Since Thanksgiving

Since getting back home, Penn's life has been turned upside down.

He's still a pretty happy, cuddly guy.

Activity Level. He's back to tack walking and the first few rides were interesting... He was hot and spooky and was as naughty as a horse can be without actually doing anything bad. The first ride back, I brought him into the indoor and he proceeded to stare at the footing and snort at it for 15 min straight. Seriously dude? Though, he's never done well with time off.

He's being aced for turnout and tied in his stall when he wants to stall walk. True story, sorry not sorry. This will continue for months sadly until we figure out a long term situation for him and for when his ligament damage is more healed/not freshly healed.

Snoozing in an ace-and-sun-aided trance on an unusually warm December day.

Interestingly, his stall walking may have played a roll in the collateral ligament tears. Did it do the actual tearing? I don't think so. Did it not help the situation? I think so. Penn has been an avid stall walker for the 3 years I've owned him. I've tried a bunch of things to make him stop (Quiessence, Total Calm and Focus powder, CBD were the big ones), and they did help to some degree but didn't make it stop. For the record, the CBD made the biggest impact on that aspect of Penn's life. It brought the stall walking down from an intermittent night time affair with mad walking at feed time to "I only walk at breakfast and dinner while I'm waiting excitedly for my food to arrive."

Penn always, ALWAYS stall walks to the left. That puts both collateral ligament tears on the inside and he pivots hard on them. I meant to mention the stall walking in my previous 2 posts, but I simply forgot because we didn't really think of it until the drive home.

HALP ME

Silent protest

New Shoes and Accessories. He got his new duds, that my farrier so graciously made for him ON THANKSGIVING, so they'd be ready to put back on ASAP. He got them back on the Saturday after Thanksgiving.

You'd think by now I could take a picture that wasn't blurry.

They make very unique footprints.

I ordered him new bell boots on Black Friday, since my favorite Italian Pull Ons can't be removed once his larger than life shoes are on his feet. I tried. The vets tried. We gave up and took them off after his shoes were pulled for his MRI.

He's a Back on Track poster child.
The medium BOT bell boots are actually slightly taller than the large KL Select Italian bell boots. I was very happy that they would provide the same excessive heel coverage that Penn needs! And if there's anything to the product, they'll help increase circulation in the hoof, which won't hurt Penn at all!

More X Ray Review (last bit, I promise). I got a little focused on the P1 imbalances in Penn's front legs for a hot second, because why not? I have all these images, may as well obsess over them and do some learning. I should have had this ready for the last post, but honestly I just didn't think about it. The program that handles the x-rays and the online viewer has a measuring tool. I decided to measure how different each side of Penn's P1s are.

Right Medial: 3.96", Right Lateral: 3.74", 0.22" difference
Left Medial: 3.76", Left Lateral: 3.43", 0.33" difference

Uh, that's a big difference. I think I'm lucky to have gotten to 3rd Level with him. Apparently some difference is normal, but I don't have a value for the max of normal.

Other Medications/Supplements. As the group think tank started cranking after we got home, we figured one thing: the healing of the collateral ligaments is so low because the hoof has poor circulation. What can we do to increase the circulation in his feet? Vasodilators and blood doping techniques. Blood doping, the way it was explained to me: athletes draw an amount of blood out of their body, oxygenate it, and at least a month later after the body has replenished the blood drawn, they have the drawn blood put back in. That way they have more red cells available to carry oxygen for sporting events. That's not really an option for Penn, so we focused on the second one: vasodilators. A common drug for navicular horses is isoxsuprine hcl. I asked home vet and VEI vets if it could help him, and got the same answer from both: It probably won't help him, but it certainly won't hurt him. I did get him some, with the logic of: it's relatively cheap, it should increase blood flow to the hoof which may help, and he's got a shit ton of navicular issues so why not?

All the meds.

The other thing I did was up his CBD to 150 mg per day, 75 in the morning and 75 in the evening. It's right in the middle of the chronic pain dosage. Overkill? I donno. It was easy enough and I found someone who would split the 10lb size, which we bought on a huge discount on Black Friday. It's enough to see him through until April for a "reasonable" price and then we can reevaluate his situation. Again, it should promote healing. If it doesn't, oh well. I can truly say, I tried everything.

