Both Weather Wiz and Chaco are direct descendants of Man o’ War through the same line….In Reality.
Chaco is Texas bred. Chaco’s sire, Captain Countdown, is also Texas bred, and the fee to breed to him was $500.
Weather Wiz is Kentucky bred, and his sire is the great Tiznow, who was bred in California. His highest breeding fee was $75,00, and Tiznow stood in Kentucky at Winstar.
Chaco would be considered a low level claimer racing primarily in New Mexico, Arizona, and also in Texas. For the record there was nothing low level about Chaco.
Weather Wiz raced on the New York circuit before going to Gulfstream where he was claimed. He then raced on the mid-Atlantic circuit.
Chaco won five times, and he came in second six times as well as in third six times. He earned just over $48k.
Weather Wiz raced 33 times winning six times. He came in second eight times, and he came in third four times making almost $309k.
They both finished in the top three 17 times.
I told Wiz that their earnings should be equal since Chaco went down in a race, had two horses go over him, and he lived to tell the tale. Wiz agreed.
Similar stories with very different track experiences, both direct descendants of Man o’ War through In Reality, and they found each other here in Colorado.
Each morning they were together, and they became instantly close. Chaco taught him how to play and passed on his knowledge. Chaco was a lot like Wiz is today… racing for many years, coming off the track, and having to learn what being a horse with other horses was like without a human controlling their every movement. Chaco had a lot of knowledge to share, and often I saw Wiz intently listening and learning from Chaco.
Two warriors becoming the best of friends in a short time.
A horse isn’t meant to put all of his weight on three legs. Compensation for an injury wears everything else out in their body, and no matter what you do to try and ease the compensation, it is a battle you can’t win. You tread water at the same place for a long time until you hit a slide down a hill you’ve been trying to avoid. Once you find the plateau, you tread water again until you get sucked down another slide, where you tread water as long as you can while eyeing the next slide hoping you can keep it as far away as possible. You desperately try to find answers staying up late at night Googling everything you can, writing to the most prominent vets in the country, and reading any new studies released only to realize you are on the precipice of another slide downward.
Stifle injuries are complicated. There is no magic surgery to fix a stifle. You can’t fuse it, because it is a high motion joint, and once the cartilage is gone, it is gone. Nothing out there regenerates it.
Chaco, as I mentioned in my last blog, went down in a race. He was brought up on the inside along the rail. All of his other races he went wide away from all of the traffic. He had a big stride. This time on the inside he clipped heels, went down, and two other horses went over him. One kicked his stifle breaking some of the bone off into big chunks. His pelvis was fractured along with a rib. He recovered and raced two months later winning his first race back.
Unfortunately, they never removed the bone chunks. (For the record, they were not chips. They were the size of your adult, front teeth.) Instead they blistered him probably so his muscles and tendons wouldn’t rub against the bone chunks. He raced for a year, and those chunks worked their damage on the femorotibial joint in his stifle. When I adopted him, we had them removed, but the damage was severe. I was told that he would never be truly sound, and each day was on borrowed time.
I created med pens trying to restrict Chaco’s movements while allowing him to be surrounded by his friends and be out in the sunshine he so loved. It might be close to 100, and he would sunbathe. After all of those years in a stall, he was a devout sun worshipper. If I tried to confine him in a stall, he often crow hopped until I let him back out into the sun.
I gave him shots in his neck each week of glucosamine and pentosan once a week, which at first really helped. After a year, their ability to help faded and faded.
We literally spent thousands of dollars on his leg each year trying to keep him sound…trying to ease his need to compensate.
I tried different injections such as IRAP, ProStride, which never worked. After one horrible winter, I found out that Noltrex was finally available in the US. He got that, and it was like a miracle. He went from being severely lame to being able to walk with ease. I have a ridiculous amount of pictures of Chacoi resting his left leg after that injection. He finally was able to give his left hindleg a break.
I made him a promise that I would never let him get like that again. If he did, I would do right by him.
After his last Noltrex injection a month ago, I noticed it wasn’t helping him. He was a yo-yo in how he would do from day to day. I tried everything and then he slipped. After that, the story is between Chaco and I, but I did right by him. He was done. He was tired. He wouldn’t even try to play with the horses anymore.
That last morning, Wiz wouldn’t go up to the pasture with the other horses. He stayed with Chaco….standing by his side.
I hoped he would die from anything else but from his racing injury. No matter how hard I fought, I couldn’t give him that. I had to put down a completely healthy horse, because of his leg. If your horse has chips in those legs, get them out immediately. Don’t wait for them to cause your horse to be lame, because if you do, it is too late. If they would have removed them immediately while he was racing, a simple $3k surgery, Chaco would still be alive today. Get those chips out!
