Holly Ann Such – Cushings – Healthier Coat – More Spry -

Thin Soles – Feeling Better – Stopped Swaying in Stall

 

John Dowdy:

Hello and welcome to this week's Equinety Podcast. We're going to swing over into St Augustine, Florida. And we've got Holly Ann Such on the Equinety Podcast this week. Holly, welcome to the Equinety podcast.

Holly Ann Such :

Thank you so much. I'm very excited to be here.

John Dowdy:

Well, we're excited to have you as well for another great story. I actually came across one of your comments on our Facebook advertising, and what caught my eye was you said, "This stuff works!" with three exclamation points. And then the next line is what got me. You said you were contemplating, "putting my mare down, because she was always in so much pain with her thin sole." So this was a last ditch effort. So tell us about your mare, what her... She's retired now, but what she was doing in her previous life, how long you've had her, and what you were dealing with?

Holly Ann Such :

So originally my mare came over from the Netherlands as a jumper, and after she retired from that, we decided to put her into dressage. So my trainer and I worked her up the levels, and we just always knew that her feet weren't fantastic. So we thought being in dressage was probably the best way for her to go. And even in the dressage work, the pressure was too much. She would always end up blowing an abscess, and then we would heal her from that one, get her back in shape, and then another one. It was just a rotating door. We were never really able to keep her sound much longer than a few weeks at a time. So at that point I decided the best thing for her was for me to go ahead and retire her about four years ago, when she was 16.

John Dowdy:

Right. And so with as you're describing one hoof issue, then the next one I picture when I would take my son to a Chuck E. Cheese, and that one little game where you had the big mallet, and you're trying to whack each one of the little things, the clowns that are popping up. It's like you get this one fixed, and then you got one over here, and then one over here. So it was just a battle all the time. And you were having to use a Bute as I understand, to try to deal with the pain. But she also had a great farrier. So you were able to manage with what you had pretty much all the time?

Holly Ann Such :

Yeah. Yes, pretty much. We tried to only give her Bute really every time we would put a new set of shoes on her, or we would try something different with her, she would get really, really sore. And we tried everything from pads, glue on shoes, every type of different shoe you could think of. My farrier and my vet even contacted other, at some farriers around the United States to get ideas about what to do with her. And just nothing seemed to work. And she would just be in so much pain after each trimming that we would have to give her Bute just to make her comfortable.

Holly Ann Such :

And then within the last probably six, seven months, she was just in so much constant pain all the time that we started her on a daily dose of Bute, which at that point is when I decided she probably didn't have the best quality of life. And that's when I was contemplating on having to euthanize her. So that's where we were as far as trying to keep her as comfortable as possible, because other than her feet, she's a pretty healthy girl, and everybody loves her. So we just wanted to do what we could for her, but.

John Dowdy:

Yes. Now in addition to the battling that you were having with her hooves, she's also a Cushing's horse. So you were dealing with things along that using Prascend, and dealing with lots of clippings from long coats.