I admit my life gets pretty crazy, especially this time of year. This year is particularly crazy. Of course, everyone knows about our move. But underneath that headline news, my mare, Silly, decided to go lame, and then Big Blue Truck was smashed by a rouge Honda. Meanwhile, the normal business of the show season has been rolling along.
So, put the events in order, a couple of weeks before our move, Silly went lame. Silly, officially known as Anisette, is my big, wonderful black Hanoverian mare that I bought a couple of years ago. I have known Silly since she was 4, and loved her since I met her. I don’t mention her much in the blog, because “Silly is working great, trying hard and making steady progress” is kind of boring reading. Around the barn, she is known as “the good girl.” She is smart, talented and tries too hard. I’ve always said she would go broken, and apparently I was right.
In May, my good girl started feeling a little funky. She went from funky to oh-my-goodness-she-is-lame so quickly that I thought she was going to abscess in her right front foot. We soaked, but nothing blew. Dr. Crowley did a nerve block, a very-localized anesthetic that numbs specific regions to help find out where exactly the pain is, and pain went away when we numbed the toe/coffin joint region, so she suggested an ultrasound.
While Secret was scaring the warmbloods and Sling was sorting out his show nerves at the Memorial Day show in NJ, Dr. Lewis performed an ultrasound on her right front pastern. Her soft tissue looked great. So Dr. C came back out, and we x-rayed, and nothing of significance showed up. So we blocked again, this time specifically numbing the coffin joint, and Silly jogged off sound.
Then, while Secret was giving a career-best 3rd level performance and Sling was struggling with his balance from a recent growth spurt and trying to convince me he needed to stop every time he needed to poo ("no, Sling-a-ling, you can't stop in the middle of a dressage test, the judges don't like that") at Ride For Life, Dr. C injected the coffin joint. I came home with high hopes of bringing my super-fun girl back to work as soon as we returned. No such luck. Injecting the coffin joint made no difference at all, so Dr. C recommended an MRI of that foot.
We scheduled it for the following Friday, as Wednesday I was scheduled to don my tail coat for Eclipse’s Prix St. Georges debut at Suddenly Farm. He did a respectable job for blue, despite my major “oops” – I memorized the old PSG test, not the new 2009 version.
The following Monday, I received the results of the MRI, and bingo, we found the problem. In the sagittal plane of her right front foot, the MRI showed a subchondral bone defect in the distal phalanx. In layman’s terms, in the center of her coffin joint, well away from the edges that show in an x-ray, she has a bump where there should be a smooth surface. Most likely, this bump has been there since birth, and being the good girl that she is, she as figured out how to get the job done despite the discomfort. But over time, the bump has smashed into the bone below it, and it has done its damage.
By now it was late June, so I made a few frantic calls to Dr. Crowley to be sure that this sort of issue wasn’t hereditary, followed by another frantic call to Leslie Feakins out at Trevelyan Farm to manage the breeding, and Hilltop Farm to secure my stallion choice (Bugatti), and sent Silly off to see about making her a mommy. Our timing was good—she arrived at Trevelyan with a follicle about ready to breed, and proceeded to produce not one, but two more follicles (did I mention that she is an overachiever?). Hopefully one of them will combine with Bugatti’s offering. Next Thursday we will find out if she is indeed pregnant.
But the fun didn’t stop there.
A week after I took Silly out to Trevalyn, I was driving down 113, minding my own business, when a red Honda CRV decided it needed to cross the road at that exact moment. Honda vs F250? The truck won the battle, breaking the CRV’s axle and protecting me in the same moment. 
Between Enterprise Commercial Truck Rental and the insurance companies, I managed to rent a proper pulling vehicle to get Secret, Paradoks, Linda, Aneesa and I to the AHA Region 15 Championships that Friday. The show was tons of fun, and Ted worked his magic -- Aneesa and Paradoks brought home a Top 5 at training level, and Secret earned the title of 3rd level champion.
Although the battle went to Big Blue, the war went to the insurance company. Last Friday they totaled her out and left me frantically truck shopping, as the insurance company will only pay for the rental for another week. Hopefully, I will find Big Blue’s replacement in time for the Gunnar Ostergaard clinic next weekend. If not, we have back-up plans to get Secret and Sling to the festivities.
So, in short, expect a naming-party for the new truck, and a clinic report in the near future. Assuming things don’t go any more crazy than they already are….
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