TC's Muscle Wasting: A Possible Answer

Well it's been a minute. But rather than jump into too many updates (Rico is great, my job is great, my people are great, TC you will hear about shortly but he is also great), I wanted to share a critical update. 

He is the light of my life even if we've
just been hanging out mostly

Five years ago I started chasing down an issue that TC and I were having as we were showing at Third level. We were scoring as high as I'd ever scored at the level but he looked *terrible* and he felt even worse. I called it muscle wasting, he seemed to not be able to put a topline on despite being in full work. He also exhibited a lot of balking, refusing to go forward, always slamming on the brakes. 

I chased this down pretty aggressively for years, sliding into insanity as I would receive answers that didn't quite fix everything in addition to a lot of gaslighting. I had trainers telling me it was normal for horses at the mid levels to struggle so we just had to get through it. I had people tell me it was his breeding, or just to keep pushing through and trusting that dressage would put a topline back on him. 

But something felt wrong, and I ended up listening to my horse and quitting dressage, last year we did a little bit of jumping (which he enjoyed but then once again the balking started), then this year I quit riding him very much at all.

The ranch remains casually beautiful

It was weird though, every winter he seemed to get better, which sometimes coincided with something that made a lot of sense, so I'd run with it, but every spring/summer, things would get worse again. I'd try and try again, then would seem to figure out what it was over the next winter only to be disappointed again. 

This year, I decided that I wanted to give myself one last year to try to figure this out. If we couldn't do it, I planned to bite the bullet and fully retire him, let him live with other horses at a different facility, and move forward with buying a new horse (likely a little Irish horse since I've come to love them). I gave him from April until now mostly off, doing primarily a postural rehab plan that I came up with (it basically combined Jec's 55 corrective exercises with some very basic dressage and some basic bodywork stuff) and waiting until mid summer when things were at their worst to see a new vet. I had been worried that nothing would show up in the spring. 

Enter: a new vet (not pictured)

This vet came to me highly recommended for his fantastic approach with cases like these. Mysterious cases where the horse is totally sound and fine and just needs a good beating (aka something is wrong but the prey animal doesn't want to tell you because then he'd be even more prey-like). We had already seen three vets who said that he was sound and fine. But this vet was different and I'm so grateful we went! 

First, we started with the most comprehensive exam I've ever seen, he did a full lameness exam (shocker, TC is sound) and then full range of motion tests for each leg. 

We then went inside and took x-rays of all four feet and his entire spine. The vet did an ultrasound of his scapular cartilage, his bad stifle, and then he stuck an ultrasound wand up his butt and I was like..... alright. Sorry TC, I'll let anyone with a white coat do anything to you in the name of your soundness.

After his exam he was so happy to 
supervise the next exam

Finally we sat down and discussed what the findings were, he talked to me for 45 minutes! But right away he said "there is nothing clinically wrong with your horse" and I was ready to leave. In the moment before he continued I was like WELL OKAY THEN and had made plans to retire the horse fully and book a flight to Ireland. 

But he finished with "everything I'm seeing is man-made, and I think we can fix it." So I'm glad I didn't overreact (externally). 

He took me through all of his images -

1. TC has ECVM, equine cervical vertebrae malformation, essentially his C6 and C7 are swapped. However, TC is now fourteen years old (what! when?) and if this was going to be a problem it already would have. He has no clinical signs and this is not the issue. 

2. TC does not have kissing spine, his disc space is great and he shows no arthritis anywhere, his SI joint (rectal ultrasound) is normal as well

3. He has nothing wrong with his left stifle, which was his bad stifle for years

4. He has damage to his scapular cartilage caused by his saddle not fitting properly, although the vet thinks it's due to the postural collapse vs the saddle actually not fitting

So what is it?

Holy shit

It's his FUCKING FEET. Now, feel free to get all high and mighty (on your own, to your friends, not in the comments) but when I say no one ever really suspected his feet, I mean it. Sure, hindsight is 20/20, but there was no real reason to suspect that this would be his feet. 

