Ysabelle, Julie and Lady Hawke Photo courtesy of South Eastern News |
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For Love of LadyHawke The Australian Strasser Success Story by Ysabelle Dean Copyright © 2005 Australian Equine Arts www.AusEquineArts.com " I've learned at last that you can take the horse out of the wild but you can never take the wild out of the horse " At the end of October 1999 my best friend Julie Leitl and I hitched up the horse float, loaded up my young daughter's welsh mountain pony, Mollie, and started out on an 800 kilometre journey that was (little did we yet know it) to dramatically change the course of both our lives forever. Destination a remote part of the Southern Highlands of New South Wales, near Sydney in Australia. Mission to capture and tame a ten year old thoroughbred mare who'd been living wild in a herd since birth. This horse was earmarked to become my next dressage prospect. I like a challenge. Julie's role - Cheer Squad/Assistant Wild Horse Wrangler/First Aid Administrator. In anticipation of emergencies she packed a sterilised knife and a bullet to bite on. (There were also a few bottles of Lemon Ruskies in place of anaesthetic, but they didn't survive the trip up.) The plan take a few days to do enough rudimentary training to get this beastie onto the float, using Mollie as a lure, and go like the clappers back to our home town of Upper Beaconsfield in Victoria. LadyHawke's home was a 150-acre property situated seemingly higher than the clouds. It was reached via an appalling one-lane cattle track with sheer drops into abyss-like gullies on either side, and tunnels hacked out of rocky hillsides by our long-suffering convict ancestors. Even the property driveway was a four-wheel-drive job. Mollie took a very dim view of the long haul, not to mention her bleak windy mountain holiday destination, (for a welsh pony she was heavily into creature comforts), and sulked for the entire stay. Julie and I were somewhat disappointed to discover that LadyHawke's owner had managed to trap her in a small yard where she was crashing and banging about. I had wanted to catch her all by myself. But we only had five days and, as the owner pointed out, it could have taken us weeks to get anywhere near this mare. She was certainly, well, wild. And LadyHawke was adjusting with extremely bad grace to all these upheavals in her hitherto uneventful, well-ordered life in the herd. After chasing me out of her yard in full Monstering Mode the first morning, she reacted at first with equal contempt to my woeful attempts at join-up. But suddenly she seemed to decide that if I was going to be It, she'd better make the most of me and preferably not as a breakfast spread. She came boldly up to me and put her head on my shoulder, and that was it for me, really. In sickness and in health, for richer, for poorer, till death do us part. I found myself going weak at the knees. And LadyHawke's knees were pretty weak, too, I noticed at that point. In fact, her whole front end was a bit of a worry. It wasn't just the seriously lumpy knees; the offset cannon bones were not something one hopes to see on one's latest Grand Prix potential. But I hastily looked the other way. Love is supposed to be blind, after all. Over the next few days I was also to hastily look away from other minor problems, such as LadyHawke's horribly ewe-shaped neck, her very straight shoulder, and her too-short back. I also had to ignore a few other little things, such as her wicked ability to kick the eye out of a fly at 20 metres at the speed of light, while simultaneously striking at human skull height with her front legs. Oh, and I was a teensy bit concerned about that roaring sound in her windpipe, not to mention a copious amount of bot fly larvae in her droppings. Nothing that couldn't be overcome, of course But for all her lethal ways and structural imperfections, LadyHawke was actually very quiet and willing. She seemed to enjoy her lessons and really worked hard to get it right. She understood so many simple voice commands by the end of the first session we decided she had spent the last 10 years reading Shakespeare. By the end of Day Two she had learned to be led. Day Three - she was self-loading into the float. By Day Four she had accepted being tied up. And on Day Five she had her first jaunt by road to the nearest town, where she quietly but belligerently eyed the local townsfolk through the float window. Not bad for a mare who'd scarcely laid eyes on even one human in her whole life. She even graciously accepted a fruit tartlet from the local bakery, chewing with thoughtful appreciation on this utterly new and alien taste sensation not a bit like the saltbush that had probably been her staple diet till now. On Day Six we left for home, breaking our journey for the night at Wangaratta, a town near the border between New South Wales and Victoria. LadyHawke behaved like a seasoned traveller, munching on her haynet and enjoying the passing scenery. The traffic did not bother her, not even the huge road trains or a large gang of Hell's Angels bikies who roared past with no thought for a wild horse in transit. But this was still a traumatic experience (for her and us). We were spending the night at a stud farm, thanks to Julie who had used her charms on the manager (and when that didn't work, a slab of beer did the trick). When we unloaded LadyHawke, her heart was visibly leaping in her chest as she stared around with those wild yet doe-like eyes. Nonetheless she settled well and loaded back into the float next day with