We have all been very concerned about
Jack's deteriorating state of body and mind. He's becoming even more sluggish, his coat is dull; his demeanor is grouchy. His feet are becoming more tender as the healing in his laminae and sole slowly progresses.
Today, with the help of
Amanda, her grandmother and Joanna, we performed a
kinesiology, or
muscle testing, evaluation to see if we could get some more insight into his condition.
What we uncovered in an hour or so of the evaluation was illuminating.When we focused on issues of
diet, we got back that he was
deficient in certain amino acids;
L-cysteine, L-glutamic
acid, (lack of this contributes to personality disorders),
L-lysine and Taurine (hey, wow! that's in my Monster Energy drink). Everything else in his diet was ok, except he should
not be getting the flax seeds, no "
Red Cell" and stop
Ranitidine - he
doesn't have ulcers.We will be looking at ways to add these missing amino acids to his diet. Preferably, a whole food source, such as
Brewer's Yeast will work. If not, an amino acid supplement will be added to his beet pulp mash.
Physically, he walks poorly because of the laminitis (which we are addressing almost daily) - he needed a massage on the front pasterns; which we did.
Emotionally - he exhibited a "
thyroid emotion" of
fearfulness. After more evaluation, it came out that his
point of fearfulness began when he was accidentally let out of his paddock by a careless gardener. He ran around the property, quite in a panic, and his right hind leg fell into a 6x6 drain hole trapping him momentarily creating several nasty gashes on his leg. I remember the day this incident happened, thinking he seemed
totally panicked about being outside,
alone with no supervision! He was running around
frantically looking for help, or so it felt to me, when I found him. He was happy to see me and came right up to me. He was sweaty and shaking and bleeding. All the other horses, of course, had been stirred up into quite a tizzy, racing back and forth in their paddocks,
contributing to Jack's confusion.He needed to be reassured that this would never happen again.Because of this incident, his
nervous system was always in a
state of fear; mentally he is in a
hyper state of "fight or flight";
he is wearing himself out in his mind and it has created chronic fatigue in his body. Just standing still, he sweats! (
and frets!) It is also interesting to note that when I had blood work done on him a few months ago (worried about his deteriorating condition and odd, lethargic behavior for a 3 yr. old Thoroughbred!) it came back that he had
hyperthyroidism!! It was so
incongruous to me that a horse
so slow and sluggish could have
hyperthyroidism! The doctor could not explain it, either. I never did get a good answer on that one!
I was told to put
Rescue Remedy in his water, which I promptly did!
Also, as mentioned earlier, he doesn't have ulcers now, but he did have an ulcer from the drain pipe incident, which healed.
He is so out of balance internally, no wonder he looks a wreck on the outside. Poor guy! We'll be working to
bring him into a balanced state with the addition of the
missing amino acids and the
Rescue Remedy in his water.
We continue to work with Zim, especially in jumping. He'll make a darling Junior Hunter, don't you agree? He loves to jump!! 
allenging!
But, we're always on the look-out for that small special someone who can bring Zim & Flash along in their jumping careers!
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