Teresa's Take 1: THE DIXIE DIET
Dixie is my good riding horse. She is gentle, well behaved and well-trained. She's also an easy-keeper. That means it doesn't take much food to keep her full-figured! Well, this spring full-figured became obese. Little did I realize, I had a BIG problem on my hands.
Dixie June 2005
Dixie September 2005
When it came time to get some shoes on for trail riding season, the farrier stepped up to her and said, "You've foundered this horse!" Hmmm. One of my riding friends had been telling me that I was going to founder Miss Dixie, but I can't say that I really understood her or the term "founder." I thought of it as something that affected ponies not horses. I was in for an education.
I hadn't been riding Miss Dixie as much as I should, so she wasn't getting a lot of exercise, yet I had been letting her graze day in and day out with my other two mares. I had also been feeding each one a scoop or two of grain-a luxury as the vet calls it-in the morning and in the evening. I wanted them all well fed, i.e., healthy. Isn't that what we figure, if something is well fed, it will be as healthy as a horse?
Dixie was to the point where she couldn't run, and she could hardly walk. She was rocking back trying to place more of her weight on her back legs. She had developed a condition known as laminitis. The laminae starts pulling away from the hoof wall, and that's painful. If left untreated, the coffin bone sinks and one's horse is forever lame. But what does eating too much have to do with laminitis?
Well, she was bad enough that I called my big animal vet. Sure enough, she was on the verge of foundering. He felt her pulse down in her front legs. It was pounding. He pinched her hooves; she flinched. "Teresa," he said, "Stop the grain and get her off of that grass. Give her two flakes of hay a day" he said. Just two flakes of hay a day, I thought. That's so little. I said, "How about an apple cookie?" He laughed and said, "Okay, one apple cookie." "How about some carrots?" I said. Acting a bit disgusted with me, he said, "ONE APPLE COOKIE!" Then he punched her side and asked me, "Do you see that jiggle? That's an obese horse." I looked at him and said, "We kill them with kindness, don't we? We do it to our dogs, our cats, our kids and ourselves." He went on to explain that I needed to limit the amount of carbohydrates that Dixie consumed. Hmmm. This was starting to sound familiar-obesity, carbohydrate metabolism disorder, peripheral vascular problems. Sounded like diabetes to me. After asking him more questions and reading some equine research journals, I found that, yes, it's basically the equivalent to diabetes in humans. Dixie has metabolic syndrome, and one of its manifestations is laminitis/founder. I could hardly believe it. Horses can suffer from diabetes too.
Three months later Dixie made it to a healthy weight. I persevered and made her follow the Dixie diet-two flakes of hay plus one, AND ONLY ONE, apple cookie a day. Early on I couldn't exercise her much; she was too lame. So, I could only manipulate the energy intake side of the energy balance equation. That made it rough at first, but after the lameness subsided I was able to gradually increase her activity-a few more pedometer steps everyday!
Here I am, I have a degree in exercise science, and I overfed and under exercised my horse to the point of her developing metabolic syndrome. That's a bit hard for me to admit. The phrase "Physical Activity is for Every BODY" rings true for humans, for dogs, for cats, for horses, for all bodies. Yes, all of our bodies work better when we move more.
