Topaz Dreams

If I’m counting right, tomorrow marks ten weeks from surgery. Polly continues to be a generally good sport about all this; periodically we have full dragon days where we walk and I swear at her as she goes vertical and sideways and forwards, but for a five year old not allowed to move in the winter? We really are doing OK.

We rode in Iceland a couple years ago. I recognized then that I get worried with any forwards walk. I know why: Fetti had an awful walk 95% of the time, and that 5% of the time where we got an actual forwards walk, she was so amped it was bordering on “are you going to bolt” and sometimes the answer was yes. I recognized then, too, this was a problem: I cannot panic every time a horse does an actual walk. Polly naturally has a forwards walk, and goes a few levels up when enthusiastic. With her it’s the vibe I get that dictates whether I need to bail, not the forwards walk itself.

In some ways I’m more anxious now than when I first started Polly under saddle. My biggest worry then was whether she would stand still while getting on. She has that part down now! Instead I worry now about whether she’ll get amped and explode. I don’t have confidence that I have steering. I’m still reliant on someone walking us around on a line.

It’s silly, and I know it. This pony was fabulous at training. She’s given fair warning nearly every time she’s exploded. I suspect, in hindsight, she gave fair warning then too and I just didn’t recognize it. I rode her around our last barn with no ground crew! Anxiety can’t be rationalized away that easily though, so for week one of tack-walking this last week, we’ve had someone walk us every time.

Day one of tack-walking I was basically a passenger. I held on to the saddle 75% of the time and held a whole lot of tension, well, everywhere. It’s been slow but steady improvements since then. I am grateful for a good friend who knows how to push my boundaries, walks with us out on the trail, reminds me that the horse is fine and maybe I should stay on another minute. Day one of trail tack-walking we both felt her energy go up, we paused, I hopped off. She didn’t end up exploding, but it was not an energy level I was comfortable riding through. In contrast, the next day everything felt great and I stayed on an extra minute or two. Polly was being good, I was worrying about what my theoretical exploding pony might do and not the chill pony I was actually riding, and my friend was correct: I needed to stay on as we turned around to convince myself it would be fine. It was fine!

Rehab is an interesting exercise in re-training me and my confidence as well as rebuilding Polly’s muscles and movement.

Our next vet visit is right at the end of the year so we can get a baseline as we start trotting. Honestly, the idea terrifies me right now. I’ve never trotted her under saddle. Right now she understands that the correct answer is to stay at a walk, even a very fast walk. What happens when she understands that sometimes we trot too? Will she start bolting forward under saddle when we trot? The worst she’s done really is just a few strides of frustrated exploding pony, and then she’ll come back. I know I’m being irrational. She trotted under saddle at training and she was fine. She trotted under saddle at the vet’s place to assess her stifles with heavy machinery in the background and she was fine. Brains are hard! So my current plan is to trot her in-hand a day or two first, prove to myself that in fact I could ride this, and then try it under saddle probably on a line. I’m hoping by that point I will feel comfortable walking off-line, so that’s the goal for this next week.

Slow and steady, we’re getting through this.

The west coast got hit with a bit of a storm this last weekend. I hauled north Friday morning in the dark and the rain, loaded up Polly, and headed off to the vet clinic with her trainer. We were a bit early for our late morning appointment, so we waited.. and then we waited some more.. and Polly got to hang out in the trailer for nearly three hours. Good training. No problem; things happen. Pony wasn’t super delighted, but she also wasn’t awful. Mostly she was cranky from not getting breakfast and not getting snacks on the trailer either. We really couldn’t fault her for that one!

And then they were ready to prep. Walked her on in, chill pony was zen about being poked and prodded and clipped again. Oh, this again? Eh, whatever. Vet tech complimented her manners. We watched as the previous horse, also a stifle surgery, wobbled his way from the surgery room to the recovery stall across the hallway. Waited a little more, and then they were ready – trainer and I stepped back into the parking lot and inhaled some much needed lunch while they prepped in the surgery room. Vet came back on out and called us in: we could watch the surgery if we wanted. Awesome!

