I Wish She Could Talk

I wish Angel could talk and tell us her story. I wish she could tell us where she has been and what happened to her, so that we could understand her and help her to feel safe more quickly.

Last week I went to my mother's house in Texas for a a few days. I got to hang out with family and enjoy time with my mom and my siblings. I also slept in my childhood bed, surrounded by books from my childhood. One of the books on the shelf was a children's pictorial version of Anna Sewell's classic "Black Beauty." Inside the cover was carefully printed in my childish printing, "This Book Belongs to Martha McNiel."

I pulled that book off the shelf and the cover came apart in my hands. But I sat on the bed and read the children's version of "Black Beauty" in one hour. It made me cry, and it reminded me so much of Angel. How Black Beauty went from home to home and owner to owner. Some good, some bad. Some kind and some harsh. I believe Angel's story is like Black Beauty's. I think she has had one or more owners who loved her and cared for her. And I know she has had at least one owner who beat her and did not feed her. It really made me wish our horses could talk and tell us where they have been and what has made them into the creatures we care for today.

Angel is about 70% shedded out. What is most striking to me - besides the interesting color she is right now and how different parts of her body are different colors - are the markings that appear to be scars. With a short and sleek summer coat growing in, the scars are more visible than when she had a woolly winter coat.

I do not know what has caused these marks, whether injury, accident, illness, or what. But everyone who has looked at them in person seems to agree - they are scars, and very possibly from human abuse. Today I took photos of the three most noticeably scarred areas: her nose, under her eye and her back.

Debbie Krimsley was out today for Angel's craniosacral body work treatment. While she was working around Angel's face, Debbie noticed a scar I had not seen before. This could definitely explain one of the reasons that Angel is so head-shy. Under her left eye you can clearly see the lines of a jagged scar and the face bone is indented more than on the right side.

Since we do not know what happened, it is impossible to know if she was hit in the face intentionally and that is why she is so head-shy, or if she ran into something and injured her face and the pain of that injury made her head-shy. But you can clearly see the lines of a jagged scar and the bone is shaped differently on the left side of her face. It is very fortunate that whatever cut her pretty face missed her eye, although you can see that it came very close.

There are actually quite a few possible old injury scars on her face. On the bridge of her nose are white hairs and an indentation that looks like a halter was left on her face for months or years and it created an indentation on the bridge of her nose. The white hairs and the indentation are permanent. She also looks to have a scar on the right jaw. In the photo you can also see two white dots on her face where white hairs have grown in.

But the most noticeable scars, now that she has shed most of her winter coat, are along her spine. Because of the lighting in the photos, the white scars may be difficult to see. But in person, they stand out on her dark chestnut back. She has ragged, uneven white scarring along her spine from her withers to the tailhead. I wish she could talk and tell us what happened! We will probably never know if she scraped her back going under a trailer door or under a fence or if she was whipped or if she had a skin condition or if she got into some other predicament only a horse could come up with and humans wrongly imagine could never happen.

I must tell you, I do fantasize that some day a stranger will be passing down the street where Angel lives, and they will stop and tell me that they recognize that horse and they will tell me her story. I have a creative imagination!

So while I do not know Angel's past, I can tell you how things are going in the present. Her udder is still bagged up and now she is dripping milk. It appears that the symptoms of ulcers are all gone. I can now brush her sides without a problem. Today Debbie was able to touch her belly and abdomen for the first time. Angel is becoming very expressive and curious.

She is calmer and more trusting, though she is still very wary of people she does not know and she over-reacts to a hand raised around her head. I've had to cut her back to two flakes of hay per day, because she is such an easy keeper. Which makes me realize how long she was under-fed, to end up in the condition she was in when she came to the shelter. Based on her reaction today, it appears that she has never been introduced to fly spray.

So here are Angel's next goals:
1. To become comfortable with fly spray.
2. To agree to wear a fly mask calmly.
3. To become comfortable getting a bath.
4. To get her feet trimmed calmly.

I don't know her history, but those are my goals for Angel's immediate future. And if you haven't read "Black Beauty" recently, it's worth a re-read!

First Hoof Trim is a Huge Success!

Wow! That's all I can say. Wow! Denise Field has a wonderful way with horses. And wow! Angel has come a long way. Wow!

Today was the first serious attempt at handling Angel's feet, with the eventual hoped-for result being the ability to safely trim her feet. Denise Field of In Balance Equine had offered to work with Angel and trim her feet. I was not sure how this would go and had very low expectations. Angel is still extremely wary of strangers and she takes quite a while to trust someone new. So Denise and I agreed in advance that today would probably be a "get-acquainted" session and the goal would be to handle her feet. Next time we might go for an actual trim.

