051 - Elizabeth Downey - Chronic Bursitis - Lame to Sound Performance Horse

 

John Dowdy:

Hello and welcome to this week's Equinety podcast. We are swinging way up north, at least that's way up north for me. I'm down here in Southwest Florida. We're going across the border up into Montreal, Canada. Elizabeth Downey, welcome to the Equinety podcast.

Elizabeth Downey:

Hi, John. I'm really happy to share my story with you.

John Dowdy:

Good. Well, we're excited to have you and I believe, as it is right now, you are our first Canadian guest here on the Equinety podcast, which is exciting.

John Dowdy:

Tell us a little bit about the horse that you have. You're in the barrel racing world. Tell us a little bit about the history of your horse and what you were dealing with prior to finding Equinety and then how you found Equinety and what your experience was in the initial stages.

Elizabeth Downey:

All right. So Heidi is a seven-year-old quarter horse that I purchased from my father. She was a roping horse before and I was looking for something to be a little bit more competitive at the show. So my dad said I should try this horse, and eventually she came to be really, really good. So I had some of my good friends, Karen [Chantaz 00:01:11], that was using the Equinety and I thought, I should really give it a try.

Elizabeth Downey:

So I put the mare on the product and she started really blooming during the season, went from 3d times to 2D times to 1D times. She was very focused and she was very constant to doing a run. So at the end of the year, I was talking to some vets. They were talking about the product saying it was a shake and I should not give that if I wasn't giving exercise to my horse. So not knowing any better, I stopped using the product. And when I started training the mare again for the next season, 2019, she came up really, really lame.

John Dowdy:

Yeah. So let me jump in real quick. So you started in the season with the Equinety product in 2018 through the summer. And this is where you started seeing all the benefits that you're clocking from 3D to 2D to 1D. You're just noticing obviously the faster times, but focus, recovery, the stamina and everything is going great.

Elizabeth Downey:

Yeah, exactly.

John Dowdy:

And then you get to the end of the season, 2018, you're coming around to beginning of 2019 and you show this to your vet and they just say, "Oh, well that's just like a shake. Don't waste your money?" That's kind of what you were told?

Elizabeth Downey:

Yeah, that was pretty much it. I didn't know any better and then I thought, of course, I'm going to try to keep some money around and then I stopped using the product is my biggest regret because when I started training the mare again at the beginning of 2019, I started having some really sore feet. Of course, there was different showing involved and stuff like that, but she just didn't look how she was the summer before. So I got her checked by the vet and then she started being lame. She was so lame at one point that you could tell it was a four out of five lame on a walk.

Elizabeth Downey:

So I tried with the vet different orthopedic shoeing. We tried pads, we tried degree pads, we tried egg bars, we tried to injection. I tried to keep her in the stall for a certain amount of time. I try to walk her. We tried just stuff from, I'd say, March until August and there was a lot of money involved into this.

Elizabeth Downey:

So I decided, you know what, I have nothing to lose. She was doing great when she was on Equinety. I'm just reading all those stuff, all those papers and all the people saying it's ...