I wish I had a better summary here, but mostly I stood and absorbed and watched. It’s an odd thing to see your horse upside-down and under anesthesia. Main surgery vet asked a few questions as he talked us through the procedure, and we were able to watch on the monitor and see what he was seeing. Left worse than right, but not by a lot. Clinically it looks like it was both injured at the same time, likely overdid it trying to do something. The usual question is of course how much we’ve been riding.. and less than 30 rides over the last few years isn’t the usual answer. We’ll probably never know what the cause was. Per the notes: “axial tear in the lateral meniscus” on the right, “partial thickness ruptures of the lateral meniscus” on the left. They didn’t seem to think this was a major problem, just worth noting. They finished up and sent us on out.

My expectation was that Polly, too, would sort of wobble her way over, unstable, not really with it. And. Well. Polly walked briskly on over to the recovery stall with only a bit of guidance. LOOK, HAY!

It’s still really odd to me to get compliments about Polly. Eleven years with Fetti left me taking some of her manners for granted. I knew she was fabulous and amazing and how lucky I was, but also didn’t really think about it. Polly’s trainer’s main vet raved about her brain and manners.”This is a horse who was worth doing surgery on.” The vet that did the ultrasound stopped me on the way out to see how it went and offered compliments on her behavior again. I don’t know what I did to end up with a horse who has been foot-perfect for every step of the vet process! (Not stifle-perfect.. but hey, can’t win ’em all.)

We got our rehab instructions, loaded up the pony, and hauled back to her trainer’s barn. We stayed the night there. No sense adding another four-hour haul to the day for either me or Polly, day was plenty long enough already.

Good news is that Polly still looked fabulous the next morning so I drove us on home before the crazy storm kicked in the next day.

Rehab plan is.. well.. handwalk a while, then start a bit of walking under tack, and no turnout til February. Hope for this space to be incredibly boring updates for the next few months. It’s time for less eventful blog posts around here.

Someday, however, I will photo dump, but I still haven’t fixed the issue with wordpress. Soon? Maybe?

I guess this is an odd post to write while still firmly in depression, but so it goes.

A lot of things went right.

Good: I had a truck and a trailer. I took the truck to the barn, and the trailer lives at the barn. I didn’t have to rely on anyone else to haul Fetti to the vet. (I’m sure I could have gotten help, but it’s nice to take out that factor.) I’ve hauled enough in the last six months that even while having an emotional breakdown I could haul safely solo. It was my first time hitching up the trailer without help from my partner. It wasn’t perfect, but I knew how to do it, I called him to check that I’d ticked all the boxes and didn’t make any dumb mistakes, and it was fine.

Something to improve on: I need a second set of truck keys. If I had taken the car, I would probably have had my truck keys with me – adding 45min to me turning around to get the truck instead of just calling my partner to bring it. Thankfully this wasn’t the situation I was in, but it’s something I can do to mitigate potential future disaster.

Good: Fetti loaded, no questions asked. I spent zero time worrying about if we could get her on the trailer. The gal holding her while we hooked up was worried for us, and I think offered to help, and I took the horse and we walked onto the trailer. Done. We live in fire country. I will be continuing to work with Polly to make sure she loads the same way. So far so good, but I don’t take it for granted. The more we do it, the more reliable she will be.

Good: My paddocks are pretty visible at the barn to other boarders, and others at the barn knew what her normal looked like and flagged colic symptoms to me as soon as they noted it.

Something to improve on: My phone number isn’t posted on their stall door, or my name, or the horse’s name.. I will be buying a stall sign with that information. The trainer that noticed happened to have my number, but we’re still new enough to the barn that most folks don’t.

Good: I knew, at least vaguely, what steps I was willing to take in terms of treatment. When our home vet asked if taking her to the clinic was an option, I could say yes without internal debate – if that was going to give her a better shot, I would do it. Vet gave that a strong yes. We went. No need to discuss other options. When discussing treatments at the clinic, I was able to be clear that I didn’t want heroic measures to save her. I felt very strongly that surgery on a 25 year old horse would be an unfair ask. I was also able to be clear that surgery wasn’t 100% off the table; if there was something that wasn’t complicated that would have great odds of good recovery and quality of life, I was open to it. I had thought a lot of this through over the last bunch of years as good friends had older horses that went downhill either slowly or quickly. With older horses, it’s almost guaranteed that someday you’ll have to make these decisions, and it’s so much easier to not be making them while buried in stress and emotions. The vets were great about laying out options clearly and talking me through their thought processes/concerns. There was no pressure to do surgery/not do surgery. I made it clear early where I felt my limits were at. They were able to give information to help me make informed decisions – “This would be an exploratory surgery – and all colic surgeries are but this more so than most” and “The reason to do surgery would be to say that we’d tried everything” – all paraphrased, obviously, I have summaries in my head and no specifics from last week. “This is a red flag and here’s what we’d do, but here’s a different red flag and it complicates things for reasons.”