Compensation for an injury is a huge price for a horse when prolonged. He compensated for six years, one of which he raced. I’m not going to share what it was like for us the last two weeks. That is between us. All I will say is he changed. He knew. I knew.
I stayed with him long past his last agonal breath. I’ve been fighting to keep him alive for five years. How do you stop fighting? How do you let that fight go when it is part of your daily routine.
I asked my horse Shandoka who always looked after him to give me a sign that Chaco was with him. Shandoka’s name meant Storm Bringer. Even though rain wasn’t supposed to start until 8 hours later, a storm gathered around us. It started to rain lightly, and then the clouds opened up forming a circle above us with the brightest sunlight pouring through as it continued to rain. Probably to anyone looking our way, they saw a rainbow.
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A few days before all of this I had to scrub out Chaco’s water tank. He loved to help me. He stood next to me, and whenever I stirred up the water for the water pump, he would stir it and splash me. He then would take a long slurp. When horses hold water in their mouths, their tongue will stick out a bit. While I was scrubbing, he would put his tongue on the back of my neck and let the water dribble out all over me. Each and every time I scrubbed the tank he did this, and he got a kick out of it each time. This is the horse I will remember….not his leg problems…but how my Gentle Giant loved to play…how he loved life.
Chaco’s Jockey Club name was Lesis More. There was nothing “Less” about him. He was everything.
I want to thank everyone that supported him in some way. You know who you are. We great appreciate you. I will be offline for awhile as I try to help my other boys get through this.
It’s bitter cold, and a snowstorm is on the horizon. I tighten up my jacket around my waist to block the wind. I’m standing next to Chaco begging his left leg to stay strong one more night. Just one more night, I whisper, that is all we need. I hug him to the point of annoying the heck out of him, when I see resignation in his eyes. He is starting to give up. Scared I head back to the house where I watch him on the cameras. I see an image next to him. I check the other cameras, and this image makes no sense. The other horses are on camera 3, yet there is another dark horse standing with Chaco on Camera 2.
Chaco, if you know me or followed my blog for a while, went down in a race several years ago and was run over by two other horses. He got kicked in the stifle, broke his pelvis, and broke a rib. The kick in the stifle is what haunts him to this day. That kick caused three marbles the size of adult teeth to break off and meander and destroy the cartilage in his femoropatellar joint. I fine myself every time I call them chips because they are anything but chips. After three hours of arthroscopic surgery, it took that long due to difficulty finding one of the marbles, I’ve spent the past couple of years trying to maintain his stifle.
The three marbles before they were removed
You can see within the circle the area that broke offThe MarblesAll of the damage
If any of you suffer from arthritis or have a horse that does, you know winter brings on feelings of dread and fear. How will they get through it? You wonder if this the winter where it becomes clear that your beloved horse can’t do it anymore. It is not easy for you or the horse, and it is a grave challenge for Chaco. Last winter he struggled, but this winter he plummeted. He slipped on a bit of mud, and his leg went downhill. He no longer could put full weight on his right leg. He was trying to tripod it meaning he was standing with his left leg directly under him trying to support his hind end. Instead of getting better, he remained the same no matter what I did.
I feared that his racetrack injury finally caught up with him, and the time to say goodbye was near. However, despite the pain he obviously was in it didn’t diminish his spirit at all. As long as his spirit was strong, then I needed to fight for him. I heard about Noltrex, a new type of injection, but it was available anywhere but our country. A few European friends told me about it saying how much it helped their horses. When this happened to Chaco, a friend got injections of Noltrex on her horse’s front knees in the states. This is when I found out Noltrex was finally available in the US, and I couldn’t believe the transformation on her horse. However, would it work on a stifle? The answer is yes! It is made for joints like the stifle. According to their FAQ:
What joints should I consider injecting with Noltrex®Vet?
The short answer is any joint. Initially, Noltrex®Vet was recommended for high motion joints. Common examples would include coffin joints, fetlocks and stifles. However, other joints considered low motion joints (limited movement, but important) have also shown great improvement from Noltrex®Vet therapy. The most common example of a low motion joint would be lower hock joints.
What is Noltrex? Here is how they describe it:
Noltrex®Vet (4.0% Polyacrylamide) is a highly viscous, non-soluble, synthetic hydrogel for intra-articular injection. The hydrostatic pressure inside the joint presses the gel up against the inner linings of the joint where it forms a fine, lubricating film. By restoring functional joint lubrication, Noltrex®Vet reduces friction and physically protects the joint from the adverse effects of overuse which leads to inflammation and pain.