Denise asked to start the session without a halter, just getting to know Angel. Angel was not sure about relating to a stranger. She frequently walked away and at times, disrespectfully turned her butt to Denise. Denise was quiet, calm and requested that Angel turn her beautiful head towards her and not swing her butt so rudely. Denise just followed her around the paddock, asking Angel to pay attention to her.

After a while, Angel relaxed a bit and seemed to accept that Denise was not intending to hurt her. Angel was still wary, but she did not seem to be so afraid. Then Denise haltered her and asked Angel to move a little bit at her request. Angel complied reasonably well. She actually accepted Denise's invitations much more readily than I expected and behaved herself much better than I expected. Both Denise and Angel exceeded my expectations today!

Denise waited to put the halter on until she thought Angel was ready. You can see by the expression on each of their faces that things were going well. Denise runs a small horse rescue called Horses In Need. She has a lot of experience with abused and rescued horses, and her calm and confident manner showed a lot of experience with horses like Angel. After the halter was on, Denise continued just as she had before, following Angel around the paddock. She began handling her legs and feet more, and asking Angel to lift and hold her feet.

Sometimes Angel did not want to hold her foot up and she swished her tail and expressed her displeasure. But she was no longer afraid, she just didn't like it. There was a very clear difference and Denise treated the attitude differently than she did the fear.

Denise gradually got a better and better response. Angel stopped walking off, stopped pulling her foot and began to agree to stand still while Denise handled her foot. Angel stopped swishing her tail, stopped turning her butt and seemed to agree that it was OK for Denise to hold her foot in the air.

Then Denise brought out the first tool - a hoof pick. She allowed Angel to smell it and touch it with her nose. Denise cleaned both of Angel's front feet. To my amazement, she said Angel did not have thrush, even though her feet had not been picked out in more than four months. We had not planned to actually trim any feet today. But Angel was being so cooperative, Denise decided to try to trim a little bit off the front feet, which were quite long. So she came back with nippers, a rasp and gloves. Angel was a little concerned about these new tools.

But as you can see in the photo, her concerns quickly melted away. By the end of the session, Denise had cleaned and trimmed both front feet. Denise and I were both extremely pleased! She handled Angel's back legs quite a bit, down to the hoof. But we are going to save the back feet for next time, when Angel has had more of a chance to develop trust in Denise. I know from her work with Debbie Krimsley that Angel gets progressively more relaxed, the more times she meets someone. So I think giving her another opportunity to spend time with Denise before lifting the back feet will be safer and more productive.

Here is how the session ended. Two front feet cleaned and trimmed. Two back legs handled safely. And a calm and happy horse. It doesn't get much better than that!

I want to express my very sincere gratitude to Denise, who is donating her services to Angel. Denise has a wonderful, quiet way with wary horses and she really won Angel's trust. And it was wonderful to see how far Angel has come. She has made tremendous progress in her willingness to give human beings another chance. The white scars on her back are more and more visible and I do wonder what gave her those scars. Regardless of her past, Angel seems willing to believe that humans might be trustworthy after all.

You can reach Denise Field at http://www.inbalanceequine.com.

Shedding Season!

Angel arrived fifteen weeks ago today. She was skinny, scared, mistrustful and kicked rather often. During the past fifteen weeks, she has gained approximately 300 pounds, has stopped rearing and she has not been observed kicking in over a month. She is becoming friendly and calls out a greeting whenever she thinks it might be time to eat. Yesterday she allowed Debbie Krimsley to handle and work on her forehead, jaw and poll. Now, instead of rearing when she is frightened, she vigorously bobs her head up and down, but her front feet remain solidly on the ground.

Angel is in the middle of shedding season. She looks rather like an old moth-eaten velour jacket at the moment. She still has strange ripples in the hair on her neck, which look like really cheap velvet, in a strange and "wrong" sort of way. She has a coat that I have not seen on a horse before. It is the wrong texture, is dull and coarse and just looks "wrong." Fortunately, she is shedding a lot, and I am eagerly waiting to see if the new summer coat that comes in will look better. I am hoping for a sleek and shiny, healthy copper-penney look. But since I don't know how long a horse must have good nutrition before you can see it in their coat, I don't know if her summer coat will look better or not. At the moment, she just looks like an old velour stuffed animal with half of its fur rubbed off.