Something to improve on: Polly is not insured yet. Fetti wasn’t insured due to her age (no regrets on this either, this was the only incident in all my years with her that got expensive at all). Polly isn’t insured because I haven’t gotten around to it. This is something I need to investigate and act on.

I have ride photos from every ride that offered them, digital art from Emilie, a framed portrait from Nicole. I have a puzzle to put together and frame with a photo from our last ride, but that’s been too bittersweet to deal with and may still be a ways off. Another boarder got some recent photos of us on the trail when we went out with her, nothing formal, but so valuable. Don’t wait for the perfect time. Buy the memories. And buy from vendors who will work with you when you ordered the most fabulous new neon pink browband and then realized that adding more neon pink into your life right now is a terrible mistake and perhaps we could shift the whole thing to be Polly’s colors instead please and thank you. More on grief-purchases later, that one deserves its own post.

I told my boss on Tuesday that I was probably out Wednesday, and updated her Wednesday morning that I was definitely out for the day. (A close coworker may have beat me to it. I’m intensely grateful for social media letting me not have a hundred of these conversations, and just dropped the updates a few places instead.) Fabulous boss proceeded to reschedule the handful of meetings I had lined up through the end of the week and told folks that asked that I was out on bereavement leave. Functionally correct, bypassed the bureaucracy, got the job done (even if it doesn’t actually meet criteria, but .. good enough). This could have been so much harder had I felt obligated to do work things while an emotional wreck. I’m still slowly letting folks know who didn’t see it on social media. It doesn’t get any easier, but at least it’s fewer conversations this way.

I’m not ignoring all your comments; I read, love, appreciate. I’m fine til I’m not, and then I crash hard, and apparently comments/replies are still on the list of things I’m not coping with. Polly’s next vet visit is next week; keep your fingers crossed for us.

I was going to write things about how Fetti and I had a lovely hill ride on Sunday. We’d started playing with the Equicore bands. We were starting up very low-key interval conditioning to bring her fitness back this winter. Nothing spectacularly exciting, but a plan in place, things to work on.

Instead the trainer at new barn called me Tuesday afternoon. Fetti was down and looked colicky. I headed out. She called again when I was on the way over. Didn’t look great. I met the vet at the barn.

Trainer had seen her down once, thought it unusual but maybe she was napping? Fetti got up, whatever, no problem. Next time trainer came by Fetti was down again and she called me. I would have had concerns if she were down once, but I absolutely cannot blame them for not calling over a horse that might be napping. She wasn’t thrashing, she wasn’t rolling, she was just.. down. I think I can count on one hand the number of times I ever caught Fetti lying down. Not that it never happened, that just wasn’t her normal. Heard you coming, got up.

The vet noted, I think, a bit of a distention on one side of her belly – RH. Her heart rate was high. She was pacing and uncomfortable. IV banamine did not make a significant dent. We tubed, found a bit of gas but nothing obvious, and discussed. They could set her up with IV fluids but basically didn’t have any solid answers. Was hauling to a clinic an option? Yes – and I am so so grateful that right now I’m in a place where it was. They gave her some more meds to keep her kinda comfortable on the drive over, I grabbed a random other boarder to yank the bedliner out of my truck, dropped it basically right where we pulled it out, and the vet helped me hook up my gooseneck trailer. (Learning to do this solo is on my list, but apparently I have leveled up to doing it well enough that minimal assistance in a crisis is sufficient.) Fetti loaded, because of course she loads – other boarders were expecting problems, I think – and we drove.