So I never chased that down. My farrier is a Journeyman farrier, she's a great farrier, his feet look great. I mean they're huge and friesian-y, but they look great. 

I have lots of feelings and lots of "should have" statements and some anger that I'm sure will come out about this that I will keep to myself. The point is that we have something that could possibly be an answer and that is all that matters. There's something that we can do. 

Circled is mechanical laminitis by the way

It makes sense. The horse is unable to lift through his thoracic sling due to his feet being painful in addition to the possible C6/7 switch that makes it harder for him to build muscle at the base of his neck. He then drops his wither, which slides his saddle forward into his scapula and also causes his back to spasm. The psoas and other muscles in his low back get rigid, causing all sorts of nerve stuff to buzz him.

It explains why he's better in winter (softer footing in his pasture, he can alleviate his feet by standing in mud), it explains why all the work I did seemed to work at first (building the TS) and then stop working (when he had to sit back on his hind legs and his back was still dysfunctional), it explains why I haven't been able to get a topline on him. And worst of all, it explains why over the years, it's just gotten worse, his feet have gotten worse and worse since he can't balance himself. 

And it explains that bodyworkers were finding it in his back end and thoracic sling, that vets were saying that he just needed more topline and he'd be good, that the chiropractor literally said that the base of his neck was tricky and he's just going to struggle with lifting it... it was like when three people close their eyes and are asked to describe an elephant and all describe very different things. No one was wrong. Just n one was able to get to the root of it. 

Mostly though, I'm so glad that I listened to this horse and stopped working him, because it seems like I preserved the rest of his body by doing so. The vet said the magic words "once you fix his feet and get him going properly, there will be no limitations, this horse could do the Grand Prix" and I felt more hope than I've felt in five years. 

The vet had some dogs and TC was
obsessed with them

Now, I'm not entirely insane, I know that I have had these epiphanies before, where someone comes along, says the word "thoracic sling" or "postural dysfunction" or "rectal ultrasound" and I'm like YES THIS. So I let myself celebrate today, but only after I texted my local vet and my farrier, who I am going to smash together like a child making dolls kiss. My vet is going to come out and x-ray his feet as he gets trimmed so that we can get him back in balance. 

But I know this could just be one piece of the puzzle. And I also know that I may not actually know until April/May of next year since we are about to enter winter and things always get better in winter. While the vet doesn't see any damage done, there is the emotional/mental piece of this for a horse who has been in pain undersaddle for longer than he was out of pain. And there's my piece of it, making sure that I continue to advocate for this horse and believe him when he says no. 

But I'm genuinely so hopeful. Could this be the start of TC's return to dressage? After all, Rico did his first PSG at 17 years old and his first Grand Prix at 18. I'm giving myself small doses of believing that the sky is the limit for my sweet gray horse. 

TC says "uh if that rude bay horse can
do it, so can I, obviously" to that

Anyway, hello again, maybe this will spur a real return to blogging (maybe not, work is truly nuts right now, I apologize). 

Rhombus to Rectangle Transformation

This last Saturday, I had another lesson! My last lesson before the horse show.

Logical people would probably make this lesson about test riding, or a movement they find particularly difficult. I don't honestly care about those things. Tracey is great at teaching the movements, don't get me wrong, but after my existential crisis with her two weeks ago and then figuring out why I'm feeling like this about my horse, I wanted her input on the basics.

So I came in, told her I have a horse show coming up, and then told her that I couldn't feel TC's hind legs and wanted to dissect that issue. At one point during the lesson, she said "this isn't a very good lesson right before a horse show, Megan" and I told her that I didn't care about the show, I knew I was going to score FINE and that I have managed my expectations and know I'm not going to get a 70%. That seemed to be a reasonable answer and she kept going.

