Holiday blues - 18/07/24
- Bella Fricker
- Jul 18, 2024
- 7 min read
Updated: 4 days ago
I'm just back from my first holiday in 6 years! In fact, this is the first time I've been away from my horses for so long since I was about 15! Not accounting for when I was in hospital for nearly a month of course in 2021 (that wasn't voluntary after all 😬).
I feel so refreshed from the break. I can't say how nice it has been to just step away from everything and just chill! I am a busy person and I know that I thrive when I'm at max capacity juggling work, exercise, horses, social life and volunteering. However, I'm not great at taking a break or even factoring in easy days into my schedule and I often feel like I'm teetering dangerously close to the edge of a breakdown 😅
It was of course an active holiday - can anyone really imagine me laying by a pool for days on end? I can't think of anything more mindnumbingly boring and indeed I don't even enjoy excessively hot weather. I am a fair climate girl all day long and most happy between 10-25C!
So to Scotland I went with my boyfriend in a campervan touring the North Coast 500. We wracked up some serious mileage over the whole holiday but got to see some amazing views, lots of mountain climbing, waterfalls, white sand beaches and so much wildlife - eagles, puffins, seals, jelly fish to name a few. It was so much fun and great to see so much of Scotland in one trip. I highly recommend the Isle of Skye though - I wish we'd had longer there!
Another highlight of the trip was going to visit Tannasg Arabians. This is a well established stud that breeds some really proven Arabs and Anglo Arabs with several 160km horses coming from there. I got to meet two 2-yr-olds that are related to Zest too - one on the dam side and one with the same sire, ZAYIN ZACHILLES. It was particularly nice to meet the stallion, TANNASG ANSOMROB, as I've definitely had my eye on him for a future husband for Fern😏.
In other news in my little world we finally selected and announced the England team set to compete at the Home Internationals (HI) in Ireland this year (I'm the Chef d'Equipe for the England Endurance Team). With just three weeks to go now we are finalising our travel arrangements to get 12 horses across the water. We had planned to take 2x travelling reserves but we are already down to just 12 so hopefully no more unforeseen circumstances will crop up!
Being the squad manager is such an honour but it does come with a lot of stress and responsibility. There are so many people and horses to manage and with the HI encompassing all levels there are more inexperienced combinations to support too. Adding the challenge of the ferry and the export paperwork (BREXIT fun!) does make it more of a challenge but I'm confident we'll get it sorted :D
Now for the pony updates, which I'm sure is why you're here really!
Chip
Chip and I had a riding lesson on the Sunday morning just before I headed off to Scotland. He worked well but if I'm honest started off quite sluggish. I have been a bit worried about him actually, he just hasn't been as interested in his work as usual and I can't quite put my finger on it.
He's a very honest horse, always forward going and quite a work horse too, he never says no.
Lately though, especially in the school, he's been quite behind the leg. In his lesson two weeks before with my friend Fleur riding him he was going quite over-bent too even though she wasn't really holding him. It's very unlike him.
I wondered whether we were asking too much of him from a technical perspective. After all, he's not a low mileage horse and though he has lots of fancy moves, I don't know if he needs to do too many of them or whether we are better just focusing on the forward and stretchy action?
Anyway, back to the lesson, we did achieve the lovely forward Chip and got some really nice stretchy work out of him and he felt really fabulous but it did feel like we had to unstick him for the first half of the lesson.
I discussed with Kate about how I've been feeling with him lately and also discussed that he'd had osteo recently and we're hoping to see a big improvement in his topline now.
Kate has seen Chip lots of times over the years and agreed he definitely wasn't his usual chirpy self and actually suggested that I get him tested for Cushing's (PPID).
Kate is not the first person to say this to me. Last year when I was looking at Chip's topline and worrying about him, a barefoot trimmer (my sister's mentor at the time) suggested that I should get him tested. He's also quite riggy and of course Cushing's is a hormone related disease.
