Fixer-Upper

Phew... it feels good to have things that desperately needed to be addressed actually get addressed, doesn't it? After waiting on the dentist's backed up new client list for over three weeks, Pangea was finally able to be seen and worked on. It was worth the wait... and worth the mucho $$$$$$$ that it cost!

As a horse owner and professional, I would say I know a fair bit more than your average horse owner about dentistry. With a brief refresher, I could name every tooth in a horse's mouth by number and quadrant. I can recognize pathologies visually from the outside as well as the inside of a horse's mouth, I can evaluate my dentist for exactly the things that I want to have worked on, and I can tell whether or not I've been duped by someone who is floating my horse's teeth. Everything my dentist had to say about my horse's mouth and issues aligned exactly with what I expected to hear, and the way she handled her speculum and tools made me very happy. She only opened the speculum for as long as she needed to to get in and out for each particular part of the adjustment, and then she shut it and let Pangea's TMJ relax. (If your dentist makes your horse sit with a fully opened speculum in her mouth for any lengthy period of time, run away and get a new dentist!!) She also worked for part of the time while kneeling, which was great for Pangea as she didn't have to crank her head up to the ceiling and stress out her already unhappy TMJ and atlas/axis. She did, unfortunately, have to be sedated THREE times during the procedure... she kept waking up! (Just like her daddy, that one... we had to cocktail the crap out of him repeatedly during every procedure we ever had to do with him. Gogo, on the other hand, was a classic lightweight and would be swaying on her feet with less than a quarter of the drugs needed to quiet horses twice her size. Cheap date.)

Pangea had some pretty obvious TMJ issues going on, which I suspected and discussed in my dental post a few weeks ago. Her left temporalis muscle - the big lumpy one - corresponded to the fact that she had actually been floated sometime in the recent past... but the whackadoo that did her left her entire right molar arcade completely out of occlusion save for one single molar in the back of her mouth that was eternally too high and damaging the opposing lower molar! She was working overtime to make the rest of those teeth touch, and she couldn't. The left side of her mouth had just enough occlusion and sharp points on the edges of her molars that pieces of her cheek were slipping inbetween them and getting torn up pretty badly. (Hmm, wonder why she was having trouble with left bend.) Her incisors, unlike her over-floated molars, were at far too steep of an angle and had been completely untouched by the previous dentist. When chewing, she had no free-floating motion of her mandible (which they need for oral health), so her incisors were receiving uneven wear and actually had something of a ventral smile to them. No bueno!



Drugged and standing quietly with a closed speculum.... no unnecessary cranking open here!



Molar adjustments. Taking away the sharp hooks and working out two molars that were totally missed by the last guy and were standing WAY too tall compared to all her other teeth!



Incisor adjustment.



She is chewing SO much better now!

Unfortunately, I have not been back on her to see how she feels under saddle. The weather has completely failed me in the fact that it suddenly out of nowhere became 100F every day with unusually blazing humidity, and Pangea is suffering for it. She is lathered in sweat every day when I go out to see her, and she is losing weight. We've also had several huge rainstorms offset by some desperately dry weather, and her feet are struggling to keep up with the changes. She is exceedingly footsore on any type of terrain that isn't her paddock (nice sandy loam), and it is to the point that it is negatively affecting her body. On top of all of that, she needs another chiro adjustment - due to the amount of dental work she needed, her entire body is back out of whack again. We're basically at a standstill until we get readjusted and help her feet out. I have a little something up my sleeve for her which I will wait to discuss until we get to try it out, but I'm hoping that with a little bit of time off and some general light maintenance and fixing-up, we can get over this little blip in the road and continue on. Everything had been pretty upwards until now, so I think it will only be a short matter of time until things are back to running smoothly again.

This heat sucks!!

Despooking and the Chiro Man

I've been a bad blogger this week because I've been out having too much fun with my horse and not enough time sitting behind a computer! You would too if you were enjoying the magnificent Texas springtime... I'm enjoying it while I can before summer comes and we all retreat to our air-conditioned buildings!


Last weekend our facility hosted a despook clinic and subsequent playday for those people wanting to go through our obstacle course on a timed and judged basis. This is the ultimate terrifying insanely crazy hard 4-acre obstacle course:



A few of the obstacles included: flapping tarps hanging from the side of the shed that you had to walk through, a carwash made of construction tape, flapping flags, a waterbox with neon colored floating balls in it, a teeter totter, boxes you had to get up and off of, tires you had to negotiate, a squeeze chute made of upright tarps that had pieces of hose scattered on the ground as footing, things tied to ropes that you had to drag, a carwash made of pool noodles, a bump gate that your horse had to push through, another push-through made of pool noodles, pinwheels, and a whole lot more. During the clinic, they even set off firecrackers and smoke bombs as part of the despooking process! (Don't worry, everyone did great!)