He's so awkward, I love him though

The first thing we did was give me a very basic lesson on feeling when each hind leg was in a certain place. I'm very good at this when using my logical brain, I can feel the front legs easily, I know the rhythm of the gaits well, so I was right every time. I knew I was cheating and told her that, so I tried to close my eyes and screw up my orientation to just feel when the hind legs were under, not using logic. I was pretty shit at this an had to really dig into the feel in his back under each seat bone. He doesn't naturally get his hind legs under, so it's tough to feel where they are, but I eventually got better at feeling them.

Once in trot, I felt that "behind the leg" feeling that I know isn't him being behind the leg. I told Tracey that I just wanted to kick his hind legs under him. She said that's not physically possible to do. And then we had the most fascinating conversation about equine biomechanics I've ever been part of.

I've always thought that to collect a horse, you need to activate the hind end to bring it more under, and that by doing that, the mass of the horse gets rocked back onto the hind legs due to the engagement.

Best pony

At least with TC, activation of the hind legs does not bring them further under, because they are in an orientation of pushing. Adding more power makes them push harder. So even if I'm keeping the step short and he's not covering much ground, adding power pushes his body forward. Tracey emphasized the need to bring his mass back BEFORE doing anything with the hind end. Change his balance first. TC tends to go with his mass forward and his legs behind him, making his legs, the ground, and the underside of his belly into a rhombus shape. She wanted me to bring him to a rectangular shape by bringing his mass back, not pushing his legs under.

So I brought his mass back and told her that while I acknowledge that he was in a better balance, he felt even more behind my leg. She then said that while he was more rectangular, he was now leaving his legs on the ground for too long, and that this was probably what I was equating to being behind the leg.

I quickened the hind legs and now that his mass was back on his haunches, he was able to quicken them without running off his feet. And let me tell you, the trot completely transformed. For a few steps. But damn, huge difference. He had so much more tone and was so much more balanced and responsive.

Into canter, we talked about the asymmetric qualities of the canter and the timing of the transitions, but the interesting part was going back to that rhombus vs rectangle piece. Friesians have a very rhomboidal way of cantering and TC apparently shifts back and forth between a normal canter and a friesian canter as we go along. Tracey again wanted me to shift his weight backwards first, then quicken the hind legs. It was fascinating to see the difference. In his friesian canter, TC was much more on the forehand and when I went to chase him, he became more of a rhombus. When I managed to shift his weight back (huge slingshot feeling in my hip) and activate his hind leg just after doing so (because when I just shifted him, he'd break), he became a rectangle and the canter felt way more in front of me. At one point I told Tracey that I felt a canter half pass in there.

Friday night before my lesson = Kishi Bashi concert, one of the
best concerts I've ever been to

At the end of the lesson, we talked about quality of gaits generally. Tracey doesn't think TC is a particularly nice mover, but he does have three correct gaits with some good qualities and is showing us that his gaits can be transformed into nicer gaits. It's easy to get wowed by a flashy front end like TC's and ignore the fact that his hind legs literally travel in a way that is the opposite of what you want in dressage. But he's still the best pony and I'm planning on helping him understand how he needs to move (and planning on legend/adequan/all the joint supplements to help him with that too).

She did say that TC has a nice front end, especially when we've shifted his balance. High quality movers have an equal amount of extensor/flexor forces, while the lower quality movers have more extensor forces than flexor. It's what causes that lightness in front vs pulling themselves along in the front end. With TC, when I shift his weight back, he's able to use the extensor forces to push his front end up and backward, which is exactly what the fancier movers do. He just needs help developing the muscle to hold his mass back so he can use his good front end.

Lesson notes

I left the lesson super happy and not at all worried about the show. Mostly excited about the show because of all the mirrors in warm up so I could further dissect this information. It was probably one of the most educational lessons I've ever had. I was telling the SO that at this point in my riding career, a lot of what I'm learning is just rehashing stuff I already know in a different context - like TC-specific or rider biomechanics. This lesson was BRAND NEW INFORMATION and I haven't felt like that since my first Mary clinic almost two years ago.