The two photos above were both taken on April 9, 2011. The photo at left was taken on Dec. 9, 2010 when Angel had recently arrived at the Animal Shelter in San Martin. I feel like Angel is making good progress. She had another very successful bodywork session with Debbie Krimsley yesterday. Angel was more alert and aware of her surroundings during this session, but she was able to hear sounds and observe sights without feeling the need to move her feet. She stood very quietly and very still while Debbie worked on her, even though her ears and eyes and head were moving a lot, taking in the activities around her. Debbie got to touch and start working on places she had previously not been able to touch (including her forehead and under her jaw).

I am sure that Angel was disappointed to notice that she was receiving less food this week. As I was grooming her and trying to get that yucky old hair off, I realized that I can no longer feel any ribs! And the point of the hip that used to protrude prominently is now soft and rounded. So I cut back her feed to two flakes of alfalfa and about 3 lbs. of grain per day. (For the past four months she has been eating 2-3 flakes of alfalfa and 4-8 pounds of grain per day!) I plan to start exercising her a little bit more, but not a lot. She is still taking very shallow breaths and her breathing doesn't seem "right" when she runs. I am hoping with more time to relax and more of a sense of safety, maybe she will be able to breathe more deeply and use all of her body more properly. We have time, there is no hurry.

One evening last week I was grooming Angel in her pen. It was the end of a long day and I was using a shedding blade to try to hurry up the shedding process. Angel was standing quietly, without a halter and without food, just enjoying being groomed. The night was dark, but the barn lights were on. After I had been grooming her for about thirty minutes, I was a little startled when I looked around and saw that she was standing in front of an open gate! Apparently I had not latched the gate properly. Angel had pushed it open with her nose, and the gate was standing open in front of her. Since I did not have a halter on her, she could have left at any time! But she chose to stay and be groomed. I'd like to think she decided to stay because she enjoys my company. But I think the truth may be that she is as tired of that weird-looking, icky old winter coat as I am, and she just wanted me to get it off of her as soon as possible.

Giant Step Forward!

This will be brief. But I want to share what felt to me like a huge step forward for Angel. This past Saturday, March 19, was a cold, windy, stormy day. Debbie Krimsley was scheduled to give Angel a cranio-sacral bodywork session and I wanted to cancel. It was very cold and very windy and I thought Angel would be upset by the storm and agitated and jumping around. So I suggested to Debbie that we cancel and she said, "I'm game to do it." So I met Debbie at Angel's paddock, expecting the session to last less than fifteen minutes because I thought Angel would be too agitated from the wind.

Debbie said that Angel walked up to greet her when she arrived, which is a huge improvement. Until very recently, Angel would turn tail and run away from everyone but the bringer of dinner.

The summary is, Angel stood still, quiet and visibly happy, for one hour and fifteen minutes while Debbie worked on her. Debbie was able to touch and massage body areas she has not been able to touch before. She was even able to massage her poll, forehead, jaws and ears! Woohoo!! That was a big first.

Angel had her head down, licking and chewing, throughout the entire session. She usually had one foot relaxed and resting, and she stood rock still while the gale blew around her. She genuinely seemed happy. Angel's response to this session made me think there may be hope for her after all.

I wrote Debbie an email to tell her thank you for coming out in the freezing cold and wind to donate a session to Angel. She wrote back, "It's my pleasure! She's such a doll and it's a privilege to see her blossom under your care. I'm really excited by today's progress." I was really excited about the day's progress also!

For one hour and fifteen minutes Angel allowed Debbie to mess around with her head, her withers, her back, her ribs and various acupressure points and she did not pin her ears once or threaten to kick once. That is HUGE progress! She looked like a quiet, confident, relaxed, well-behaved backyard horse. I was thrilled and amazed. Debbie is a quiet, confident, brave and sensitive horsewoman and she has clearly won Angel's trust. It was very cool to watch.

There are no photos from the day because I was so cold I didn't want to mess around with a camera. And the driving rain and wind made it all look pretty dismal. But Miss Angel was a shining star. She seemed to realize that Debbie is a good person there to help her and she seemed to relax and enjoy the attention. For Angel to stand quietly for one hour and fifteen minutes without pinning her ears or threatening to kick once was as big a transformation as the "My Fair Lady" scene where Eliza Doolittle passes as a lady at the Embassy Ball. "The rain in [Gilroy] stays mainly in the plain!" Maybe she should be called "Eliza."

Springing Forward

Today Angel looked like a "normal" or perhaps an "average" horse. An untrained eye would look at her and see a "normal-looking" horse with no glaring physical or behavioral issues. Angel arrived at my house eleven weeks ago, weighing approximately 750 lbs. with a Body Condition Score of 2 (on a scale of 1 through 9 and 5 - 6.5 being ideal). Today the weight tape showed that she has gained 200 lbs. and with the vet-recommended adjustments to the weight tape, she probably weighs about 940 lbs. Her Body Condition Score has risen from a 2 to 4.5 or 5.

