I debated posting this in snark factory, but I think once I get over the emotional shock, I'll want to document the rehabilitation process, so here we are.
Anyways.
Cliff and I first met in 2016. I was training a horse for somebody, and she happened to own him as well and asked me to ride him for her as well, but I hated the way he went. He was inverted and threw his shoulder and would bite your leg when you put it on. Of course, all of these are symptoms for ulcers, but he wasn't my horse and it wasn't my business, so I just said I wouldn't ride him at that was the end of that.
And then my friend bought him and asked me to ride him.
I liked my friend a lot more than I liked the first owner, (that's a whole other story) so I said yes and started riding him, and I never really liked him but I started to have more fun with him. He stopped biting my leg, he had a nice trot and an incredible canter, and he didn't refuse a jump. Ever. This horse did not have a stop in him, and I started to... maybe not like him, but I didn't dread our rides either. And then in 2018, my friend dropped the bombshell: she was selling Cliff.
That was a week for me. I spent it alternating between thinking good riddance and sobbing my eyes out, and finally I texted her to tell her that I was buying him, and instantly felt relief. Our story was not over yet.
So I treated him for ulcers and we started training in earnest, and it sucked. Every month was another issue: thrown shoes, sore back, strange lameness that I couldn't quite pinpoint and my vet didn't think was even there. We moved barns, and he finally went lame enough that we could identify it- front left. We xrayed him and there was a bone chip. One injection later and I had a sound horse.
Then his back started hurting him. My saddle didn't fit anymore because now that he was sound and in earnest work, his topline had built up enough that the saddle fit had changed. I spent three months scouring the far corners of the world (well. Florida) for a proper saddle and it fit and off we went!
And it was great. The past few months have been some of the best we've had in the four years I've known him. We went to a dressage show and got some lovely remarks, and went to our first over fences show last month and he marched straight into the hunters and nailed it. He knows his job and he loves it.
But something still bothered me. He was clearly happy in work- he came to me in the pasture, put his halter on himself, put his bridle on himself, and every ride was better than the last. But he would make a face when I tightened the girth, and sometimes he would feel... not lame, but not 100% either. I didn't ever think that he was in pain, but I did think he wasn't 100% happy, either.
A friend suggested testing him for lyme. I researched it and found that it ticked a lot of boxes for Cliff- the weird, shifting lameness, skin sensitivity, the fact that his topline was fine but not as far along as it should've been considering his workload.
So I called the vet out and discussed my suspicions, and she was noncommittal. It'd be weird for a horse to get lyme disease in Florida. Generally that's further north. But she examined him and noticed how funky his withers were.
I said that yes, I had a suspicion that he'd broken his withers before in his racing days. He did have a bad racing accident where the horse went down in front of him and he hit it and flipped over. But his withers didn't seem to hurt him, so I figured they'd healed and it wasn't an issue anymore. She said she wanted to xray them anyways and I decided we might as well. I've already poured so much money into this horse, what's another hundred or so dollars?
So we xrayed them and- surprise. He never broke his withers. They were fine. The way they're shaped is just the way he was born. But the vet carried on and xrayed the rest of his back, and we found kissing spine.
Kissing spine is when the vertebrates in the spine crush (or kiss) together, leaving no space for them. It's painful and it can be career, or even life ending, for some horses.
My vet and trainer are pretty hopeful about Cliff's case. We're going to inject the area and stop it from hurting him, give him a week off and then start bringing him back into work by doing lots of long and low, spine stretching back lifting exercises to help separate the vertebrae. Also, lots and lots of carrot stretches. Cliff will appreciate those. If he stays sound, and happy, we might let him get back into jumping, and then re-xray him in a few months to monitor his back and see if it's getting better or at least maintaining. But if it's getting worse, then that's it. I'll have a retired 12 year old horse.
No matter what happens, he has a home with me, and I'm not putting him down just for being unrideable. I owe this horse so much more than that.
But beyond the shock and sadness that he's been in pain for so long and genuinely has this awful problem, I'm also incredibly frustrated. I have a lot of competitive ambitions in this sport, and I bought Cliff to be my 1.20 horse. After all the shit we've been through, I lowered my expectations to 1.10, and all we've ever done is the 2'3 hunters once. I was hoping this would be the year I could finally let Pogo start slowing down a bit and focus my energy and money and time on Cliff, so this has totally blindsided me, both from a health perspective (NOBODY I have ever talked to about Cliff has suggested kissing spine, and I personally know a lot about it and never once suspected it) and from a competitive perspective. I don't know what my next step is. I'm going to try and see if Pogo is down for another year of 3', and maybe see if he can step into the meters, but it's not fair to ask him to go beyond that. I can't afford to lease the caliber of horse I would need to jump that high, and I'm not buying another project horse and risking that one being unrideable and/or unsellable for any reason. So I'm a little bit stuck.
We'll see what Pogo wants to do. If he doesn't want to do it, then that's fine. He doesn't owe me anything either. But that's possibly a story that deserves it's own thread.
And in the meantime, I'll focus on rehabbing and loving my orange horse and hoping that the future has something kinder in store for us both.
Heavy Rain