I brought Pangea over to check out the course on Sunday evening, and finally as the sun was setting, we had our chance to get on the course and see what she'd make of it. I didn't bother running it with the other folks in a timed way, just in case something freaked her out and she tried to kill me. (I truthfully had NO IDEA what she was going to do when she saw everything!) She gave me a nice prelude when I walked her up to the gigantic ball that was used during the clinic, and she didn't even bother to sniff it because it was so boring:



Once on the course, she did AMAZING. AMAAAAAAZING. Flags smacking her in the face in the strong winds? No big deal. Tarps flapping on her head? Whatever. Teeter-totter bridge... at a trot? Psh, I've seen scarier. Squeeze chute made of tarps that was touching her on both sides? That's cool. Pool noodle bump gate and carwash? I'll halt and stand immobile so you can snap a picture for all your friends to see:





What is the ONE thing she WOULD NOT under ANY circumstances do?

The water. The most benign thing out there. Of course. Wade through a 4' river the weekend before? Piece of cake! Puddle of muddy water in a small box? LAKE LOCH NESS. Won't go near it.

The ONE thing I was sure she wouldn't give a dang about... and she would. Not. Do it.
We tried until it was dark, to no avail. She just said no, and I didn't have enough time or light to finish pushing the issue. Instead, we trotted through the rest of the entire course. That's right, trotted! Just ran around 4 acres over teeter-totters, boxes, bridges, squeeze chutes, and a million flapping and rustling things flying around in the air. Dang, I shoulda done the playday! We woulda beat 95% of the people there! I think she went through it better than most everyone else!

Seriously, what a gem. I can't believe how "whatev" she was about everyone. She seriously did NOT care!



Sunday evening, I left Pangea to stay over at the work farm, and on Monday morning she got her customary AquaTread session and Theraplate. She is working now for 3 minutes as a power walk, 9 minutes at a maxed out trot, and 3 more minutes at a power walk to finish, plus her warmup and cooldown. She works out strong in the pool, and is only getting stronger and better. I think I'll stick with this routine for awhile, seeing as I like how the powerwalk pushes her out of her typical speedy little walk and encourages her to really stretch out and lengthen her stride more. Gogo had a huge rolling walk, but was lazy, and Pangea is the opposite: she has a HUGE motor on her but her stride length is shorter and less rolling than Gogo's. It's a nice pure 4-beat walk, to be sure, but the more we stretch out into it and let it roll, the better she does.

Pangea spent another night over at the work farm on Monday night, and on Tuesday, the chiropractor was out to work on her and a number of other horses. I have no idea when the last time she ever saw a chiropractor was, but if it was ever, it was years ago. What kinds of horrible things was he going to find on her?

Nothing. Pretty much nothing of interest was to be found on her. She had some minor lumber issues, some small stuff freed up in her neck and withers, and her right hip was a bit out. And.... that's about it.

Every single other horse adjusted got follow-up appointments, ultrasound and pool prescriptions, and instructions for rest. As for my girl? Give her a few days of just bareback hacking, and then get back to work. Easy!


How about that huh. Simple, simple, and simple.


Oh, and then a whole crapload of tornados came.




That was the view from the pool barn where I was swimming horses. We thought it wasn't going to hit us... and mostly it didn't, it passed over us and dropped about a minute's worth of scary hail on us, and then was gone. We didn't bring the horses in because we thought it was going to pass, and from the pool barn window I saw Pangea get nailed by a rouge hailstone and rear STRAIGHT up in air.... poor baby! I felt awful, but it was over in about 30 seconds, and she was back to eating her hay.

The storm that went over us went on to produce a tornado and completely destroy a large area right in the middle of the Metroplex (the area between Dallas and Fort Worth, a hugely populated area), decimating houses and tossing tractor trailers in the air like they were toys. There were over a dozen tornados in all, and hundreds of homes in the DFW area were completely leveled. Amazingly - no, miraculously - no one was killed or seriously injured. Thankfully these storms happened in the middle of the day on a weekday, so most of the inhabitants of the homes destroyed were at work or school. It's just awful that this had to happen in one of the most populated areas in the state of Texas.... you just don't hear of this kind of damage happening in the middle of a major city very often.


But we're all safe and sound, thankfully! We survived a terrifying obstacle course, a chiro adjustment, and some crazy tornados.... go us!!