Partner met me at the clinic, and the intern got us started while we waited for the vet to make it in due to some communication snafus. Respiration still high. Pulse still high. Clearly uncomfortable. I don’t remember what number they pulled, but it too was getting worse. Ultrasound pointed towards active internal bleeding, but also seemed to show a thickened small intestine. We moved forward with a blood transfusion in hopes of stabilizing Fetti and buying us time to get a better picture. There were still a lot of question marks when we left her there, but the vet put it as basically 50/50 – either she improves or she doesn’t. Transfusion wouldn’t solve the underlying issues, but we should see some improvement.

I was able to be very clear: I don’t want heroic efforts to save her. I want her to get a good shot. I want her long-term quality of life to be there. And if she deteriorates fast, don’t keep her alive just for me to get there to say goodbye.

Vet called the next morning with a status update. There was some progress. There didn’t appear to be active bleeding now. But something was still very wrong, and best guess at this point was that an internal membrane (?) had torn, and the intestine had ended up through that hole. The intestine would – if the theory was correct – need to be removed surgically. This wouldn’t be easy or straightforward, there still wasn’t a ton of confidence in exactly what was going on, and her pain level was still not under control (they didn’t think it was terrible as she wasn’t thrashing, but with stoic pony, in hindsight, I think it may have been higher than it was coming across). Best-case odds of surgery weren’t terrible, but weren’t amazing.. and this had been complicated and confusing from step one. Once I took surgery off the table as an option, the only viable path forward was letting her go.

They were comfortable managing her pain until we made it out there.. but frankly, she was mentally checked out. She didn’t acknowledge we were there and she was clearly hurting. She went quietly and calmly. It was the right call. I don’t have any regrets. I don’t think getting there sooner or checking on her on Monday would have helped; I think by the time she showed symptoms, it was already too late. I don’t think there was anything more we could have done while still keeping her best interests in mind. It just really, really sucks.

Eleven years with her and I could have so happily had eleven more. Dreams and plans and moseying rides even into semi-retirement. For years I’ve arranged much of my life around her schedule and making that time. Now I’m heartbroken and lost. Partnerships aren’t built overnight and we’d reached that comfortable zone where communication was easy.

“But what about Polly as your next riding horse?” And that’s where this really sucks – I don’t know. Polly is still off at training as we try to troubleshoot lameness with a rider. I don’t know what her prognosis is short-term or long-term. I am grateful I had a few years with both of them to work on that transition, and that I’m not starting from scratch with Polly now.

I’m looking at borrowing a friend’s (sane, safe, reasonably boring, not a ton of mental work) pony for the next month just to keep me occupied. Hopefully by then I can bring Polly home and start working on riding work, but.. at this point.. who knows. When you love hard, you grieve hard too. This just sucks all around.

She was the very, very best first pony I could have asked for.

I am incredibly lucky in a few ways.

First, I know that if a boarding situation doesn’t work out, I have a good friend who could take both my mares at her house. It wouldn’t be ideal long-term, but it would be a safe and reasonable solution short-term.
Second, my current boarding situation is not actively dangerous to the horses. It’s not important that I move the horses ASAP. I was able to give 30 days notice.
Finally, over the last bunch of years I’ve been in the area I’ve done a reasonably good job of networking in the horse community. I’m not starting from scratch in my contacts and research.

What factors did I look at with barns?
1. Location. I currently drive about 40 minutes to the barn and can move my schedule around to avoid the heavy commute times on that highway. I’m not interested in making a significantly longer drive. I can’t get much shorter, as the location of our house is minimum 30 minutes away from any barns in the area. Barns to the north or the west of me would be acceptable in addition to (my ideal) barns to the south. I have the strongest local network in my current barn area and it’s valuable to me to keep that. It’s also where the folks I like to ride with are located, and the social aspect is important to me.

2. Price. Horses are expensive. My self-care/co-op setup let me not think too hard about total cost per month since it was all spread out. I definitely winced when I added up the total.. but also I don’t have any real regrets. See: horses are expensive.

2b. What’s included in the price? What do I count in my “monthly” totals? Hay (grass or grass/alfalfa, preferably both available). Supplement feeding once daily (for either Polly or both horses). Daily feeding and cleaning (either a similar co-op setup, someone who I can pay to do it the times I can’t make it out, or 100% covered). My life right now works best when I’m not at the barn 7 days a week, so I need a setup that can support that. Shavings (either I purchase or barn provides).