I groomed her for the first time in several weeks. She stood quietly, calmly and seemed to enjoy my company. To an untrained eye, she would have looked well-behaved. A trained eye might have wondered why I didn't tie her up instead of working with her untied? (The answer is: she doesn't pull back or rear if I don't tie her up.) She did not attempt to kick or move away from me. I also know her better now and didn't ask for anything that I thought would provoke a kick.

I have been so busy working for the past several weeks, I have not done much with Angel except feed her. Every morning and night I would feed her and check on her and talk with her for a few minutes, but there wasn't time for any more than that. Her only job was to eat, gain weight, and relax a little. Today it looked like she has been doing her job well.

Her coat still looks a little weird. Angel arrived at the Santa Clara County Animal Shelter in San Martin about 250 lbs. underweight. Because of malnutrition, her coat is still coarse, wiry and dull. Her skin is flaky and dry. She is just starting to shed her strange, wiry winter coat and I am very interested in seeing what kind of a summer coat comes in its place. I am hoping that good nutrition for the past eleven weeks is going to be enough to allow her to grow a soft, shiny, healthy-looking coat.

Now that her winter coat is shedding and she is filling out, I am noticing more scars and white spots on her. There are white spots all along her spine, all the way to the tail bone. They are not sensitive to touch, but they clearly look like scars from something. She also appears to have scars across her nose, from a too-tight halter left on continuously or perhaps a rough hackamore. The white scars across the bridge of her nose show something was not right in her unknown past.

Today I cleaned her left front foot for the first time. This is the first (and only) one of Angel's hooves I have cleaned so far. She is very mistrustful and will not allow me to hold her foot off the ground more than a half a second (literally) before she slams it back onto the ground. I have been attempting to handle and hold her front feet for a few weeks. I have not tried to lift a back foot yet. I am too afraid of being kicked in the head. But today she allowed me to hold her left front foot long enough to hastily clean it. This is a huge improvement from the last time I tried. She still would not allow me to hold her right front foot more than one second. We will continue to work on that. I have no plans at the present to attempt anything with her back feet. That will come in time, when there is more trust flowing between us. I will be wearing a helmet when and if I ask for a back foot from her.

Tonight our clocks "Spring Forward" into Daylight Saving Time. I am hoping that more light in the evenings will give me a little more time to play and work with Angel. I still miss Nick terribly. I cry almost every day because I still miss him so much. He died eleven weeks ago and it feels like it was yesterday. But little Angel is settling down and warming up and I am very grateful to have her living outside my window.

Six Weeks and Settling In

Angel arrived six weeks ago today. She is beginning to settle in and settle down.

There is this item called "work" that prevented me from spending much time with Angel over the past two weeks. It keeps getting in the way of my horse "play time." But I am grateful to have work that I love and work that is meaningful. So I will not complain!

The most noteworthy occurrence of the past two weeks has actually been a non-occurrence (or is that the absence of an occurrence?). On February 3, Angel got her second round of vaccinations and she didn't kick at the vet! In fact, I have not observed a kick of any kind in the past two weeks. That is the absence of an occurrence. Yea!

On February 5, Angel got her second cranioscral bodywork session from Debbie Krimsley. And she didn't kick at Debbie, either. Yea! I think the truth is that we (myself, the vet, Debbie) are getting to know Angel better, so we know what she will tolerate and what she prefers. So we are guessing less and have more knowledge of her, which places Angel in the position of feeling less threatened and less of a need to defend herself, although she is still quite guarded.

Angel is a very clear communicator and she uses her ears well. If you pay attention to the flicks of her ears, she tells you exactly what she is thinking and feeling. She is not one of those horses that holds it in and surprises you with a reaction. Angel is honest and transparent, and she clearly communicates when she is happy and when she is not. That makes her relatively safe to work with, as long as you are paying attention.

The vet said Angel's Body Condition Score is now 4 - 4.5. That's up from 2 - 2.5 when she arrived at the shelter. (A score around 5 is considered healthy.) Angel is currently eating 3 flakes of alfalfa and 8 lbs. of senior feed per day and I will continue that for a while longer. She will also continue getting daily psyllium for a while longer. The alfalfa and psyllium are both thought to help with ulcers, which she almost certainly has, given that she was brought into the shelter starving.

She needs to have her teeth floated, because she has sharp points and drops food when she eats. But that will not be possible until she has more trust in humans and will allow someone to work around and handle her head more. Right now, the trauma of dental work would be a huge emotional setback for her. Her teeth are not so bad that they caused her to become thin.

