M & M was brought from Texas where she was used as a working stockyard horse, and she has the scars to prove it. Several places on her body have gore wounds from working with the cattle. She developed navicular problems as she aged and was abandoned. Fortunately, a Good Samaritan adopted her and set about dealing with her issues. She was nerved in her left front foot because of the severity of the navicular problems. In addition, there were hock, tendon, suspensory and ringbone issues. I didn’t start to work with M & M until she was in her early twenties. At that point she had to be lead outside the barn to be turned around. A 12-foot barn aisle was too tight a space for her to turn.
M & M taught me more than any other single horse I have ever worked on. I learned to look at her issues from multiple angles and change my strategy as the horse changed. She made me take a hard look back at the lessons I had learned from Tony Gonzales – specifically, to look at the whole horse not just the feet and lower legs. Instead of evaluating M & M just once, we (the horse owner and I) went through the steps outlined in the Movement Evaluation on a regular basis. M & M’s situation proves that there are no magic cures. A horse like that has multiple problems so you can’t do just one thing and say that is the fix. It’s our job not to give up by saying that “oh this isn’t working – therefore there is nothing we can do for this horse.” There are always ways to re-evaluate and re-think a horse’s issues if you are willing to listen to what the horse has to say and let go of judgments that aren’t working. There are a lot of things out there on the market and a lot of ideas that are sold as the cure for all problems. There isn’t one magic cure for all problems. Each horse is an individual and each product or technique will work a little different for each horse. It is our job to adapt to new situations and learn from them in order to help our equine friends.