3. What facilities do I need? An arena. A turnout area (OK if arena can be used for this). Preferably a round pen. Ideally, the footing in at least one of these isn’t awful in the rain. Trail access of some kind. I accepted that I can’t get amazing trail access comparable to what I currently have without limiting my search to about five barns in total, and I made peace with that. Some kind of secured tack storage. Trailer parking (though if I stayed local, this was not a dealbreaker).

4. Things that weren’t super important to me: how busy the barn is during the day. How pretty the barn is. I ride mostly in the evenings. I need something functional and I’m willing to put in some work to keep it there. I have plywood. I have stall mats. I have tools.

Barn #1: North. I actually know several folks via Instagram that board here and it came well-recommended. Price was similar. I think there’s a covered arena. Reasonable trail access on property. I’ll admit that the location ended up being the dealbreaker here.. I just don’t want to move the ponies out of my social circle if I don’t have to. It’s still on my “if I need to move” possible options list and the price wasn’t much more than I’m currently paying.

Barn #2: South (current area). Maybe another five minutes of driving. Small barn, usually has a waitlist, two open paddocks right now. Arena looked fine, rotating small turnout so each horse gets a full day with more space, self-care. Reasonable trail access. Large shared tack rooms. This place was super cute but also had a ton of wood, and I had visions of Polly eating through wooden fence in no time flat. There was also the sense that if we were to feed at our usual near-dark time, that would be problematic since others feed closer to 4 or 5 year-round. The two open paddocks are not terribly close to each other. I don’t remember exactly but think the pricing was similar to what we’re currently paying.

Barn #3: South. Approximately same commute, a 5-10 minute neighborhood walk from our usual trails as well as another park. Self-care. Also entirely self-maintenance. OK to let horses loose in the shared turnout or possibly rebuild the hillside turnout. Shared turnout, however, backs up to all the other paddocks. Snarky mares would be unlikely to enjoy this. Fencing was questionable at best, some really low fencing, some broken pipe, random objects and t-posts in turnout. Small arena with decent footing is a short hike up a somewhat significant hill. There was a lot of potential here, I really wanted to make it work. Then we realized we’d need to re-fence the hillside turnout to make it safe for our horses, hike up the hill every time we wanted to take any horse to the arena for turnout or work until then, fix broken pipe panels, provide several more pipe panels, run water lines since there’s nothing close to the paddocks.. re-gravel, redo walls.. the bones of the place are there but that’s about it. Or worse, it has stuff but it’s not safe for energetic and injury-prone horses. Fetti would probably be fine here. Polly.. this is the one my gut feeling kept telling me was the wrong place. It would be cheaper month to month, but at what cost of labor and materials to maintain everything?

Barn #4: South. Adds about two minutes of driving. Full-care. Slightly smaller paddocks, with the option to pay more for enclosed stalls. I ignored that in the price, as my two don’t currently need a soft fluffy stall with walls in the California weather. Hunter/jumper trainer on site, big boarding barn feels very much like the hunter barn I grew up in. Not necessarily a positive or a negative, but it’s an environment I know I can be in comfortably. Round pen with lights. Arena gets a few puddles in the rain but appears well-maintained and still useable. Limited trail access, but enough for weekday evening hacks. I’ve done volunteer stuff with the owner before and trust her judgment and sanity given what I know so far. Trailer parking available.

I’ve ended up moving forward with Barn 4. It is slightly more expensive than what I’m paying now, but means I get the time back in the evenings to ride and work the horses, not just hang out with them and clean and feed. In a year where I’m hoping to put more rides on Polly that time feels more important than it has in the past. I don’t know if this is our perfect solution; I don’t know if there is a perfect solution.

There are a lot more options I have available to me that I could move to. Barn hunting really is a matter of figuring out where your priorities are and what dealbreakers you have, and then being OK with things being imperfect for everything else.

I’m still grieving the loss of the community I’m losing. But I’m intensely grateful for the community support and the knowledge that I’m not alone and I have choices.