Hopefully Back On Track

 It has been such a long time since I posted anything here! There has been a lot going on with Killian over the past several months and I've been struggling with how to update everything concisely on Instagram so I finally decided to post here.

Some of this won't be new if you're following me on Instagram but some of it will be as it's just tough to post full updates there. Hopefully I can still keep this fairly short and concise though.

Here we go! 

This spring we did two dressage shows. Leading up to those shows I was really struggling with Killian's fitness. I was working way too hard to get her moving and keep her forward. It was particularly a struggle at the canter and was very demoralizing after how hard we'd worked over the winter. I continued to chip away and was training most of the 1st level stuff but without nearly the forward we needed. With that being said we were running through 1st level test one pretty successfully but man was it taking a lot from me just to get us through the test. 

Ultimately I decided at the time to go ahead and enter 1st level test one at our first show of the year. In retrospect we just weren't ready but at the time it felt like the right decision. Killian ultimately took charge of the decision at the show as she was uncharacteristically spooky and unwound. I'd ridden her off property several times at that point and at 5 different facilities and each time she'd been basically the same horse that she is at home but at this show she was not.

Because I'm all about this being fun and building good experiences for both of us I ended up scratching my test each day but did get some good schooling in. Around that time I was at my wits end about what to do about her fitness. Because the indoor at my barn is so small and I'd struggled to get her to canter consistently under saddle in the indoor over the winter, despite my best efforts, I decided to consider an opening at a barn that I'd looked at years ago. They had a bigger indoor, heated barn and wash stall, and lots of good outdoor riding spaces including trails. On paper it looked perfect and after talking with that owner again and discussing with my current barn owner I decided to go for it.

Picture from the barn just before we left

I had so many mixed feelings and had some concerns about Killian living outside in a paddock 24/7 and getting fed with a feed bag, as well as concerns about losing my amazing barn family and support system, but the good things seemed to outweigh the bad and ultimately I wasn't sure I could build the strength I needed to with Killian without a larger indoor.

Doesn't portray how tough this was

I gave my notice in May but went to one more show with my barn in June and then moved the weekend after that show. For the second show I took us back a few steps and did Intro B the first day and Training 1 the second. She was good as gold for both tests but still so behind my leg that I had to carry her through both tests. 

The ribbons also don't accurately portray
how tough riding her was at this show

The move went well and she went into quarantine. Because of a few factors including how wet it was this spring that quarantine ended up being extended and then extended again after the first introduction didn't go well. A second introduction into a different pen also didn't go well but after some great flexibility with that barn owner we found a turnout situation that worked for Killian and their horses.

Quarantine in full bug armor

Her and her bestie Remi with Zoe photobombing

I started taking lessons with the barn's eventing instructor and made a bunch of progress in learning to ride a horse that is naturally more woah than go. She was great and I was having a great time but Killian continued to feel like she was losing rather than gaining condition. We took things back a bit and focused on getting her in front of my leg at the walk and trot but on the lunge her canter seemed to get worse rather than better. 

She also off and on struggled with eating her grain and supplements and I wasn't always hearing about it in a super timely manner which made it tricky to address. At that time I wasn't overly concerned if she missed a day or two of supplements since she wasn't on meds or anything super critical so I continued to do what I could to work through it with the feeding crew.

At the end of September I went to lunge her and she looked very slightly off behind, my guess was left leg up high. I gave her a few days off to see if some rest would resolve it but it didn't seem to improve enough so I had my trainer look at it. She agreed with me that she was off and we decided it was a good reason to have the vet look at her. Even though it was very slight my gut had been that she was not 100% for a little while, we just didn't have anything to point to other than that she was tough to condition.

The day after I spotted the unevenness behind

I made the appointment and for a few different reasons it ended up being almost a month later. I gave her a week off, expecting that after a week I'd at least start tack walking or trail riding but after that week off she looked worse. I gave her more time off and then had a vacation and was out of town for 5 days. When I returned she looked worse still (slightly not a lot but definitely moving in the wrong direction). She wasn't looking more lame, if anything the lameness was mostly resolved but her whole body looked sore. It was midway through the following week that I started to wonder about EPM. When the vet came out a few days later she agreed that EPM was a likely cause with how weak and was and how she responded to the neuro tests so we tested for EPM, Lyme, and put her on a high dose vitamin E and some banamine while we waited for the tests to come back.

It took 5 days and during that time I was super freaked out. I was so lucky with Katai who basically was never unsound in the 9 years I owned her and now I'd dealt with a major injury with Niall and now potentially EPM with Killian. Luckily we got back results for EPM that were fully negative, not just a low titer, and the Lyme came back negative as well. We decided low vitamin E was potentially the cause since she was doing way better at that time on just the vitamin e. I stopped the banamine and continued the vitamin E.

It was lovely to get to use my tack locker again!

In retrospect I think she's been struggling with this for awhile. Up until this spring she'd been on a vitamin e supplement at 2000IU and my guess is that it was at least maintaining her levels. In the spring though I'd changed her to a complete grain with 2000IU on the bag based on her serving. I've learned though over the past few weeks that vitamin E is destroyed in a complete pellet like that so since I changed to that grain she hasn't been getting really any vitamin e supplemented. 

That brings me back to the issues with her eating the grain though. For two full weeks I went out every day and gave her the high dose, water soluble, vitamin E with an oral syringe to make sure she was getting it. I learned that she hadn't been letting the feeding crew put her feed bag on consistently during that time and that sometimes (not sure how often) she would walk away when they put her feed in a feed pan and another horse would eat it. I tried problem solving for a bit but I'm in full seasonal depression mode and everything else going on in the world is stressful enough without worrying about whether she'd eat her vitamin e each day.

Not looking too shabby after a couple of weeks of high dose vitamin e

I'd also been missing my prior barn and barn family since I'd left. With the vitamin E diagnosis I also had hope that the bigger arena maybe wasn't the only solution and that with adequate levels of vitamin E I'd actually be able to make progress with her strength. I reached out to my amazing prior barn owner who took me right back. I'm so incredibly thankful for this amazing group of people and so happy and relieved to be home. I also got to trailer her back myself in my new trailer which was a life changing experience.

We learned alot while we were there though including me getting brave enough to
do our first few solo trail rides

Splash party before heading on another solo trail ride

We've been back now for almost a week and she is continuing to look so much better. She's got her vitamin e split into two feedings now which I think is helping her levels stay more even and the last time I tried trotting and cantering her briefly on the lunge to check soundness she looked better than she has in a long time. We had the vet out for fall vaccines this week and are testing her vitamin e and selenium levels so I'll be curious to see what those come back like.

We still have a long road, she still looks pretty weak and I don't want to risk an injury so I've got a rehab plan that we're working through to slowly get her strength back up while we address the vitamin e levels. I can't wait to have my horse back and get to start riding again but I'm also just so thankful to have her feeling better and get to see her goofy personality returning. Having my people around us while we go through this is also such an amazing thing so I know the time will fly by.