So, I have not been on here for a while as we have been busy moving, It feels strange posting about Cass in her early days, as she has changed so much, I have changed so much. However, I feel I need to tell her story and show that a really traumatised horse can come through her trauma and learn to love and trust again. So last time, I finished off by saying I had started to give Cass choices. Simple ones really, did she want to be brushed was the biggest one. She looked so surprised when this was offered, but definitely let me know each time I showed her a brush.
One day, I was with a client, they were not having a session, just popped over to check in. We took Cass out for some grass. She had grazed at this spot many times, but suddenly she had a different attitude to being there. She totally freaked out. She was spinning in circles, rearing up, bucking. All I could do was to go with it. Keep my heart rate low and get out of the way. In the end I had to encourage her to walk back to the pasture where her herd mates were and she then galloped around the enclosure until she wore herself out. She was in full flight mode. Something had triggered her and this was an episode that did not end for a long long time. She is still very herd bound and doesn't like to be away from her herd mates, but these days she is lucid when she lets me know. In these early episodes she was not there. It was scary, I am not going to lie. She would also do this in her stable if her herd mates didn't come in at the same time, or didn't go out in the right order. It didn't take much for her to be set off. We worked on everything. Honestly, I just allowed her to work through it. Each episode would become shorter and shorter and eventually, as long as I was there, she would settle down. I was her anchor.
However, one day, not long after our first episode we were having a conversation about her not walking through a gate to get out to graze. I told her, we were not going to be walking through it, but she was welcome to follow me and we could use her other gate and graze outside her enclosure. I asked her to step back and out of my space and allow me to pass, which she did. I started to walk back and all I heard was the thud of feet and then felt her a wallop to the side of my head and I was on the ground. She had gone past me, kicked out her back legs in pure petulance at being asked to move out of my way and not allowed to going through the gate. I truly do not believe she meant to kick me. I know she was having an opinion and wanted to share that with me. As soon as she saw me on the floor, she ran to the corner and shut down. She gave me concussion and I went to the hospital and checked my wrist and head were not broken. I was OK, but couldn't go to the barn for a couple of days. Cass shut down and was so sad. I went back on the Sunday and she was so sorry, she snuggled with me, but was sad, it came from every pore from her body. To me, it was actually progress, she had become aware of her body again. We had noticed that she was completely disassociated from her hind end and barrel, this was the first time, she intentionally used her body to express an opinion. Normally she would just go into fight or flight and just couldn't see or feel straight. She was waking up.
I was definitely more nervous after this episode, I had brain damage, again! My brain was swollen, I had headaches, I was dizzy and was not as quick on my responses as I should be. Cass would react to that as well, she knew when I wasn't myself and could either be empathic to me or be stressed out due to me not being present. Every time she moved quickly, I leaped in the air about 10 miles high! I was a bit of a hinderance to her progression, but it is OK, this is a journey for both of us.
Throughout the remainder of 2021, we made slow, slow steps. Everything has been in slow motion, there are days that I definitely didn't think I was making any kind of progress and times I felt I should just sell her. However, I knew no one else would understand her and no one else would have the patience for her. She would either be bred again or put to sleep. I was not going to give up on her, I couldn't. Cassie was too sensitive to have Masterson done on her, it released too much too quick. I couldn't have my chiropractor adjust her back as it was too much. So all the other avenues I would explore were currently closed to me until she was ready, we just had to see it through together, slowly. Oh so slowly.
In December. it snowed a lot. The first time she went out, she went crazy, galloped flat out, screaming. It had triggered something in her. It would have been a little over a year that she had been separated from her last foal which had been up North in the snow. That was the only thing I could think would trigger her. After that trigger, she licked and chewed and released whatever was going on. After that, she just had lots of fun in the snow. I loved that she was being able to regulate her own outbursts, releasing after something triggered her, bringing herself back down to the parasympathetic. Had it only been 10 months since I got her. Roll on 2022.
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