Chip definitely ticks the box for lethargy and muscle wastage but not necessarily any of the other symptoms. However, I do already feed a low sugar and starch diet, combined with limited grass intake means that I guess many of the 'symptoms' would be negated by his lifestyle already.
I've spent my holiday really thinking about this because if it's right then this could well be the end of his competitive career. The commonly prescribed drug that helps Cushing's horses is called Pergolide and it's not prohibited in competition. The withdrawal period is 5 days too so it's not feasible to compete and take him off a drug that he would need daily just to go to a competition.
Anyway, I am probably jumping the gun but the research I've done so far along with what I've learned from a nutritionists' perspective with work tells me that we certainly can't rule it out.
I've booked a blood test for him on Monday. What's frustrating is that the testing accuracy for a confirmed diagnosis is much more tricky in the early stages of the disease but hopefully I'll have a clearer picture soon.
For now I've put any plans to compete on hold again. I was hoping to do the 40km at Poplar Park on the 3rd August - just before I go away with the England team to Ireland. However, my holiday cost a little more than expected and with now needing to pay for this blood test (they don't offer free Cushing's blood tests anymore unfortunately) it doesn't seem a sensible spend of money. Of course too, I need to get things organised at home before I go away and if the results are positive for this test there's a chance we won't be going to a ride ever again anyway 😭.
Alternatively of course he doesn't have Cushing's at all but maybe is feeling his arthritis. The osteo was extremely confident that his lameness at Lavenham and lack of topline was coming from his sternum and pecks and that as far as he was concerned Chip's lower limbs were functioning normally.
As usual with horses I don't think it's a straightforward answer and we'll take one step at a time and see the results of the blood test and go from there.
Fern
Just before I left I also had the vet, Phil, out to Fern and her latest sarcoids which are frustratingly very near to her girth area. He prescribed an imuno-cream called Aldara which is actually used in humans for skin cancer. The cream needed to be applied every 2-3 days and Pheobe did this for me whilst I was away. She sent periodic photos and videos as she was concerned that the sarcoids were swelling and so I passed these onto the vet too but he assured me that was all normal and part of the process.
I got back from holiday yesterday afternoon in time for our 5pm visit for Phil to review how it was going. He's pleased with the progress and he would like to see a picture in two weeks time. For now, we are to cease the treatment whilst we wait and see what happens - they should now fall off!
In the meantime Fern is off ridden work again as the swelling has made the sarcoids in her girth area far too large to be feasible to tack her up. What's another few weeks out after all!
I'll keep her ticking over with ground work and leading out off Chip. It does mean we are very unlikely to get to the fun ride on the 17th August that I'd hoped for - when we eventually get to a ride it will be a very exciting day indeed!
Raine
For a long time I've been worried that Raine too is getting sarcoids - on her eyelid... so I took the opportunity when Phil came out to look at Fern to also look at her eye and unfortunately he agrees that they do look like sarcoids.
The treatment plan is the same using this imuno cream. Phil, himself, is on holiday for the next two weeks so we aren't going to start her treatment until he is back.
I'm quite relieved as this gives me a fortnight to work on some positive reinforcement training with applying cream to her eye. I started today using Sudacreme and she was a good girly as expected. I'll now make a plan to do this everyday as a mock treatment so that when we are ready to start properly we can hopefully do it without needing to sedate her.
Otherwise I'll need to pay for a vet visit every 2-3 days for 2 weeks + putting her through the unnecessary stress of being sedated. Hopefully the training will pay off and we can avoid this.
Zest
My perfect child! Currently the only horse in my field not causing me too many worries! I've entered her futurity grading for the 30th July so not far away now. I need to find some time to trailer her out somewhere before we go as she's not been out on her own anywhere since February and the grading is a couple of hours away - which will be her furthest ever journey in the trailer!
I have every confidence in her though, she is such a self-assured and independent person.
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