temporary fly mask until I can order a fancy-schmancy $100 one that blocks a ton of UV light.

The affected eye. Her lower lid should curve up and not expose as much of the sclera. You can also see the old scar on the eye itself in this photo.

The one drawback.... a top line of barb wire on this defunct fenceline between hay fields.

The awful phase where she readjusts to being barefoot after having shoes. The toe is actually breaking to a nice shape, it just looks TERRIBLE. I've been rasping it to try and control the breakage and keep it to a minimum.

I took a video today of Gwyn

And some over the ears video so you can see where I ride right now!

4.22 miles under an hour!

Today was a chilly day. It never really got above the mid 50s. Thank goodness I had a jacket in my car....  All of the horses were staying in because the vet was coming today so I made sure to lunge Gwyn first.

Working well....

Weeeee!

Working well again

I wanted to get back out into the fields again and leave the ring work be for now. I'll be a bit more restricted to ring work once we move so I don't want to sour Gwyn on it. My goal was to push myself physically and try and get in more miles in the same amount of time. This means more trotting and cantering and hitting the perimeter of each field at least twice.

Gwyn was pretty good. I'm also noticing an improvement in myself, which is encouraging with all the exercise I've been doing out of the saddle. My focus in the canter work was to make sure I could rate her back with half halts from the seat and have less a hand gallop and more of a true canter. It worked today!  We only had a couple minor spooks and nothing I fell off due to. 

I've noticed I'm way weaker on my right side and I tend to sit more heavily on my left foot. This needs to change for Gwyn's sake as well as for mine. 

It was a pleasant day.

When I got back Gwyn was hardly sweating and the vet had finally arrived. She was going to be working on a lot of horses so I went and picked up Kaylee from school, grabbed her jacket and some lunch, gas for the car, and headed back to the barn with the toddler in tow.

Gwyn greets Kaylee

I had the vet give Gwyn her spring shots, specifically Potomac Horse Fever and rabies. We discussed Gwyn's ever present red eye and she proposed an interesting cause. Long ago Gwyn was bitten by a rattle snake and while there was no noticeable long term internal damage that I could ever determine, it seems like the nerves that control her eye lid were negatively affected. Her lower lid droops and doesn't keep the eye properly covered. The upper eye lid cannot close fully and her blinks are odd. The vet even demonstrated for me and sure enough, I can't believe I didn't see it before.

The solution at this point is to give her some artificial tears and see how that changes things. It may be what she needs! I'm also going to be getting a super fancy fly mask for turnout that has 95% UV blockage. I hope those things can provide some relief. I'm so paranoid about uveitis with her being part appaloosa that I really want her eyes to be in the best health they can be. 

Kaylee watches the vet tech clean the dental tools.

Then we went outside to put Gwyn away and explored the birds nest in the arena. Hurray for science!