Horsebackwriter on Tumblr

A friend of mine from work sent me a link to a Tumblr blog written by Horsebackwriter. Like me, she has a bay Arabian. Her mare, Khyssie, reminds me a lot of Isis in her antics and markings. I saw the pictures of Khyssie and immediately had flashbacks to Isis Bint Sirdar. And then I read a post from August 5th that said this:

The groundwork was coming along as scheduled. Everything was textbook. But I noticed something about Khyssie that I’d never seen in any other horse. She seemed to be stumbling and tripping more than any other horse I’d ever been around and at first I thought it was because she was a baby. No need to be concerned, I thought. She’ll grow out of it.

My heart sank. That was exactly how Isis started out with EPM. She tripped, I thought, because she was a clutz or just wasn’t aware of her feet. It started when she was five or six. She tripped with me on her the first time I asked her to canter. A few years later, she fell on me during that riding lesson.

Except it wasn’t her being a clutz. It wasn’t that at all. It was the EPM (neurological disease) coming up years before it flared into full episodes. If we had diagnosed and treated her earlier, life would have been so much easier on her and on me. Maybe she would still be around. (Not going there.)
Isis turning at the trot

I read horsebackwriter’s posts and had this sinking feeling. I didn’t see an easy way to contact her from the blog page, so I joined, hoping to leave a comment. No such luck. I tried to send “fan mail” except I hadn’t been following her blog long enough to send fan mail.

I’m writing this post hoping to get in touch with her. And hoping that her lovely girl was just having an off day and not the same thing that Isis had. I never want anyone to have to go through what I did with Isis.

If you know Horsebackwriter on Tumblr, please ask her to leave me a comment and let me know how her Khyssie is doing.

Related Images:

Similar Posts

  • Belly Gunk

    Some guys get belly button lint, and Isis just gets gunk. About two weeks ago, Isis had a swelling on the right side of her abdomen. Not very large — maybe about a hand long by 2-3 fingers wide. I used a topical tea-tree oil and hydrocortisone ointment on it. The swelling went away after…

  • Bay Mare Boogie!

    The good news continues (yay!). She drank water this morning. She seems to be handling everything well. The path out of the woods continues to brighten. She has been pawing whenever she comes back in from being outside — but it is out of boredom/pissiness rather than pain. She wants to go back outside and…

  • New shoes for Kasane

    After her hock issues, we’ve been evaluating everything with Kasane to try and help her as much as we can. The farrier was out and had a good talk with my vet about some shoe ideas for Kasane.  She has her front shoes on backwards now. This helps alleviate pressure from her front suspensory issue…

  • Lessons from riding

    I’ve had a riding lesson for the past two Saturdays. It has been a roller coaster where my riding skills fluctuated from newbie to advanced. Had my skills degraded? Muscle tone wasn’t as good as it had been in 2008 when we were able to ride more. In 2009, riding time was minimized due to…

2 Comments

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.