More on Moonshine
Posted by Mikki on Apr 18 2008 at 01:33 pm | Tagged as: General
We had the vet out to look at Moonshine yesterday. She had good news for us - she says it looks like just a sprain, and there’s no evidence of serious damage to either her leg or her insides. Both hind legs are swollen, especially the left. We sprayed it down with a cold hose for a while, then Kristina slathered it with Magna-Paste, wrapped it and gave her a shot of Banamine, an anti-inflammatory. (Since she was poking her already, she did her spring vaccinations too. If ya’ll haven’t done that yet, it’s time.) She left more Magna-Paste and dressings with the trainer, with instructions to cold-hose it again in the morning and re-wrap it if it was still swollen. Unfortunately, our planned ride tomorrow will not include Moonshine, because she will need a few days to recover.
Now that the medical side is under control, we have to address the bigger question: is Moonshine safe to ride? Three experienced horse people - Shari, the trainer and our vet - think she may be too dangerous based on this incident. We want to heed their advice, because obviously they’re about a zillion times more knowledgeable than we are. But part of us (is it the emotional part, or the logical part?) thinks that since she has never done anything remotely like this, there must be a logical explanation. We had suggested that perhaps she was stung by something. Bill suggested yesterday that it might have been fire ants. They are very common here, and both her actions and her symptoms both fit that theory - when Bill was stung on the leg by fire ants last summer, his leg swelled up like crazy. Both her back legs are swollen, and she certainly didn’t hit that car with her hind end. But the vet says the swelling is due to muscle strain, not the impact, and the trainer says that even if she had been stung by something, she shouldn’t have gone nuts like she did. He says he’s been riding a horse when it was stung by wasps and it didn’t go crazy. (That horse is tougher than I am – I most certainly did go crazy when I was stung by wasps!)
So what do we do? Moonshine is a total sweetheart on the ground – affectionate, calm, obedient, gentle. Her only problem thus far was that she “crow-hopped” when being ridden, usually at a canter. We were making progress with that – the trainer said that she never did it if he longed her before riding, so we just planned to longe her before every ride, and Bill would learn how to react if she did do anything funny. But now we have a horse that may or may not be unpredictable (like any horse isn’t). Shari has long been of the opinion that we should sell her, but who would buy a 10-year-old horse without an impressive bloodline that few people can ride? We’d have to sell her at auction, most likely, and her future would not be bright. We couldn’t do that. So if we can’t ride her, we’ll have a very expensive pet for the next 20 or so years.
She will be coming home from the trainer the middle of next week. Shari has promised to ride her on our trail rides together, to get a feel for how unpredictable she might really be. I guess we’ll just evaluate her over the next few months and see how she does.
So please keep us and our sweet, nutty Moonshine in your prayers. We’ll all need them while we work through this, hopefully with no further injuries to either horse or riders.
I am glad to hear Moonshine is okay. That is very scary! My horse injured himself when he kicked out a panel in his run-in shed and his leg swelled up like a tree trunk, not just from the wound, but also from the trauma to the surrounding muscles.
My Boy also freaked out when tied to the trailer last summer. I was lifting the saddle to his back and he began to twitch, freak,jump and pull back, we had to untie him quickly. He eventually calmed down but was very agitated. Our only guess is that he was stung by a bee, he was still twitching and uncomfortable the whole next hour on the trail ride. He had never acted that way before or since. I wouldn’t give up on Moonshine yet, it appears he just needs some more miles but this sounds like an isolated incident.
Maybe the vet already thought of this, but did he/she shave down Moonshine’s leg/s to look for insect bites?
If it was red ants, no horse should be expected to weather the severe pain and discomfort of that without losing it. a bit.
It sounds like that might be what caused it, since you had mentioned that the trainer had stopped by a tree to chat with someone, and ants love to hang out at the base of trees.
And if there was a wasp nest in that tree, a wasp, easily annoyed at Moonshine’s swishing tail, would have simply stung her.
If it were me, I would wait and see, like you are planning on doing. She’s a good horse.
Also, Instead of auction, consider using craigslist.com. It may take a while, but if you are honest, there is a very good chance that an experienced rider will want her. I hate the idea of selling a horse that you’ve become attached to and don’t recommend jumping to the sell. However, IF it has to come to the sell issue, don’t just assume the only option is auction. We bought our 10yr old Appaloosa and discovered that he is NOT for even advanced beginners. We posted him on craigslist and said experienced riders only. I had a couple of calls for him but they wanted one for a youth. I refused. Then a lady called and said she’d trade me a beginner horse worth 3000 for the crazy, bucking, biting, run-away, untrained, immature horse we couldn’t even ride for her to evaluate. So long story short- use the internet to sell your horse if it has to be done. It could work. At least there would be a chance that someone would treat her like their best friend. If craigslist.com does not work, use maybe the Thrifty Nickel or a local online publication like that.
Meanwhile, hopefully this instance was not a prediction of things to come and you’ll have many years of fun and craziness with this wonderful girl. I hope it works out.
Moonshine and the rest of your family are certainly in my thoughts! Hopefully this is just another hurdle to get over and you’ll be able to keep Moonshine in the family for years to come.
“and the trainer says that even if she had been stung by something, she shouldn’t have gone nuts like she did. He says he’s been riding a horse when it was stung by wasps and it didn’t go crazy. ”
To me, there’s a HUGE difference between what Moonshine did, and what his horse did. First off, no one was riding Moonshine. She has not flipped out while being ridden. As I shared before, my horse did the exact same thing while tied back over a year ago. She has NEVER done this while being riden. She is more confident while being riden. Moonshine may have felt very vulnerable at the time. You really have no idea of knowing and I just don’t think you can judge her ‘ridability’ by this one incident. She was not being riden.
I realise the horse experts may have differing opinions, but in our family, with our five horses, we have ALWAYS gone with our gut feeling on things. If we listened to horse experts, we wouldn’t even have any horses and if we did, we certainly would never have the five we have today. Yet here we are, happy and content with our horses. Yes, they’ve all have their ‘moments’ (except the baby of course! LOL) but for the most part, they are all good horses.
If an experienced horse person had told me I shouldn’t ride my Raiah any longer after how she freaked out last year, there’s no way I could have complied. Now, a year and a half later, I can say again, she has NEVER done anything like that again.
It’s difficult to tell what happened, whether she spooked, was bitten by something, etc. since it seems no one was really watching her (it sounds like no one was handling her when it happened). Accidents will happen with any horse and it does sound as though that incident is not related to any crow-hopping issues you’re having when riding her. It also sounds like Moonshine is a horse that would benefit from more frequent and consistent groundwork and arena riding. Get confident and under control in a safer environment before you go out trail riding where you introduce conditions are not under your control. Also be sure to give her plenty of time to recover from any soreness from her accident. One last thing for the crow-hopping, be sure to check saddle fit and try others as necessary. It’s very possible your saddle is pinching her somewhere that is not affected at the trot. You could test this by cantering bareback (if you feel comfortable) to see if she does the same thing.