I'm so glad I decided to start riding with Tracey again. And I think I'm realizing that I should probably do more of these lessons with her and less movement specific lessons. Not that she isn't fabulous with movements, but when I have a horse like the one she showed me I have, I don't need help with the movements because they're just there.

How to Manufacture a Hind Leg

When we left off, I was hyper-analyzing a situation, which, let's be real, is my near constant state, so it's nothing to write home about.

All my best friends

Kate came out to ride TC this Tuesday. She first watched me ride and asked me a lot of questions/told me what she saw:

- I started out showing her what I thought in front of my leg was. She said he looked like his back was tense and dropped. I said yes I could see that in the mirror and that it felt like I had to kind of hold him on the bit vs carry my hand, but that he felt in front of me soooo ?

- I brought him to a place where Tracey wants him but he feels behind my leg at the trot. Kate asked me to describe that and I actually couldn't describe it easily. He feels like he would stop if I took my leg off, but then when I did, he didn't stop. He feels like he would refuse to do a canter transition, but when I asked he did it. He feels like we couldn't do any lateral work from the trot, but he can.

- We went into canter and I put him in a canter where I felt like he was in front of my leg. He was mildly hollow and difficult to steer for me on the left side.

- Then I put him lower, softer, and slower at the canter and he lifted his back, but I felt like he was going to drop out from under me. He broke to trot a couple of times but nothing dramatic.

Hi, wanna see me make my neck REAL SHORT

After that, Kate got on. She rode him for a bit and I kept harassing her about what she was feeling. And then she said this:

"This is going to sound weird"
"Just tell me in whatever words make sense to you"
"I can't feel the ground, I can only feel it down to his hip but not down to his feet, there's a black hole back there"

Oh.

And she's right. When riding TC, you cannot feel his hind leg. We determined that there is some muscle not firing in his lower back that is responsible for that feeling. That muscle gets switched on in a negative way when he bolts or when I run him off his feet, so I can feel the hind legs and even if they feel like crap, I can at least feel them.

Love this place

I had brought my piaffe whip and had Kate trot around me. I tapped TC's haunches and when she could feel his hind legs, she'd pet him and I'd stop. He looked incredible. He was recruiting different muscles in his back and abdomen in those moments and you could see his hind end interact with the ground in a very different way than he normally does. More with his heel than his toe.

Kate and I switched and I got on him, handing Kate the whip. I trotted around her and aided for a shortened step while she tapped. I felt it a bit in trot, but especially coming back to walk. I felt him in front of me in the way that I had wanted. He felt like he was carrying me forward.

And it's not "in front of the leg" as much as I could feel where his haunches ended and where they were going. And THAT'S what I'm getting on my client's horse that I can't feel on TC. It has nothing to do with his level of responsiveness or being in front of the leg. It has everything to do with the way TC interacts with the ground in his hind legs.

Not for sale, if I can't afford a good hind leg, I'll make one

We brainstormed some things to implement into TC's program:

1) I am going to bring Kate out to help me on the ground once a week.
2) I am going to do piaffe work in hand once a week
3) I am going to clicker train holding his hind legs up for 30-60 seconds at a time
4) I am going to do long and low over raised trot rails
5) I am going to teach TC how to jump small cavalletis to work up to getting him comfortable with a series of small bounces

TC is also going to start adequan and I'm putting him on a muscle builder again. He's also going on some aloe pellets just in case this work stresses him out.

Tracey was concerned about putting a piaffe on him because of his mental state, but he loves me and he loves Kate, so he just thought that was a fun game. We're going to have the clicker and some cookies next time so it's even more fun for him.

I'm so grateful for friends like Kate who I can throw on my horse, tell her what I'm feeling, and ask her what she thinks of him. And now we'll see how much the piaffe training helps with all of this! Either way, it's fun to be working on something like that.

My Horse's Different Hind Legs

I went out to ride today with a lot on my mind about what I wanted to do with my horse today. I got Rico all tacked up and when I was about to get on him, I realized he had a spur rub on the left side of his barrel. But something wasn't right, it was too high up on his side! My legs are fairly long and the spurs I was using the last few days are fairly short and low on my boots. There is NO way that my spur could have gotten up there, even if I was in jumping tack. 

