Stryder
All of my horses have a unique story; Stryder’s absolutely has to be the longest and the most trying. Brady and I decided to get a project horse that we could train and sell. I had some prerequisites of what we were looking for; it had to be young, preferably a warmblood, gelding, and COULD NOT BE A PAINT. Since I was a young girl I have always been attracted to paint horses and I knew I already had Summer and Finnegan, therefore I could not have another.
I came across the ad for “Rocco” a 2-year-old Hanoverian gelding and it caught my interest, I opened the add and they forgot to mention in the description that he was also a PAINT! I read the full description and decided that I would show it to Brady even though he was a paint. Brady liked him, so we arranged a time to go see him.
The following Saturday Brady hooked onto the trailer (as he didn’t want to do the 4-hour drive twice if we liked him) and off we went. We arrived and “Rocco” was out in the field with another horse. The seller fetched him out of the field, tied him to the trailer so we could have a look at him. He was quiet but curious and had a soft eye. We left him tied to the trailer and went for a walk around the seller’s property as she wanted to show us her other horses; he must have stood there for 20 minutes and didn’t move (which anyone who knows Stryder, knows that’s a BIG deal). Brady said “So are we doing it?”, I nodded and the seller got the paperwork. We loaded Stryder on the trailer and took him home. On our way home Brady turned and looked at me and said something I never thought he would. “There is your upper-level horse Paige”. I was ecstatic, as I had dreamed of having a horse with capabilities this gelding demonstrated but never thought I would have one.
Two days later, my dreams were CRUSHED. We arrived at the barn with the intention of going to a local park to go trail riding with friends. All the horses came running up to the front paddock, except the new horse that we renamed Stryder (previously ROCCO). Brady went looking for him with a friend of mine while I helped a client out with her horse. Suddenly Brady came running up the path from the backfield (and when Brady runs you know there is an emergency). He told me to call the vet, he was going to get the truck and trailer. I dropped what I was doing and RAN out back. My friend Rachel had stayed with him, but he was laying down in the middle of the field (that at one point had been an enduro-cross track), eating grass. We tried getting him up but once we did he could hold himself up.
Brady arrived with the truck and trailer, and with four of us out there we were able to get him up and practically lift him onto the trailer. I rode in the back hold him up and soothing him. You could tell he was in a lot of pain but he was being very loving. We got back into the barn and unloaded him and put him in the lay up stall. He appeared to be lame on the front right and had a puncture in his hind right stifle. The vet came and showed tremendous concern of the front right but said to give it a couple of days and we would X-ray. As for the stifle, the puncture did not get into the joint and we would just have to keep the wound clean. He was to stay on stall rest until further notice.
The vet hadn’t even left the driveway when I received a call from my friend Rachel, who had gone on the off-property trail ride, crying! Her horse (who she had also just recently got) had severed an artery in her leg, from hitting it off the bottom of the trailer while she was tacking her up at the park. She was absolutely devastated. Our vet basically left our farm and went straight there. I prepared the other stall we had for lay-up, as I knew that she wouldn’t be going outside anytime either.
Stryder remained fairly quiet all day, we had naps together and ate together. He spent a lot of time laying down and he had difficultly getting up. Rachel arrived back home with her mare in rough shape and it was decided that we would spend the night at the barn with our broken ponies. It wasn’t the best idea of a girl’s night I had but it was absolutely a memory. Despite everything I was happy that I wasn’t alone and we were going through all of this together. I made a bed out of my clean horse blankets, on the floor outside Stryder’s stall and that is where I slept.
Two days later, the vet came back out and we X-rayed Stryder’s front right, we started in the hoof and the plan was to move up from there and figure out what the issue was. It didn’t take long before the vet discovered the problem. Stryder broke his coffin bone.
I literally felt like someone kicked me in the stomach. I felt hopeless, worried, and terrified as to what the prognosis would be. I was simply told that they would have to connect with a specialist and we would have to see what they said. No one was really sure what his prognosis would be so we were in a wait and see.
About four weeks later I was feeding and cleaning his stall, and being a young horse with pent up energy from being stuck inside, he was not overly happy. The only thing he looked forward to was eating his food. I was in his stall and asked him to move his bum over, and he kicked out with both hind feet. I took one to the forehead and the other hit the wall.
I knew immediately what happened, and told my working student to go get Brady. In the end, I ended up with a pretty wicked concussion which took me a long time to recover from (that a story for another day).
The antics of Stryder continued, as he was not a fan of being stuck in a stall 24/7. He tried going through the stall wall, which resulted in scrapes and cuts. He jumped out of the stall, into a wheelbarrow, lost a shoe, and smashed his face off the floor. Finally, 6 months later Stryder was X-rayed and we were told that we healed the coffin bone. Both my vet and Farrier told me at that point they never thought it would heal and it was an absolute miracle that it did. I had worked really hard in rehab him with different products and therapies (all of which I will discuss in future blogs).
Stryder got to go outside for the first time almost 11 months after the original incident happened. I chose to give him time to just be a horse after that and didn’t do much with him training wise for a year.
He is now broke under saddle and we have still had our struggles with soundness, as he has a lot of build-up muscle in the wrong places from compensating for this injury. He is also the horse that if something is gonna happen, it happens to him. He has had Potomac horse fever, viral infections, ripped off a Flip Flop (Horseshoe that is designed to NOT be ripped off), jumped a fence to get into another field for grass and the saga continues.
Stryder can be a handful when he is left in his stall for too long and he can sometimes think that humans are a play toy. He is my headache child; the one I always worry about and the one that frustrates me to no end. I have had people suggest I get rid of him but I have been through FAR too much and honestly, I have worked this hard to get our partnership where it is today that I would never get rid of him.