The second craniosacral session was slightly less calm than the previous session. Angel was a little agitated. In the first fifteen minutes of the session a small airplane flew overhead with the engine backfiring (it sounded like gunfire), followed by five horseback riders GALLOPING down the road past the fence, followed by a large group of very loud motorcycles roaring past. After these noisy distractions, she calmed down and did "pretty" well, but it was a noisy afternoon!

Today I worked with her in the arena. She walked to the arena more calmly and ran with much less frantic energy. She still ran around exuberantly (that girl can run FAST!), but it seemed calmer and less insane than previous times. She calmed down quickly and was very agreeable to working on the halter rope. We worked on circles and backing and bending and she allowed me to put pressure on her head without her over-reacting. Her resistance is lessening and her over-reactions are diminishing. Instead of rearing when she feels pressure on the halter, now she bobs her head vigorously up and down, but her front feet stay on the ground. Yea!

I tried picking up her front feet today and that did not go very well. She allowed me to hold each foot about two seconds before jerking it out of my hand. She does not yet trust me to hold her foot up. She clearly wants all four feet on the ground, so she is ready to run if necessary. We will continue working on that. She is supposed to get her feet trimmed in the next couple of weeks!

All in all, working with her today made me smile. She is such a charming little mare who clearly wants to please. She both seeks out and fears human contact. But I have great hopes for her future. It will take time for her to learn to trust, and I don't know if she will ever be rideable, but we will give her time. She is still an Angel-in-Training. I believe some day the bell will ring and she will get her wings.

Week Four: An Exquisitely Sensitive Mare

That's how I would describe Angel: "an exquisitely sensitive mare." Angel arrived in my keeping four weeks ago today. The more I get to know her, the more "exquisitely sensitive" she seems to be. If she ever calms down enough to be predictably safe, she will make an AWESOME therapy horse, because she is so incredibly sensitive to human emotions and states.

How do I know this? Personal experience! When I go out to spend time with her and I am feeling sad, upset, angry, scared or perturbed in any way, Angel will walk away quickly. If I try to make her stay, she will pin her ears and be visibly upset.

But - if I am aware of what is happening and I can stop myself, step back, breathe, check in about what I am feeling and find my center, I can go back to her and she is like a different horse. She is a breathing equine biofeedback machine! Now, truly, many horses have this capacity. But the horses I have always had in my life had enough training, good experiences, self-control and probably kindness that they do/did not react to the degree that Angel does. Because she is so fearful and we are still getting to know each other, any strong negative emotion that I am feeling results in strong negative behaviors from her. I wish I had videotapes of our encounters the past two weeks.

A few days ago I took Angel down to the round pen, to give her a chance to run around a little bit. She has been eating good food and gaining weight for the past four weeks, and she has also been showing a lot more energy. As she was running in the round pen this week, she fired out with both hind legs in a sudden, high, explosive kick that scared me. I was far away from her, in a completely safe location, but the speed and power of that double-barrel kick scared me.

I've never owned a horse that kicks. This is a new experience for me. And not one I'm comfortable with nor pleased about. She kicked at the vet during her first vet exam and kicked three times during her first body work session. She has not yet connected with a human being that I am aware of (since she came to the shelter and subsequently to my house), but I don't like the kicking! She has not yet kicked at me. But I think it is only a matter of time, if I am not very careful.

This week I cleaned all the "boogers" out of Angel's eyes. It was the first time she has let me touch her eyes. I was happy to get them cleaned up and looking prettier. And I was very happy that she trusted me enough to allow me to mess around with her eyes.

She is allowing me to pet her head and poll and ears and head. She drops her head consistently when asked and is keeping it down longer and longer. She really does seem to want to please.

It appears to me that Angel kicks when she is scared or in pain. So the way to be safe around her is to help her feel safe and to not inflict pain. That sounds simple, but is probably not as simple as it sounds.

When I am scared or in pain, I frequently lash out at whoever happens to cross my path. I generally don't kick people physically, but I can deliver a mean verbal kick. Angel and I will both be working on feeling safe and learning to control ourselves when we are upset.

We played around some more with the pedastal, but I am questioning my judgement on that one and may decide not to do it right now. Haven't fully decided yet. You can see the famous purple pedastal in the corner of the photo at right. I'm thinking that since her "default" fear reaction is to fling her head to the sky and rear, it might not be the smartest thing to teach her to step onto a pedastal before we have a stronger relationship. We played around with it today and she has no idea what I want her to do. So she just stands very close to the pedastal and drops her head lower and lower and waits for me to praise her. That may be the best use of the pedastal at this time in Angel's life. :)