Protocol

Back to warm, sunny days where progress was being made.

As mentioned in my previous post I'm doing some problem solving right now with what's going on with Katai. I think that mainly it was stress related and from a big change in her living conditions but there have been small things going on with her here and there so it made sense to just relook at what I'm doing and consider some additional options to make sure she's feeling her best.

First, was ulcer treatment. I started out with UlcerGuard because she was refusing to eat her supplements, and therefore the Nexium pills, but the plan was always to go back to Nexium for the majority of the treatment because of the cost effectiveness and past treatment effectiveness of this for Katai.

After the complicated musical cars process of giving away the half bag of alfalfa pellets I cleared the space in my car and picked up a bag of Senior. I don't love feeding Katai grain but a few handfuls won't hurt and if it's palatable enough that she'll then eat the important supplements and ulcer meds I'm all for it. Luckily it has been working and she's eating it so I didn't just buy a 50# bag of gran for nothing haha.

Unfortunately for me and my personal life the Nexium pills need to be fed daily in order to be effective. I'm following the protocol of 3 pills for 28 days, then 2 pills for 14 days, then 1 pill for 14 days to hopefully not cause a spike in stomach acid. I'm on day 11 right now and that means that this will go into December. I'll be honest, it's a lot to try to get to the barn every single day but I've been successful for the past week. In looking ahead it looks like I'll be able to make it out every day through November except for 1-2 where I'm going to try to get a fellow boarder to give her the meds. This would be much easier on stall board but oh well we'll get there soon enough :)

I also mentioned making a change in other supplements in my previous post. Up until now she's been getting four supplements with California Trace as the main vitamin supplement. CA Trace doesn't have enough vitamin E so she's getting that as well as an Ulcer preventative and Magnesium since CA Trace doesn't have enough of that either. The new supplement has some coverage for all of the above so, while it's a bit more expensive, I will be saving a small amount with just feeding that one supplement rather than all four others. Mostly though it has additional Copper, Zinc, probiotics, biotin, some anti inflammatory stuff, and enough Magnesium and other vitamins and minerals that she's getting now. It's meant for hoof health but also to support the metabolism which are both of Katai's problem areas. Also, since there is just less stuff that I need her to eat I'm hoping it will go down easier with the handful of senior. I also went back to Smartpaks just to make life easier and because there was a small additional cost savings which was awesome. She's starting with a loading dose per the instructions. Once I figure out how this is working I'll do more of a post on what I'm trying.

Most recent riding picture I have :/

To address any body soreness she also got a massage last Monday. The massage person, named Dave, was awesome and came highly recommended from M (the friend who referred me to this barn). I REALLY liked him and, while Katai was a little defensive, he was getting lots of releases. He has rehabilitated a couple of horses at the barn and the work he does is more sports massage based. He did some myofascial type work as well as traditional massage and spent some time working on some specific pressure points. The only thing he really noted was that her hamstrings were tight. We both thought it could potentially be the mud and just the transition from stall to pasture.

He also agreed that just the stress of the move likely caused some ulcers but seemed pleased with her condition and musculature overall. He was also great to talk to about the lack of riding recently and felt that I was following a good protocol in getting the Ulcer meds started and giving her a chance to heal a bit before I went back to doing much riding.

Now she gets two days off, including today and tomorrow, where I'll just go out to give her meds, supplements, put thrush stuff in her feet, and probably hand walk her a bit. The plan then is to ride on Thursday and see how she's doing. Hopefully all of this will pay off and she'll be feeling comfortable and fit :)

What's On The Menu

A couple of people did this sort of post quite awhile ago but I wrote this up and then just sat on it for awhile. I've done some posts in the past I have a few updates so I thought I would post an update about Katai's current diet.

The "Grain":

Katai currently doesn't get any sort of grain beyond a couple handfuls of alfalfa pellets to bulk out her supplements but for the purpose of this post I'm going to include that and supplements in this category.

Smartvite Perform - Katai has been getting this for some time and I really like it as a ration balancer especially since it contains the amount of Magnesium she needs without needing to provide that separately.

MSM Pellets - Every vet I've ever worked with has recommended MSM for performance horses and it's a relatively cheap supplement so I have her on it.

