Cosequin ASU - The 90-Day Trial, Update 3

Tracking up, sure. What's the big deal?

Here's a picture of Saxony walking with K the other day, cooling down, eyes half closed. We'd just finished a 25-minute longeing session in the still-damp riding ring. Saxony burned a winter's store of energy at the end of the line; at times I felt I was wrangling a swordfish leaping high and powerful under the sun. I really wanted to let her go, but the gate and its posts were blown down in a blizzard and have yet to be repaired and the fencing is low enough in places that I fear she might sail over the rails in a moment of unplanned, entirely justified esprit.

I was celebrating even before we started to work, though. She tracks up now, well up. She did not have that range of motion when I bought her. She wasn't hampered, particularly, but neither did she reach. K followed us into the ring, watching Saxony's hoof prints overlapping in the sand. Honestly, we squealed like preteens over it.

I see a dramatically extended range of motion in Saxony's walk and trot and an evenness, smoothness and uniformity in the rise and fall of her hips. Before the Cosequin ASU, her right hip did not lift with the stride as fluidly as the left. Her resistance to picking up the left lead has changed, too. She counter-cantered circling to the left, but she also found the left lead and settled in to it from time to time, which reveals a new willingness to push off with her right hind. K still sees a tiny hitch there, but only in the canter. We agreed that basic suppling gymnastics and muscle-strengthening work could erase it.

I think Cosequin ASU has been a complete success. I'll keep her on it while we work up to a regular riding schedule, but I'll be tempted to stop it for the summer months to see whether she still needs it or not. It might have been the perfect thing to bring her back to soundness, but may not be required beyond that. I'll look to my vet for advice about it after putting Saxony through her paces during the spring barn call.

Watching her circle around me, I saw a beautiful, balanced, easy trot, effortless really, like she could go for miles and miles. But she couldn't go for miles, of course not. She was tired after having bucked and played in both directions and then done a work session of 10 minutes walk/trot, walk/halt, trot/canter, etc., each way. Therefore, her sleepy cool-down walk with K, which I took way too many pictures of.

Because I will have to learn to see past her winsomeness to focus on working with her. I get so drawn in by her expressive face, I end up standing there slack jawed, all tasks forgotten.

Cosequin ASU - The 90-Day Trial, Update 2

A recent visitor requested news of how Saxony is responding to the Cosequin ASU. I intended to post an update after Saxony had her wolf teeth removed, since that is the next time my vet will see her and make an objective assessment, but I can offer a subjective view for now.

In an ideal world, we'd have control over variables, especially when conducting experiments, so no factors pertain but the one we are testing. I didn't get that lucky. Shortly after Saxony started on the daily Cosequin ASU SmartPaks - which my vet recommended we try for findings of mild arthritis in the right rear hock - X-rays revealed crookedness in Saxony's front pasterns and I began my quest to find a farrier who could offer an alternative to shoeing.

Actually, maybe that made it a sort of ideal world, in an odd sense. Saxony's feet grew longer and longer as my search for a farrier dragged on. I'm sure her long toes and generally uneven hooves placed stresses on her pasterns that weren't helpful. Coupling her sorry feet with turnout terrain that has vacillated between snow, ice and mud of late, I think I had good reason to worry about her being sore.

That same terrain has made it impossible for me to move her out. There is no indoor arena, and the riding ring long ago vanished under a layered winter lava comprised of ice and snow. My opportunities to watch her move have come when she's in turnout. She's smart and knows how to move on slippery footing, so I've watched lots of walking. No limping, no lameness, just a deliberate, careful walk.

One week ago, Saxony's feet were trimmed. She walked out of the barn, back into turnout, entirely differently than she had walked into the barn. That's how much the trim transformed her. It didn't change her step, it altered the extent to which she toes out in front. That toe-out is really reduced, I mean really reduced.

On Wednesday I wrote about the funny little pony who was tearing around his paddock, wanting to play with everybody. It was during his crazy antics that I saw Saxony buck, crow hop, squeal and break into a canter, snaking her neck from side to side as she ran along the fence line separating her from the pony. She whinnied like a little filly, not a nine-year old mare.

I watched as she stepped down into a floating extended trot and circled through a figure eight, tail high. I remember thinking, Oh, I can't wait to ride that trot. And I can't. She feels much, much better. I see it in her overall lightness and playfulness. I'm sure that, when the footing is decent, she will offer an explosion of pent-up energy. On Monday upcoming, it will be eight weeks that she's been on Cosequin ASU. Factored in has to be the one-week-old trim that she's wearing so well, but I believe the Cosequin has helped and is helping her.

Because Saxony spends a lot of time turned out, unblanketed, only overnighting in the barn at temperatures of 20 degrees or lower (excepting blizzards, etc.), I felt the winter was exactly the right time to try this experiment, thinking if  Cosequin would be helpful at all, why not try it during a time when she might really need it. When my vet comes, the first question I will ask her is whether she thinks Saxony should remain on Cosequin permanently.