I also put him on OrthoPur Si from HorseTech (he's been on it for a month and a half now). HorseTech makes products like SportWerks, Hylasport, Hylasport CTS, Reitsport, etc. A farm friend and I got talking about supplements and she had really good luck with that company. She called them and together with vet information, they made up a support plan for her horse (who had a freak accident involving a porcupine of all things and shredded his suspensory). I did talk to rep from the company and gave them a detailed run down on Penn's issues, and they custom made a supplement for him and recommended OrthoPur Si as additional support since it's more bio-available than dry silica. I'm not ready to make judgement on the custom mix (which I'll probably be changing in light of his last vet visits) or the OrthoPur, so we'll see how that goes!


I found a horse I can borrow for a couple months at least while Penn's situation develops. There's more plans in the works for another horse for me, but I have to stop hemorrhaging money on Penn first. I have some other fun horsey plans scheduled for the end of January, so I'm working hard to get back into real riding shape instead of just tack walking shape!

The Meds & Supplements

As a side trip from our recaps, I'm writing about the various things Penn gets to supplement his training. I've tried a lot, but finally found a mix that I'm actually really happy with.

Is this a dressage move I don't know about? Kicking pirouette into medium trot?

Penn had been on the following for most of the time I've had him: a feed through joint supplement and some kind of calmer to try and combat his stall walking (he walks a ring into his stall that would mean his stall gets stripped almost daily), and also to combat his trailering nerves. I tried a lot of things: Quiessence, Total Calm and Focus, Mare Magic (purchased as a generic, aka a bag of organic raspberry leaves from smile.Amazon.com), Zylkene.

I kept him on Total Calm and Focus the longest because it worked the best on his "stable nerves" (stall walking, nervousness in the cross ties that resulted in diarrhea, etc), but didn't really negate his trailer nerves. I bought the 180 supply from smile.Amazon.com because it was the best price per day I could find.


Chiropractor:
I should also state that Penn sees a non-local chiropractor every 8-9 weeks. He started seeing this guy in Nov/Dec 2017. He's the only one that has made Penn's hips level at the end of an adjustment. Chiro's adjustments actually hold until the next adjustment now, it's so nice. This guy does adjustments and then vit-B acupuncture type injections into the areas that get adjustments (it helps the adjustments hold).

Hips so even. They're still even now too!

Joint:
I started Penn on Adequan twice a year starting last year. I buy the 10 dose bottle and give him 5 injections 4 days apart in spring, and then repeat that 6 months later. It's not the 7 doses the company recommends, but Penn is young and relatively undamaged, so I think we can get away with this for now. It make me feel better that I'm doing something to support his joints, and it's cheaper per year than my favorite feed through, Doc's OCD.


Muscle and Gut and Calming: (because they've become intertwined in this narrative)
Upon starting training with GP Trainer, I found Penn had trouble building the strength to do the work. I gave him 4-5 months to build new strength before deciding to see if I could help him out.

SmartMuscle Recovery

He stopped feeling funny up front when I got on. Sometimes he would come out very stiff up front and it took a lap to work out, but with this, no more. I am happy with it. I opted to get it in Smartpaks because there wasn't any price difference to having them scoop it (at least for the first 2 months- I ordered AM and PM doses since they were half off).

I mentioned in passing about Penn's trailering problems- diarrhea and then he goes off his feed while he's away too. GP Trainer is sponsored by Uckele, so she recommended one of their products (with her personal reusable coupon code!)


G.U.T Paste

Love it, love it, love it. I can't express the amount I love this stuff. It stopped 90% of his diarrhea. He still has a little bit, but it's SO MUCH BETTER. He gets a half tube the day before travel, and then a half tube each day of travel. He started eating better while he was away too, yay! The bright side: I use GP Trainer's code to get a discount, and then I bulk order it at one of their bulk order discount rates.