Long legs = no spur rubs right below saddle pads!

Rico's coat hasn't been too great these days, and he has rubs all over him from who knows where (including one on his neck?) so I'm fairly certain that it wasn't my spur that caused this rub. However, I took my spurs off of him today just in case I was somehow able to poke him way up there.

Anyway, I was not expecting a great ride since I didn't have spurs. I don't really NEED the spurs on him, he's very responsive to my leg, but I tend to use spurs on everything I ride so it's habitual to just put them on. But due to my use of them daily, I was fairly certain that he was going to be dependent on them, even if it doesn't feel like I use them a lot.

I was pleased to find out that I was right when I say that he doesn't need the spurs. I didn't feel any difference in the ride! Good to know.

The most responsive! Here I am holding him back from a medium...

During my ride, I wanted to address a few things in the walk and then work mainly on the canter pirouettes. However, I was surprised to find that when I picked up the sitting trot, he was SUPER amped. He immediately gave me the really nice trot I had been getting for the last few days, and when I asked for more, he complied. I called my mom and begged her to come out to tape us. We did a bit more trot for the video before the pirouettes.

My mom was kind enough to videotape the pirouettes too, but this is where technology failed me. I couldn't find the video after she taped! She swore she taped it and I believe her, as I saw the video save to my phone. So the pirouettes felt great, but there is no way of knowing whether they were great or not. How irritating! I was bummed since I rarely get video taped and usually when I do, my horse feels terrible so it's not an accurate representation of where we are.

So let's focus on the trot!! After my ride I, of course, came inside and analyzed the crap out of my two and a half minute long video. I came up with two conclusions, both of which I already knew.

1. I ride with my hands WAY too high, which makes my horse tight and short in the neck. Katy pointed this out to me this last fall and it is the one position thing (other than my graceful looking down) that I absolutely cannot kick. I really like my position (for the most part) other than those two things though! My leg stays down and pretty and for the most part, my lower back is strong and stable. So that's progress.

Keep your hands DOWN

Seriously!

2. My horse has two different hind legs!! I knew this since 2005 when I bought him. I tend to forget about it as I cannot feel it undersaddle except when it manifests as a straightness problem. Recently his straightness hasn't been as good, so in the video today I wasn't surprised to see his left hind refusing to engage and his right hind refusing to carry. Examples...

Weaker side, left hind engaging, right hind needs to push.
Instead, right hind straightens which pushes him onto his forehand.

Stronger side, he moves better uphill on this side.

He isn't lame, his head doesn't bob, and it's not noticeable unless I watch the video frame by frame. Clearly there is a difference, even if I can't see it in real time. However, for the first time since I started getting videos, we got some REALLY nice pushing with the right hind every now and then.

My uphill pony!

This primarily occurred when I was asking him for his fancy trot. So I think that this is REALLY good work for him, not only for me to score better, but to get him to use his body evenly on both sides.

Such a good boy

Take off! After this he gave me a passage step!
... sorry Heidi! I'm not supposed to let him do that.

As seen in the pictures, he does tend to get a little enthusiastic when asked to push with that hind leg. So right now my goal for this straightness problem is to get him pushing as evenly and consistently as possible with both hind legs. I'm planning on giving him an adequan shot soon, just to give him an extra boost while I'm asking him to push more with that right hind.

Overall I was really happy with what I saw on the trot video. I like where he is at right now and I'm okay with what I look like as well.

He obviously looks better than I do though, I'm used to it

I'm still working on not holding myself to the standard I did when riding horses was my full time career. The difference in fitness that riding eight horses a day in comparison to one horse a day is HUGE and I can't get irritated if a position problem of mine doesn't go away the moment I want it to. So my homework is to keep the hand lower, let his neck out a bit, and work on those hind legs!