Looks like elephant ears

It was a morning just like any other -- September 9 and very warm. Teddy and I walked down the long road quietly for our jump lesson. There was nothing unusual about the journey. No hint that problems lay in the future, the immediate future.

Search on such phrases as "coping with a loved one's injury" or "dance partner injuries"  on Google.com and one comes up with sites about mental illness, death and dying or Mario Lopez and Dancing With the Stars.

Search on the phrase "coping with sport horse injuries" and up pop articles about acute injury, this time in horses; but there are no articles about what to do if your horse suddenly goes from full speed ahead to full stop in one week. How to mentally and physically cope with an equine partner who suddenly goes lame is unanswered. There apparently are no scholarly articles on such subjects. It is a subject ripe for exploration because as we all know this can cause serious mental illness in the rider at best, a weight gain of at least 10 pounds at the worst and can cause impoverishment for years if the source of the problem can not be found.

So when Teddy and I entered the jumping arena, we entered the realm of unknown injury and for the next month we searched the globe for a reason he was lame at the trot. Initially, there was no warmth, no swelling, nothing. Everyone had an opinion. "Suspensory strain," said one. "He must have kicked something," said another.

A week later the leg swelled up and we "knew" it was an infection. He was given antibiotics. Yet the lameness continued. The ultrasound showed nothing. The X-rays were inconclusive. Finally a knot developed at Ted's ankle. The vet decided it must be the sesamoid bone. A diagnosis developed -- sesamoiditis.

Asking how a horse has injured himself is a dicey question. How does a horse do anything? The only reason horses seem to have survived the prehistoric period was because "man" adopted them, first to eat and then to ride. This may be the only way they survived as they don't do well on their own.

Ted plays. He kicks and rears and generally has a good time. The only problem with this is that he does it in a pipe paddock and the metal is hard on his legs. The young stallion next to him plays too. Let's say they got happy together in a celebration of exuberant emotion. That's how the vet thinks Ted injured himself. The acute part of the injury came when the tiny ligament that runs between the sesamoid bones (looks like elephant ears) got caught over a roughen edge of the bone itself.

"This is a race horse injury," my vet said. "Not a dressage horse injury. It is an anomaly and not caused by the work he is doing."

"Great," I thought to myself. "Was he going 40 mph in his stall and suddenly hit a wall?" It seems this might just be the case.

So Ted was moved to a quiet stall in an out of the way barn to serve his confinement. He received shock wave therapy. The vet reexamined the X-ray and decided that there might be a fracture and he was taken to UC Davis Large Animal Clinic for a further exam, which proved to be inconclusive. He was scheduled for a CT scan. For this procedure, Teddy would receive general anesthesia and then he would be laid down. If the university vets saw inflammation and roughened edges of the bone, then they would perform arthroscopic surgery to "clean" the inflammation out and "smooth" the edges.

The whole idea of laying Teddy down, took my breath away -- made my eyes tear. Waking up from general anesthesia is the most dangerous part of laying the horse down. When Kentucky Derby Winner Barbaro was injured at Pimlico, his recovery was done in water to prevent him from reinjuring or killing himself. UC Davis doesn't have this type of elaborate recovery center, instead waking up from general anesthesia takes place in a controlled environment in a padded room.  My vet says that while the statistics for injury during the waking up period are low, there is still a risk.

There wasn't much else to do, but begin riding again. My trainer doesn't have lesson horses. All of her clients pay for training, so I am relegated to exercising the geriatrics. Mainly, I ride Willis, a 26-year-old Friesian horse, whose once black face is graying out. He likes pretzels and wheat thins. On the nights he doesn't feel energetic, we sit on the sofa together and drink beer together and recall better days when we were young. Willis stumbles, fakes profound tiredness and generally likes it when I hit the vending machine in the tack up, so we can both share something fantastically salty and fattening together. I feel privileged to work with him.

Occasionally I ride Bobbie; he is an Andalusian horse who is pure white. When he trots it's just like riding a jack hammer that goes no where. Getting him relaxed is a feat and has taught me to simple just sit still. Cantering is like riding the drug store plastic pony; it looks cute in the mirror.

Then there is Calloway; an unraced thoroughbred jumping horse. Calloway doesn't bend. He doesn't round up and come through like a dressage horse. What he does do is go -- at least for me. I pressed his forward button and he likes it, so do I. After working on bending in the arena, we go out into the fields and go.

Calloway's other special talent is that he wiggles and is crooked at all times. We ride squares and 20 meter circles just to get some geometry into his system. Calloway isn't an excellent jumper either. His modus operandi is to bolt forward after completing a jump and to trip while doing it. I have worked and worked to slow him down so that we don't flop face first into the sand.

All of these horses have made me realize how wonderful Teddy truly is. He is light, on the bit, easily rounds up, is easy to sit and sometimes even forward. Hanging out with Ted during his recovery, which amounts stall confinement except for 10 minutes walking a day, reminds me that his temperament is saintly (in some respects). Right now he is quiet, relaxed  and affectionate as we ramble over the farm eating weeds.

The vet came out yesterday and we trotted him out to look at his level of soundness. He was light, forward and sound. Both the vet and I were pleased. Tomorrow he travels to UC Davis for his scan. I hope to receive a call that tells me he is healing well and will soon be back to work.

Photos by Lake Web Design. Teddy is insured or very little of the care he has received would have been possible.