Equestrianitis

Calm down!!! It’s not a rare not disease! 

Equestrianitis is something all horse owners, horse lovers and horse riders suffer; its main symptoms are; spending every spare second at the yard, smelling of horse piss and talking about horses, with great affection and expression! 

My symptoms on a scale of one to ten this weekend is a strong ten. 

Bless the pregnant/not pregnant Porky, she is once again insisting she is most definitely pregnant, despite the fact that on both her seventeen and twenty-one day scans no embryo was found and a 120 day urine test came back negative. Now – due to showing some alarmingly accurate signs – the time has come to give in and get her scanned…again! Some may see her rather large tummy as her usual appearance (how dare they!!! She’s a svelte sex-bomb…in my rose-tinted opinion), however, I’ve been her mother for thirteen years and, although she’s been prone to throwing a good phantom a few times a year, this time is different. She can’t fake her relaxed attitude towards other horses when she normally would strike out and attempt to savage them, she can’t fake her change in temperature, she can’t change her bedroom habits for no reason – I could quite literally map the dirtying of her stable, it’s always been the same and she can’t change the shape of her belly from day to day. 

Taken yesterday…the ‘belly’ was more prominent to the left previous day

So that’s one half (or more likely three quarters) of my weekend. The remaining was spent on the baby…Tonto the four year old failed racer.  

I (somewhat) promised myself I wouldn’t fall for him, FAIL! I’ve never met such a loving gelding, he is more like a massive – and strong – dog. He is 100% a people’s horse, horses don’t really bother him all that much. He is Mr. Independent and Mr. In-his-own-world. With this wonderful attitude in mind I decided this weekend would be time to bring him back into work. Organised as I am, I put aside Friday afternoon after my doctors visit to get him tidied up and ready to start up again on Saturday…no such luck…

On walking up to the field to get him I noticed the standard slow walk and head lift of a horse with an abscess. Poor sausage! So in he came for a pick out, a hibiscrub wash off and a hoof tester session – nothing! No reaction, no soft pocket, no localised heat, nothing, nada, zilch. Having had many a thoroughbred in my time of horse ownership I made the executive decision to drug him to comfort, keep him on dry ground for the night (in Porky’s bedroom!!! She was not impressed!!!) and re-review it the next day. 

Sunday morning arrived and I leapt out of bed to go and see how he was…and if the stable was still in one piece – he hasn’t had much stable practice. The walk and trot-up was carried out and, thankfully, he was sound in the walk. He was slightly off in the trot but nothing that wouldn’t ease off in the next twenty-four hours…if it followed the same recovery rate as the walk. Making a call on these things can be extremely difficult, especially when the horse is a recent addition to the family but, thanks to the previous TB’s I’ve been lucky enough to call my own, I feel confident in the choices I make when it comes to their care and wellbeing. Hopefully next week will be an irritating amount of photos of him back in work! 

So that my dear readers is the full compliment of my weekend symptoms of Equestrianitis…I do love a diagnosis! 

Ta ta for now

Much love! 

JSx