ML – Final closure in the saga
| January 30, 2015 | Posted by Melinda under Uncategorized |
Last week I got this message from *N, a friend and blog-reader who was kind enough to once again make the drive from her home to the stable to meet the vet for me.
————————————————————————
She definitely got “the willies” or Zoomies out… or at least some of them…she is really fast when she turns on the speed for the length of the arena.
HOWEVER… ahem…… she does not have an Arab buck….. she has a full-on Quarter Horse yahoo in there!
Seriously. You don’t come out of something like this unchanged and it looks like ML emerged better, not worse which is a relief.
(And yeah…she’s FAST, and can buck like no other horse I’ve owned or leased could).
Back to blood work.
Results normal. Vet and I agreed that it was reasonable to keep ML off antibiotics.
YEAH! Exactly the end point we had talked about months (and months…) ago when none of us were really sure she would even make it this far.
All good to go right?
Except…the email ended with the ominous sentence of “…and we will continue to monitor”.
WHAAAA?
See, that’s what vets say when we have some complication in the back of our mind and we don’t want to get our hopes (and the client’s) up too high and it’s a cautionary statement that “all may not be well yet”.
I admit that I got a bit *direct. After all, this was the end point as described to me. There had been no discussion that after reaching this end point we couldn’t resume normal activities, cross our fingers, and continue our journey towards the start of our first 100 mile in a couple of years. Leaving me with a vague “continue to monitor” was frustrating. What exactly remains?
*ironically I reviewed some of my clinical evaluations today from the last couple months and one clinician pointed out that I can be quite “blunt” which I found highly amusing and not as much a character flaw as was probably intended.
As a vet I understand the necessity of tempered hope. As an owner I need my vet to provide actionable guidance – I understand it’s a complicated case which is why I’m not managing it on my own! Communicate! Address the animals’ purpose – if it’s a performance animal make sure concerns related to performance are addressed (when can it start work again? What are the risks? How big are those risks?). Success in vetmed is not solely measured as being alive, it also measured in “return to function or purpose”.
It turns out that the vet’s comment was encompassing the “horses will be horses” clause we all know so well, and also keeping in mind the severe and atypical presentation ML showed at the beginning.
ML *is* cleared for work and it is unknown whether she will have any downstream effects from this episode on her life. That I can live with. This is no different from any other setback that occurs in the time between the present and the future when any horse finally starts that first 100. Rare is the horse that gets to that point who doesn’t have a skeleton in their closet and a little something in their past whether it’s an illness, a wire, or an injury.
——————————————————————-
What I posted…
Today is the blog’s six year anniversary. On January 30, 2009 I posted several posts that kicked off one of the most rewarding projects of my life. I didn’t consider myself a writer but after six years and about 1,343 published posts I might have changed my mind.
Test….a reader told me comments were blocking her.
Great news! glad to hear.. I think we need to get ML together with Otto because I was jut noticing the other night while feeding that Otto is rather impressive in his leaps and bucks. I have yet to see a horse be able to get off the ground quite that high.. it’s terrifying to think I have to someday ride that horse.. good thing for two more years of solid ground work and hopefully we can keep that from happening once I am in the saddle!
Congrats on your anniversary!
Hallelujah! I much prefer straightforward- blunt, if you will- tempered by kindness, if possible. With horses,
it’s *always* “continue to monitor”.
ain’t that the truth. :/ continue to monitor is the story of the endurance riders life.
Excellent news all around!
Yay for ML, yay for *blunt, and yay for six years as a writer!