Right now, what I see is one sweet, happy mare, which means I have to file Cosequin ASU under so far, so good.

Cosequin ASU - The 90-Day Trial, Update 1

German Muffins?

My vet's notes from the day we did all the X-rays of Saxony's hooves and hocks included the following finding: Saxony is much improved since starting Cosequin ASU. Her right hind was much improved - bit stiff, but otherwise sound.

At that point, Saxony had been getting the loading dose (which means double dosing to prime the pump, so to speak) for two weeks. I think it's interesting that my vet could see a significant improvement in her after such a short time. But when I thought about it, I realized that I might have been seeing a response even earlier when I wrote here about a moment that happened just one week after she started the Cosequin.

Now that she's completed the loading dose, she'll be getting SmartPak's one-scoop maintenance dose for the next two months. My vet returns at the end of February to extract Saxony's wolf teeth, so I'll get another assessment of the Cosequin then.

I just need the greatest barefoot trimmer in the world to materialize in front of me right now. Or any barefoot trimmer. Not a pasture trimmer, but a barefoot specialist who believes in such a thing as the balanced foot. The search has been frustrating and makes me understand why some people give up and learn how to do it themselves. I feel Saxony's toes growing like nails on a chalkboard, and it's making me cringe.

Sidebar: Lately, it seems Scout has been on my mind more than Saxony. And she has been, just in a different way. Laying around working on getting better leaves me with time to ponder (kind of, druggily) and Scout somehow presented herself at the outskirts of my mind and then wandered up close. Right now she seems to stand for me as some sort of proof, in the mathematics sense, which, according to my  huge old broken-backed dictionary, means a sequence of steps, statements, or demonstrations that leads to a valid conclusion. Yes, I think that's the exactly the way I mean it. Now I just have to figure out what that "valid conclusion" is.

Eight-minute rides are best, I find.

Ten days of not seeing either of them has been really rough.

Me-worthy If Not Seaworthy

Conclusion No. 1:  I think I may have spent more on her yesterday than I did the day I bought her. It underlined in stark terms how I feel about her. To invest in her is to invest in me, and that's what I'm going to do.

Conclusion No. 2:  I should probably change her name to "Stax." Her front ankles look like Roman ruins, stones stacked unevenly, ancient mortar all but vanished.


We took a dozen X-rays, starting at the left front. They were good, clear images. I couldn't help but be startled once again by the delicate architecture with which these creatures are designed. We were looking at a thin tower built of just three bones; to me they seemed ill suited to support the 1,130 pounds standing patiently above them.

Saxony inherited some crookedness between the fetlock and coronet band. Her foreleg pasterns are uneven front to back, though normal in side views. She has really good joint spaces. We X-rayed the naviculars in two views, from above and below, and they're both normal. This is good news. Her right front shows more crookedness than her left, though only her left front shows an offset. Dr. B pondered that a bit.


By the time we had finished up with her front end, I knew it was worth it to me to keep going. I felt determined; I wanted to see all of her. There's no such thing as an imperfect horse, but how imperfect is mine? No, that wasn't the question at all, actually. The question was: what is her normal, and how do I maintain it, support it, help her thrive?

Images of her hind legs, both hooves and hocks, showed  normal anatomy in her ankles -- no crookedness or offsets back there -- and two teeny tiny bone spurs in her right hock. Her left hind is the star, the exception that proves the rule, I suppose.

We moved her out before doing the X-rays. Dr. B pointed out a striking improvement in how Saxony goes. She attributed it to the Cosequin ASU.

What does all of this mean to me? We did not take any X-rays of Saxony's heart or mind; they were plain to see. She stood like a statue for all the pictures, let Dr. B place her feet, one by one, just so. Once, she gently lifted my braid between her teeth while I was kneeling beside her right knee, assisting Dr. B. Any of those German muffins around? Just wondering.

My vet, who I trust, has told me there's little I can't do with my mare. There are no arthritic changes other than those two bone spurs. She traced Saxony's right hind hitch (now almost gone) to bracing against the left front crookedness.  She doesn't recommend taking her over four-foot jumps or into Grand Prix Dressage. She does recommend trying shoes up front, and she told me to think of them as orthotics. The anatomy in Saxony's ankles causes her to wear her hooves unevenly. Dr. B thinks shoes could help protect her joint spaces from compression and stave off arthritis. We agreed any experiment with shoeing should wait until the spring. My homework now is to think about that, and see if I can find a way to get around my bias against shoes. 

I think my other homework is to figure out how I feel about the vulnerability built into my girl. Right now, I feel like it's just reality. I think I'm sobered, but I also think, so what? She's the one.