I decided this was it. This is what he needed, and I wrote to my vet asking him to order it.
A friend of mine acted as devil’s advocate for me even though I really didn’t need or want it, yet it was appreciated. She is very anti-injection, and she also believes if a horse can’t be ridden, they should be put down. She challenged every single one of my decisions and helped me realize, much to her chagrin, that I made the right choice to go ahead with this.
I understand why people are anti-injections. Many people do it to mask serious injuries and work a horse beyond their capabilities. I have neither hope nor plan to do this. All I want is to give him more time with his horse buddies, to let him enjoy his life, and to spend more time with him if he is pain free. He deserves it. If I’m lucky, maybe I can pony him with Dulce a few times this summer on easy rides. Maybe he can pony Sueño on his first excursions into the forest. He is such a good mentor to Sueño, and I want him to keep teaching him what he knows.
My friend says that all I’m getting is borrowed time. Is that such a bad thing? To borrow some more time for him? He is a happy horse that loves to live. He somehow survived a really bad wreck on the track, so I think he deserves to have someone fight for him and give him some more time. He lives to play with the other horses and to sleep in the sunshine.
The morning of his first injection, I ran out to check on him. His left leg was holding strong. His eyes sparkled despite the pain I knew he was in. Hope coursed through my veins. I loaded him and off we went to the vet. The thing I like the most about Noltrex is no special machine is needed like for IRAP. My vet doesn’t do IRAP, and instead of needing five injections as it was recommended for Chaco regarding IRAP, he would need two at the most. I didn’t need to go to a vet I didn’t know. Instead. I got to go to our primary. All positives in my mind. The injection went in well. He didn’t fight it or even flinch like he did when we tried the ProStride.
First Injection
I wondered if I’d see any improvement at all after the injection. When I got him home, I was surprised to see that he no longer looked like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. He stood squarer, although he still favored his right leg some. He was supposed to rest for three days before I started taking him for two ten-minute walks a day. On the third day of rest, he protested a lot. He dumped his water bucket, which he would only do if his stifle didn’t hurt. He has to put one of his front hooves into the water bucket, and then he leans back onto his hindlegs pulling the bucket over. This was a great sign! Off we went. He did really well. Each day we went on a walk he seemed to improve more and more. From what I learned; the horse will improve over the four weeks after the injection. Also, you aren’t supposed to put them back to regular work for ten to fourteen days as inflammation may develop at site of injection. Since Chaco has a severe injury, my plan is to bring him along slow.
Each day I saw him improve little by little. He stood more and more square, and I finally could trim his hooves again, which is a huge relief.
On our walks he began to trot. One morning it got down to ten degrees, so I ran outside dark and early to wait for Chaco to wake up. When he got up, he took three stiff steps, and then he walked normally. It took all day, if not days, for the stiffness to disappear in the past. Maybe we finally found a way to get him through the winter!
I about started to cry when he began spontaneously resting his left leg. This means that he is standing with full weight on his right/injected leg.
Resting the left leg is one of the most beautiful sights to my eyes
He improved to a point that thrilled me beyond belief. It brought him back from the edge of the abyss, but he wasn’t to the point where I felt he could be turned out with Dulce or Harley. This is one of my goals for him, because he so needs to be with another horse. They say that if your horse improves to a point yet stalls, to get the second injection at the 5th or 6th week. So, for Chaco’s 12th birthday, he got a second injection, and I’m hoping and praying this brings him to a place where he and his best buddy, Dulce, can hang out together again.
What is next? Well, today is his 12th Birthday and Dulce’s Adoptaversary. I plan on loving them both incessantly all day. Chaco gets to rest for a few days, and then we start going for walks again. After a couple of weeks. I will start to incorporate some pole work into his daily walking to try and strengthen the muscles on the right side. He will be getting body work done once or twice a week to try and help balance his body. He has stood and worked a certain way for four years, so we also need to work on reeducating his body posture. Hopefully, he and I will go for some lovely walks through the forest together soon, and he and Dulce will be able to hang out together once again. Yes, borrowed time yet sweet, wonderful time.
I want to thank my vet John Shull for putting up with my constant questions, and for doing such a great job with Chaco. A big part of the reason why Chaco was ready to go for a walk on the third day was because of the excellent job he does at injections. Chaco was barely even sore the next day. I am truly grateful to have such a great vet in our lives.
Who was that horse that I saw on the cameras that night? I don’t know. I was sure a horse had jumped the five foot fence into their dry paddock. Of course that wasn’t the case. All I can say is that I saw a dark bay horse eating alongside Chaco until I didn’t. A wave of comforting faith that all would be well washed over me…..
Reenchanted Thoroughbreds 