The stories of people who have rescued or rehabbed ex-big lick horses are coming in. We will share them here anonymously: My very first TWH was a ex BL horse. She was fabulous in every way except for a few bad habits, but certainly still OK for a novice. She never made a bad move, but had to be retrained to stand while being mounted. She also had no brakes and no idea what leg cues were, but she learned! She had obviously never been outside a show ring in her life and every experience we took her on was a new one. At about age 24 (weve had plenty of horses in their 20s still working) she developed severe arthritis in both stifles and her right knee. We noticed her having difficulty getting up from a supine position and eventually she was unable to get up alone altogether. We helped her at all hours day or night. We got a baby monitor so we could listen for when she needed help. She eventually gave up laying down altogether and that progressed to falling over when she fell asleep too deeply while standing. Farrier visits became a nightmare because even bending her right knee slightly would elicit a groan from her. I never in my life heard a horse groan from pain. I never in my life watched a horse fall over while sleeping. Horrible. She was on daily bute and had injections to her knee but Im sure it didnt help much. She was humanely euthanized at the tender and still vital age of 26 after a final fall. My vet felt that due to the stacks and the big lick crawl she was asked to perform most of her career, she had developed such severe arthritis that she was unable to even lift off her hind end anymore. Yes, its speculation but Ive had several older horses in my life that never experienced anything like this and I also own her daughter who will be 18 next year and is in perfect health. The daugher has ZERO signs of arthritis or any aches or pains and shes been keg shod/competitive lite shod her whole life. That mare was a God-sent in my life and I miss her every day and Im so sorry I couldnt take away what had been done to her. I was starting to get into horse breeding and heard about an ex-big lick stud who was being trained down in TN. He had great bloodlines, and sounded like what we were looking at to cross with our mares. The story was the vet we purchased him from was at a big lick barn on other business and had found the horse in the back barn. The poor thing was standing on his toes from contracted tendons. He was severely underweight and essentially put out of sight (and mind??) and left to his own devices. Im sure the trainer was waiting for his death. The vet told the trainer he was either euthanizing him RIGHT NOW on the trainers dime, or he was taking him home. Obviously the stud came home with the vet! The vet did his tendon surgery and rehabbed him at his place, at his expense. Once he was back to square one, for reasons Ill never understand, the vet placed him back in training with a different big lick trainer. The horse was put back on stacks and back to work. By the time I came across him he was living the typical big lick lifestyle. Locked in a stall and only coming out to work. The vet was ready to sell him at this point and I was ready to save him! We asked he get taken off the stacks prior to shipping him to us and he came with plantation shoes on. You could tell they didnt even bother trimming him; they just switched from stacks to plantation with barely a thought. He also started scruffing within a week of being home. This indicates that even though he was training on stacks with horrendous tendons, THEY ALSO SORED HIM. He took a lot of work and money to keep his legs from constantly swelling and going lame. We eventually found the key, which was natural horse trimming, and he flourished after that! More to come.....
Posted on: Sun, 01 Dec 2013 01:51:55 +0000
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