scarcely a qualm, only pausing long enough to give me a look that seemed to say "Well, I'd rather not, but from now on, where you go, I go." I think I knew then that I had found a horse who would literally follow me through fire. Or maybe it was a case of she'd found me. We made it the rest of the way home without trouble. LadyHawke quickly settled in, and I started her training the gentle Classical way. We took our time - she'd waited 10 years for this, there was no hurry. But within six months she was working quietly under saddle at the walk, trot and canter and learning some simple lateral movements. She accepted me in the saddle as if she'd been born with a rider, and was the most beautiful horse I'd ever ridden smooth, yet extremely powerful. That too-short back could lift and round like that of a much more experienced horse, and already she wanted to collect. She was also a very comfortable horse to ride. Saddle or bareback, I felt we were glued together physically, mentally and spiritually. She obviously liked it that way, too, because if she felt my balance even start to teeter, she would carefully position herself to catch me before I fell. There were a few unbalanced moments, I have to admit. LadyHawke liked to throw one daily temper tantrum to remind me that she was still a wild horse. She would usually do this with a full-on capriole, but sometimes by throwing all four legs in different directions, looking for all the world like an oversized daddy-long-legs doing starjumps. But this was not about trying to get me off. In fact, until I did come off it had obviously never occurred to her that it could happen. I've never seen a horse more shocked as that day I hit the dirt. She ran away and then galloped back, nudging and nickering as if to say "What are you playing at, you idiot!" I made tentative plans for our first competition. I knew LadyHawke would be fine in the ring. She was very bold about being taken to different places, provided I was somewhere within a six-inch radius of her nose. This could cause a few problems when I took her to my trainer's for a lesson and needed to use the toilet. LadyHawke would demand to come, too and, when this wasn't allowed, would stack on a turn of the first water. Many a time I've strolled off to the Ladies, leaving poor Julie dangling several feet above the ground on the end of a leadrope attached to a cavorting, screaming LadyHawke. The only thing that worried me about competitions was her tendency to savage other horses and people. I had visions of her reaching in through the judge's car window and ripping off a head or two But one step at a time. It was about then that, almost overnight, the steps ceased literally. LadyHawke started to plant during our training sessions. At first she would refuse to canter, but soon she didn't want to trot, or walk, or even move. Sure, a lot of green horses do this at some stage, although not to such an extreme degree. She was telling me that she was hurting badly. Enter an entourage of vets, equine bodyworkers and therapists - even a long distance animal communicator was consulted. They found sore spots all over her - shoulder, knees, hip, wither, spinalis dorsi, poll vertebrae, sacroiliac, hocks, stifles, ribs. It wasn't the saddle, it wasn't the training, it apparently wasn't me. The only thing they all absolutely agreed on was that she had extensive deep-tissue scarring that ran from her right flank and hip all the way up to the sacroiliac, and that this damage had occurred in very early life. Massage, Bowen, Chiropractic, Acupuncture, Reiki three am calls to the UK-based animal communicator. It all helped, but nothing seemed to give her more than temporary relief. And then she started to scramble and even fall in the float. There was one nightmarish evening when the only thing that prevented her from breaking her neck was the Hessian scarf I use for transporting young/green horses. This, rather than the headstall, managed to hold the weight of her twisted neck and head until I could unload her travelling companion, pull out the guts of the float and give her room to slide unobstructed onto the floor. Then, while she was still in shock, I had to walk her several kilometres home along a main road in the gathering dark, meeting everything from tourist buses to pushbikes. Fortunately this was LadyHawke and she wasn't too fussed, and she didn't seem to have been seriously hurt. But her problems continued, and a few weeks later she was lame, as well. Once again nobody could really figure out what was wrong, but one vet diagnosed some unknown foot problem, in his opinion probably related to her shocking conformation. He advised me firstly never to breed from her ("Not with a front end like that!") and secondly to shoe her with rolled toes. Reckoned I'd probably get a few years out of her, anyway. It was all wrong. I brought this girl out of the wild where she'd lived frugally but happily for ten years, and now she was miserable with pain. And on top of that, just recently we'd lost our little Mollie to a sudden and severe bout of founder, despite the best conventional farriery and veterinary care money could buy. There was something seriously amiss with the system. By this stage Julie and I had, thanks to a visiting BALANCE saddle consultant, discovered Dr Strasser's books and had devoured them from cover to cover. We were starting to question the role of shoes and physiologically incorrect trimming in lameness and other equine health problems, and Julie had already had her horses deshod. LadyHawke had never been shod, but now I