G.U.T. Powder

I loved that paste so much that I decided to put him on their daily gut supplement since he has sporadic diarrhea at home too. I added that to his Smartpaks, only because the Recovery didn't meet their $40 for free shipping once I knocked him down to one dose a day. Paying shipping negated any gain in scooping it myself, so I opted to have them scoop it.

Omeprazole/Ranitidine
Penn carried on with the above supplements for a while. He was pretty grouchy, he still stall walked despite the Total Calm (though it did help some), and he wasn't holding weight. He has a very strenuous training and travel life.

At this point, I ponied up and got him a round of Omeprazole. Abba Vet Supply compounds their own product at a really fabulous price (I got 45-10mL doses for $224 in 15-30mL tubes). You need a vet RX to get it, and they don't offer it on their website (you have to call), but they're easy to deal with and fast. Before anyone goes high and mighty on me for using a compounded generic, I've heard from numerous human medical professionals that we overdose horses on omeprazole (but of course not enough that it hurts the horse). Abba's product is supposed to have the same 2.28g of omeprazole as brand name, but it also has ranitidine. There was also a study that said horses had the same healing from a full dose, half dose, and quarter dose. This means that even if the full dose of the compounded generic didn't have the full 2.28g, it should still be effective. Plus, if that didn't work, I'd chalk it up to lost money on a failed experiment and just pony up for the real thing. It's not the first time I've used this particular compound, so I anticipated it working. I opted to do 21 days of 10mL (full dose), followed by 21 days of 5mL.

The results: It did work. Very well. Penn started eating all of his hay. He ate his grain better too. 99% of his stable nerves vanished. His stall walking was reduced by day 10, and by the end, it had vanished majority of the time. He still gets worked up every now and then and trashes his stall, but he's so much better. He had a softer look in his eye by day 7. People who didn't know he was being treated said, "Wow, he looks really relaxed now. What'd you do?" He's still grouchy about having his belly brushed, and the saddle/girth, but I think that might just be him.

So this will probably be a yearly thing I do for him, or maybe just when his stall walking dramatically increases. I give 5mL doses the day before travel and each day of travel. Another plus? I dropped his Total Calm and Focus and he stayed relatively the same in personality. He's a little more unfocused under saddle, but that's no problem. He's still considered a green baby, and I can to work through that.


Total Blood Fluids Muscle
Penn continued to just have trouble with strength and stamina. He'd wear out quickly. Not unusual for the amount of work he's doing, but it still bothered me that 6 months in, he wasn't feeling fully better. I decided to try another muscle supplement and really liked the overall idea of this one (muscle-blood builder-electrolytes), and since I just stopped the Total Calm, I could get this instead (since they're both stupid expensive).

I got it from smile.Amazon.com (I am not having Smartpak scoop it- it's WAY too expensive for that). But sadly, Penn would not eat it. In fact, he stopped eating altogether. He eventually started eating again, but then he wouldn't touch ANY powder in his feed, including his GUT powder. Sigh. Back to the drawing board.

Smartlytes Pellets & Grand Vite
This is where I got mathy. Smartpak has this awesome comparison tool that breaks down everything in the products so you can compare what has what and how much of it. I put the breakdown for Total BFM into Excel and got cracking on how to "make it myself" using other (preferably pelleted) supplements. I put Total Calm and Focus into the comparison as well to see if I could help Penn's focus a bit too.

Adding these two supplements got me super close. Of the 75 various vitamins/minerals/compounds in his original supplement group, I was able to replicate 64 of them at the same or greater value, and only one was missing entirely:

New to the left, old to the right. Not really concerned that the six B vitamins are at a lower value. I'm guessing Total Calm has obscene values for their calming effects. Grand Vite was the best way to put some more of each back into his diet, as well as many other vitamins/minerals.

The one missing entirely, Creatine, is in his Manna Pro Ration Balancer, so I'm not concerned about that. The best part is that the electrolyte and vitamin together are cheaper than Total BFM, and he'll eat both of them! I did put both of them in his Smartpak because the Smartlytes are cheapest in that form, and I didn't want to have to scoop his Grand Vite and G.U.T. powder into baggies (and I loathe powder in baggies). I figured this is already cheaper than what I was doing before, so I'll suck it up and keep the Smartpaks which also let me stagger the cost throughout the year and save time.

