*Tessa is like my crown jewel - I simply adore her, she is a daughter of my deceased mare *Chip's Barefoot Babe (Babe was a piece of my heart!) and her sire is *Spartacus, so she has really excellent breeding and obviously the ability to go in lots of directions.
I have shown her in dressage and endurance and done some jumping with her and lots of trail miles. She has had two wonderful foals for us, both sired by *Sandman, a lovely grulla pinto filly 5 years ago and in 2010 she had a gorgeous black filly.
So, *Tessa has always been a horse with quite a bit of "go" and she has a spook serious enough in her that I would never consider her a beginner's horse! But a year ago when I put her back to work (after weaning her foal) she was just SO much worse than she has ever been - she has been a bundle of nerves that at times has been at best unpleasant to ride and sometimes even seemed to be a bit dangerous, both to me and to herself!
Most cases of horses changing their behaviour so drastically can be pinpointed to being pain related, so I have begun a quest to find out what element has changed for *Tessa - I want my horse back! I started with treating her for ulcers, and this month I will have the chiropractor look at her, but in the meantime I read something about minerals that sounded like it could be her problem. You see, when my mares are pregnant and lactating they get a loose mineral fed to them every day to make sure that their foals are getting enough minerals to grow properly. Once weaned they foal then gets the minerals fed daily until they are about 2 or 3 years old. Of course *Tessa was no exception, she was fed the minerals until she was 3 and she was bred at that age and continued to get them through her pregnancy and beyond. Anyhow, when I did all the math, it has been this last year when she has NOT received the minerals that her behaviour became over the top. So I have put her back on the loose mineral and also on a daily dose of magnesium, she has been on this for about a month now and I think I DO see a difference. Yesterday I took her out for a VERY pleasant trail ride, best I have had with her in a long long time - I am SO happy to have my horse back!
So the lesson here is that if a horse suddenly changes - there is a reason for it and we need to track it down and "make it better!".
I don't have any current pictures of *Tess as we have been riding mostly solo - but here are a couple from last year - she is like a fairy tale horse LOL. Well, the first photo is fairly recent :)
Shelly
Curly Standard Place
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