wondered in earnest if corrective trimming was the way to go. Naïve optimist that I was, I was certain my trusty farrier could handle it with the help of instructions taken off the Internet. Okay, so it wasn't Strasser, but weren't all barefoot trims the same? My bemused farrier did his best, and certainly that first barefoot trim helped LadyHawke a great deal. She stood up straight and square again. Her back, which had started to dip, lifted once more. Her straight shoulder became sloping. She moved with more confidence on most surfaces except gravel and sand, and Old Mac Hoofboots overcame that problem. Over the next few weeks I noticed inflammation down the outside of her right cannon bone. Didn't bother her and, when it subsided, I was almost certain that she was not so badly offset - in that leg, at least - and her knee didn't seem so misshapen. Small beginnings. I felt very heartened. Unfortunately it was all a bit of a downhill slide after that for a while. All barefoot trims were apparently not the same, but without the knowledge and the expertise to deal with the myriad of hoof pathologies Julie and I were starting to vaguely recognise, and no Strasser Hoofcare Professional within several thousand kilometres, we were very much figuring it out as we went. We pored over books and drawings, and started telling the farrier how to trim. No wonder he had a hissy fit. The more we studied, the more Julie and I understood that LadyHawke needed help from none other than Dr Strasser herself. But how to get the mountain to Mohamed? Even if I could afford it, I did not fancy a long plane flight to Germany with LadyHawke determined to kick out the fuselage and kill a few attendants just for fun. So Julie and I got together with other like-minded people and formed a committee to organise for Dr Strasser to come to Australia to run a Basic clinic. The day we got her e-mail saying that yes, she would come, is the day our hard-working committee cheered and popped several champagne corks. This was a coup. Especially for LadyHawke. Even my ex-husband was grudgingly admiring as he said, "Only you could get the world's leading authority on lameness on your doorstep to look at that crazy animal!" It was all for love of LadyHawke. And that was where it all really began for LadyHawke and for the Strasser Hoofcare Movement in Australia. Dr Strasser arrived in January 2002. We let her get through the first day of the Basic seminar before we trotted out my little wild horse. Fortunately LadyHawke was in a good mood that day and didn't so much as flatten her ears or bare even one tooth. Dr Strasser diagnosed long-term navicular. She said LadyHawke's bars were so high and so shoved up into the hoof capsule that every step was like walking on drawing pins. She also had unilateral contraction beyond the vertical on both forefeet, crushed heels, severe heel contraction, and was walking on the outside of her feet. Oh, and it was likely she had laterally rotated pedal bones as well. She had become bow-legged as a result, thus making a vicious cycle of incorrect movement even more vicious. As she had been living wild on granite country, which should have meant she was self-trimming, it seemed likely that some other injury had set the problems in motion. Put in context, a lot of things started to make more sense. It seemed probable that LadyHawke had suffered a bad fall in her first year of life, severely tearing the muscles in her right hip and sacroiliac. If we had mountain lions in this country she would have perished then and there. Somehow she had managed to stay on her feet, but the instinctive drive to keep up with the herd, coupled with what must have been severe pain, had forced her to move more like a crab than a horse. This might also explain her savage behaviour when she felt she was under threat: survival became a matter of fight, not flight, for a horse who must have been half-crippled during her formative years. The unnatural way of moving had caused the deformation of her hooves, particularly the left forefoot, affecting all her joints and muscles; hence the bow legs, malformed knees and ewe neck. And then she came to live with me soft ground, nothing like the same amount of movement, no need to forage, no need to do anything except stand around and eat and sleep between her daily training sessions on deep sawdust. The bars grew long, contraction set in, and she became sore all over. I was ready to slit my wrists, but Dr Strasser was not perturbed. "This we can fix," she said. "We just have to dig out the bars." Sure. The problem was, of course, that digging out the bars properly is an ongoing job for someone with extensive Strasser training and there was no one living in the country who had that training. Dr Strasser did her best to show my farrier and me what we could safely do to at least alleviate LadyHawke's discomfort until we had some trained Strasser Hoofcare Specialists in the country, but we all knew it was like putting a bandaid on a burst artery. When the Basic Clinic was over and Dr Strasser had gone, my long-suffering farrier had another hissy fit and drove off in a cloud of dust, never to darken my doorstep again. Which left just me and my newly-purchased right handled F. Dick Knife plus diamond sharpener. Just dig out the bars. No worries. I chickened out and called in the services of a non-Strasser barefoot trimmer. LadyHawke did improve with regular trimming, but her bars had still not been dealt with properly, and I knew we were not doing anywhere near enough to fully reverse her hoof pathologies. Then