02/06/2025
❤️ The journey of horsemanship is never ending.
Before banging out another post today, I need to stop and do something, first.
I need to thank all of you who read Credo and Flint’s stories this week, who felt compassion for me—rather than ridicule, for I have been shoveling so much money into these two, on the quest to find that elusive thing called The Answer—and then, you sent your well-wishes and also, your money. I'm rendered speechless.
Social media isn’t supposed to work this way! It’s flaky and judgmental, with creeps and stalkers and words meant to hurt! Isn’t it? Isn’t that what we’re told to believe? Anyway, you folks have made me see that we’re all real people, no matter where we live and what our profile pictures look like, that we DO care and we do good works in the world around us.
Credo and Flint and I can only THANK YOU and vow to do our best to make things better.
***
Yesterday, in the dark, the wind, the fog and -30C/-22F temperatures, it was Cinnabar’s turn. There had been a last-minute cancellation at the vet/osteo clinic and they’d phoned to ask, would I want to brave the roads with ‘that other horse who might have geld scars’? Hell, yeah!
I mean, yes, please.
The truck was plugged-in the absolute minimum of time, to allow life to pulse through her veins. The trailer was hooked-up—and why, oh, why, is everything so much harder at -30, than it is on an ordinary day? Cinny was caught, the ice chiseled from out of his feet, he was quickly rugged up and loaded. And we were off.
What I saw yesterday during his appointment, was an unreal combination of science and mystery. The eighteen-year-old, high-mileage gelding was given a lameness evaluation, a quick round of osteo to pinpoint problem areas and then, he was sedated to go into the stocks for a pelvic examination.
Only with an internal look and feel, would the vet be able to see whether the geld scars had shrunken and thickened, if they had adhered to the abdominal wall. If so, were there other organs compromised? In Cinnabar’s case, it was yes and yes and yes.
At one point, the vet stopped with her arm deep inside my horse's body, turned to her assistant and quietly said, “We’re working on a career horse today.”
It took me a moment to realize that the extent of this gelding's internal scarring was such that she would long remember and refer back to his case, in the years ahead. A dubious honour, if ever there was, for our game little working man.
It was explained to me that while the term ‘geld (or gelding) scar’ is still a new one in much of the world of equine health, it has long been an issue for the males who are surgically castrated, no matter the age of the horse.
Due to how the horse was gelded in the first place and any subsequent complications—such as undue swelling or bleeding and whether or not the cords running to the testicles were able to ‘snap’ back into position, without healing in a ‘stuck’ or pulled way—meant the horse stood a good chance of healing poorly. Healing that would cause the horse to endure a life of chronic pain.
What I'm sharing with you is not a scientific document on the issue of geld scars. It is what I saw and retained in the words of a layman and if it intrigues you, if it makes you wonder about your own horse(s), please take the initiative to find and speak with equine specialist vets who will listen to you and then, who are willing to guide you.
I learned that when scarring occurs, in any part of the body, the tissues shorten and thicken. We’ll see this in the proud flesh that often occurs in a bad wire cut on a pastern. The same thing can happen internally when a horse is gelded. Breed, size or age of the horse aside, all geldings are at some risk of this happening.
New teaching methods that take into account the amount of bleeding and the position of the cords are reducing the number of geld scar cases, moving forward. This is very good news.
For the horses who were gelded in the past, however, many of them were not so lucky. When I asked the percentage of geldings who have scarring issues and chronic internal pain, my vet was unsure of an exact figure. Seeing mainly horses who need manual releasing of this internal scar tissue in her practice, she admits her own estimate may well be skewed.
“Maybe 75-80% of all aged and working geldings?” she surmised. That’s rather a lot, in a longstanding problem that many of us are only hearing about now!
The degree of discomfort a horse might feel varies, of course. From a mild pulling between the hind legs, to scarring that has the bladder adhered to the side of the body cavity, lesions running right up underneath the topline, the spleen pulled backwards and to the left, hind limbs that have been unable to move freely which results in career-threatening arthritic changes… these are just some of the symptoms we’ve seen in Cinnabar and very likely, in Credo, too.
Cinny was fortunate in that the health care team was prepared to work on him straightaway. He would be spared the months' long wait list. The sorrel stood in the stock, totally relaxed and chill with sedation, while the vet palpated him rectally, along with a hand-held probe for the guidance of internal ultrasound.
On the monitor, his scarring was extreme. Suddenly, I was able to see why he was always ‘quirky’, with reactions to saddling and cinching, always ‘cow-kicking’ at his tummy as though colic was brewing. Why he stepped quite short behind, oh-so-pleasant to sit at a jog trot over long hours on the ranch, mind. And why he was beginning to show chronic lameness in the shoulders. This, because the horse wasn’t ‘moving through’, or truly pushing off, from behind.
I was getting a scientific window into those age-old terms of ‘throughness’ and 'straightness', words that don't just mean 'lovely to watch and ride'. A horse must go well, in a ‘biomechanically correct’ fashion, to use another trending term, if he is to enjoy a long life of wellness and pain-free riding. Period.
After the adhesions around his bladder and spleen were pulled apart—the vet said that it was like removing sticky price tags, or separating strips of Velcro—she then changed gloves and examined Cinny from inside his waterworks, below. After all was deemed clear from that angle, he awoke to have a second round of osteopathy.
Regarding the horse's devolving posture, we have our work cut out for us. Due to the constant tightening and shortening of his tissues within, Cinnabar is actually flattening through the croup and starting to show a swayed back. This isn’t a new thing but will have been happening over time and it is painful for a horse, especially when carrying a load.
Cinny will have five days' rest and with any luck, Mother Nature will take pity on me and we’ll have a run of warmer weather for the prescribed in-hand exercises to help rebuild his posture. Tucking his loin, cat stretches, trot poles and lateral stretching are just some of what's on the menu, along with further rebuilding his working movement, later on. All these are doable and well within my wheelhouse.
I’m actually looking forward to working with this beloved family horse, doing my best to make sure his final chapters are good ones, free of any regrets. When we know better, we can do better, right? Cinnabar will also be on daily 4-CYTE, the joint supplement that in 84% of recorded cases, has been proven to reduce the symptoms of osteo-arthritic changes in horses and in dogs. (Only Australia, so far, allows it for human use.)
Looks like I’ll be busy out at the corrals, working with these teen geldings who will need supplementing and exercise therapy for the remainder of their working lives.
This, too, is horsemanship, I have decided. It ain’t all ribbons, pretty pictures and bragging rights.
When it comes to health and wellness, we have to see it to soothe it. The sheer relief that comes from knowing where you stand, what you are dealing with, that you’re not going crazy or imagining things, is immense. Whether it's physical or emotional in origin, we have to name it to tame it!
This was the beautiful view on our drive home.
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