SmartHoof Circulate - This is a new one I'm trying out. I've heard some good things and Katai has always had at least minor hoof issues. This stuff is supposed to help with multiple things so I'm curious if I see any changes in the next few months.

Raspberry Leaf - I'm actually out of this right now but will be ordering another big bag. They last for so long that I forgot how low I was! This is of course meant to help with hormones so I should probably order more sooner rather than later ;)

G.U.T. - This is also a new one that I added when I was concerned about Katai acting like she had ulcers. I also gave her three tubes of Ulcer guard (double the maintenance dose for the most part) and added this. All of her ulcer symptoms went away and my plan for now is to have her on this during show/clinic season and then take her off it in the winter. This is based on the instructions for use allowing for it to not be a constant feedthrough and I feel that it will be most useful when fed during times when she'll be stressed.

Gaps - I'd like to get her back on something specifically for her coat. I'm thinking Omega Horseshine but adding that to my Smartpaks bumps them up above what I'm comfortable spending right now so I may see about adding it when I take her off G.U.T. or if I decide that the SmartHoof Circulate isn't doing anything for her hooves I may swap it out.

The Hay:

Right now Katai is getting almost all alfalfa. I thought it was nuts when Jane mentioned it the first time but I trusted her (she's got a couple of "ancient" horses that look FANTASTIC and are still in full work so I trust that she knows what she's doing) and we started to add it to Katai's ration. Then, as Katai's work continued to increase we continued to increase the % of alfalfa until now she's getting almost all alfalfa and very little grass hay.

Katai's Weight:

Part of why I thought it might be interesting to share this information again is that Katai's weight/diet came up at one of my lessons. Both Jane and I are really happy with how she's looking but don't want her to lose any additional weight. She's been maintaining/losing and getting worked 5-6 times per week. I'm really sensitive to it and didn't notice but when Jane pointed it out I could see it. She's certainly not thin but for her to be able to continue to build muscle she needs to be getting enough groceries and we're right on the edge.

Because of that we've talked about adding a bit of grain. I NEVER thought I'd say that with this pony but here we are and she is working really hard and building muscle. Jane got some higher % alfalfa so we're going to see if that helps and if not we'll be adding some additional feed.

I'm thinking she looks pretty good :)

Speaking of Katai's weight and strength, whenever we're working on something new and working to build her strength I like to make sure that what we're asking is fair. Since I ride a pony and am more likely to face questions/criticism I try to make sure I have a pretty good idea of what percentage she's carrying around. I've always measured her with a weight tape and then weighed myself and my saddle. However, I know that weight tapes aren't that accurate so when I was reminded of the formula you can use to determine a horse's weight I finally checked her that way. 

[(L x L x H)/330] + 50 = weight 

where L is their length shoulder to hip and H is the heart girth measurement

With that calculation and my current weight and the saddle's weight I come in just over 18% of her body weight. When I hit my goal weight I'll be closer to 17% of her body weight. I stick with the 20% rule especially since we're asking her to be fairly athletic but I know a lot of people say ponies are closer to 25%. I've never felt that she struggles with me but sometimes when we're working to build strength it's easy to wonder especially since this is certainly an atypical arrangement for dressage :)

The Proof Is In The Pudding

Pony Beast Mode Activated!!
She's fit and getting some muscles. Plus look at how uphill she's gotten!

It's so tough to get confirmation photos by myself since she doesn't want to stand still but today she stood herself up in the cross ties fairly well. I haven't been able to capture a picture of how much taller she's gotten in front/how her withers have come up but this represents it pretty well.

Unfortunately the angle still isn't good and she's standing pretty far under herself in front which isn't doing her shoulder any favors but still, not bad at all!

Worse angle but cuter since you can see her head

 Both Jane and I are so happy with her weight and now just want to make sure that she keeps getting enough groceries to keep putting muscle on. She's completely on alfalfa rather than grass hay right now and getting quite a bit of it to keep up with her workload. She's also on no grass, or no more than she can pick at in her small paddock and what she gets when I hand graze her. We may actually end up adding a bit more grain here at some point if we continue to increase her workload so that she can actually keep at least this much body condition.

It continues to amaze me how much the work we do with them effects their body.

She was so cresty and fat here!

Fall 2016 right before moving to Jane's barn.
Yes, there really has been that much of a change to her withers