He's been feeling full of energy since I made the switch- he's got a lot more stamina, even in the heat. I'm sure that's due to the electrolyte, but he feels physically good too. I'm very pleased with the new combination.

__________________________________________________

So there you have it.

• G.U.T. Paste (when traveling)
• Omeprazole/Ranitidine (when traveling, possibly a yearly treatment)
• Adequan (10 doses per year)
• SmartMuscle Recovery Pellets (daily)
• G.U.T. Powder (daily)
• Smartlytes Pellets (daily)
• Grand Vite (daily)

And this is the closest I will get to adding all of that up in a cost per year. Ack!

Funny baby horse gets all the things since I ask a ton of him.

I'm sure some of you are looking at this list going, "OMG she's fucking crazy." So what all do you guys do?

Gut Supplements

Since Penn is going to be a stoic, internalizing his worries type horse, I want to try to do right by his gut/digestive tract and help him not get ulcers or colic.

By the way, he started a 4 day course of Bio Sponge for his diarrhea. It was still loose when I went out to see him last night to drop off his meds, but he didn't spew in the cross ties, so it looks like it's getting better slowly on it's own. The medication should help. I'll have to ask if I can give it to him in a preventative manner before hauling, or if there's a different drug (it has to be USEF legal).

I put links to each product in the table:

Product	Pounds	Number of Scoops	Price	Cost Per Day	Cost Per Year
Chia (2oz serving)	12	96	$39.98	$0.42	$152.01
Chia (4oz serving)	12	48	$39.98	$0.83	$304.01
SmartGut Pellets	Paks	28	39.85	$1.42	$519.47
SmartGI Pellets	Paks	28	$46.50	$1.66	$606.16
Progressive Nutrition Soothing Pink	15	60	$129.95	$2.17	$790.53
SmartGut Ultra Pellets	Paks	28	$63.60	$2.27	$829.07
SmartGI Ultra Pellets	Paks	28	$89.25	$3.19	$1,163.44
Doc's OCD	15	240	$309.00	$1.29	$469.94

Doc's OCD isn't for the gut, it's for general bone and joint health (and Penn gets it already so I included it's cost in my table). I will stand by that product ALL DAY LONG as the best joint health supplement (I've used several). I wish I had x-rays of Mikey's hock after surgery, and then 5 months later so I would have proof of its abilities. We were planning on taking a set a year out from surgery... but well now we can't. Penn had a slight bone inconsistency in one angle of one of his fetlock joints, so we're going to take the same shot next August to see what it looks like.

I did Chia before. I didn't really notice anything with Mikey (maybe it did work and I just didn't know?), and we decided to take Penn off of it. The 2 oz serving is a maintenance serving, the 4oz is a problem serving. I always did the problem serving because well, it was cheap enough to do it! I'd be interested in making cookies out of it because the seeds are so small and prone to static cling, but I'm having trouble coming up with a binding agent that will hold 2/3 of a cup of the stuff together (that's 4oz). Suggestions?

I'm neutral to the SmartPak supplements. To be honest, after seeing the price tags I'd really only be willing to give SmartGut or SmartGI a try since they're cheapest. SmartGI Ultra Pellets comes with the $7,500 in colic care, which is great, except Penn is already insured and for an additional $1,163.44 per year, I'll triple his value on his policy as soon as he's worth it and then he'll have more than $7,500 in surgery care.

A friend with a neurotic OTTB tried Soothing Pink to great results. Except that $130 tub lasted one month for her, making her horse's dose cost $4.33 per day and $1,581.06 per year. Not happening for Penn, sorry! We think Penn can get away with that bucket lasting two months since he weighs less and doesn't have the nervous issues that her horse has.

So I'm in sticker shock here- I'm game to try things, however the end cost of $600-$1,500 a year is not happening. So blogosphere, do you have a favorite gut supplement that you swear by?