Julie started making noises about doing the Strasser Hoofcare Professional training, and that was all I needed to hear. It took a lot of arm-twisting and several champagne cocktails at the local pub to clinch the deal, but eventually she got sore enough (and drunk enough) to agree. Of course, as a SHP student, she was going to need some case studies, and what a ripper LadyHawke would be something to really sink her teeth into. Julie was actually more worried LadyHawke would the one sinking the teeth into her. Eventually, after a few more champagne cocktails, Julie agreed to trim all my horses - for a minimal fee while she was on training wheels, naturally. Not a bad night's work, I thought, and worth every bit of the fifty something bucks I shelled out in cocktails. A few days later she arrived to trim LadyHawke for the first time. The only reason she hadn't dressed in a suit of armour for the occasion was because she didn't have one. Well, we got by. LadyHawke could still be an absolute cow about having her back legs handled, but with each leg in an armlock from me, and Julie doing a few swipes at a time, we somehow managed the deed. There were a couple of nasty moments, such as when Julie nearly slit my nostril with her knife and when LadyHawke was so fed up that she lashed out and toppled us both like stacks on the mill. But finally - that first trim was done. Only took us four hours, too. A world record. Now all we had to do was wait for Todd Merrell, who was due out from Canada to run more clinics, to advise Julie (who had not even started her SHP course, after all) how the hell you fix unilateral contraction beyond the vertical when it's combined with bow-leggedness, crushed heels and tilted pedal bones If he had the time - and the courage. LadyHawke had made a pretty fair attempt to kill the last therapist, a chiropractor. We could see the headlines in The Horse's Hoof - "SHP instructor's head knocked off by man-killing Australian mare". Todd did make time to look at LadyHawke. (And LadyHawke made time to look at Todd. Make eyes, more like it. She adored him and behaved like an angel.) Todd felt strongly that her problems could be fixed with regular expert hoofcare. Only trouble was, as Julie gloomily commented, in Australia we were still minus the experts. Not for much longer, though. Julie, who had never sat for an exam in her life till she became a SHP student, sailed through her training with High Distinctions all the way. The more she trimmed, the better she got, and by the final Practicum in June 2003, Todd and Dr Strasser were very pleased with the marked improvement in some of her case studies - including LadyHawke. In less than eight months, Julie reversed most of her pathologies. She decontracted, she no longer has unilateral contraction beyond the vertical, her heel bulbs are full and wide, she holds concavity quite nicely between trims, and her knees, although not perfect, look a lot closer to normal. You would never know she had been severely offset in the cannons, and her ewe neck has gone. She moves so beautifully sometimes now that I can almost taste passage and piaffe. We are out of the holding pattern for her career in dressage. Well, almost. As I said before, LadyHawke likes to have something to object about. First it was her feet, and then it was the bit. So I put her in a bitless bridle. Then she decided wild horses shouldn't wear any tack, so I had to take the saddle off, too. For a couple of days she did some lovely work, and I figured that now was the time to start working on the Equestrian Federation of Australia to change the rules to allow competitors to ride bit-less, saddle-less and shoe-less. But LadyHawke then decided she would prefer a career in the movies and took to rehearsing her "Heigh ho Silver, away!" routine. This included rearing and pawing the sky. She seems to have got over that, and we are now working together with some semblance of grace, beauty and dignity. But she still has days when she insists she cannot possibly canter without waving her legs all over the place, or when she lashes out so hard that she almost parts the hair on my instructor's head. There is no pain for her now; I guess she just wants to remind me that once a wild thing, always a wild thing. To tell you the truth, Grand Prix notwithstanding, I don't really mind a bit. And I'm very glad I didn't put those rolled toed shoes on her for the sake of a couple of years of "soundness". Somehow it seems to me now like the worst possible sacrilege. LadyHawke, Julie and I have been on a long journey together, and we're still travelling. Like LadyHawke, Julie and I have learned to go with our instincts. That has led to Julie becoming one of the first five Strasser Hoofcare Professionals in Australia. She has helped many horses, some who were considered incurably lame by vets and farriers. And I have no doubt she will help many more in the years to come. I've learned at last that you can take the horse out of the wild but you can never take the wild out of the horse. Maybe LadyHawke will one day become a dressage champion, but somehow it's not that important to me any more. More important is that all my horses are allowed to live a barefoot, close-to-natural lifestyle so they can enjoy happiness and good health for the fullness of their years. Sometimes I see such a smug look on LadyHawke's face when she looks at Julie and me. She knows she has changed our lives forever. But, as I often tell her, she can't take full credit. She did have just a little help from someone else Dr med vet Hiltrud Strasser. |
