Almost A Miracle - Feb. 5, 2007

Video just 2 weeks after starting Jiaogulan:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFs41dqEb9U

ALMOST because nothing supernatural has transpired...

But MIRACLE because it's awfully close.

You might be thinking, "Oh no, another Poor Sadie tale."

Her struggles just pull at people's heartstrings, and it's very hard for some people to read about her.

I HAVE GOOD NEWS THIS TIME!

(please excuse all the exclamation points, but I am just so ecstatic!)

A few months ago a friend emailed me an article about Jiaogulan, a Chinese herb, often referred to as J or J-herb. It was a very clinical article and I didn't absorb much and didn't follow up on it.

After hearing about other horse's improvements on it since then, I got hold of some and began Sadie on it 2 weeks ago exactly. I had to stop the Bute, which she has 3 days out of the week, because they interfere with each other. Usually she can't go longer than 3 days without it or she stops moving at all and loses her appetite.

Over the last 9 years I have tried every joint medication and supplement, changes in diet and nutrition, massage, chiropractic, magnets, some off-the-wall, little heard of treatments...everything, and nothing has helped her much, if at all except a Kenilog (used to be Vetalog) shot every 2 or 3 months and Bute a few times a week for the last 3 years...

We know that's not good for her...Surprisingly, she doesn't have ulcers.

I have not put any recent pictures of her in my album because she looks so pitiful that I am embarrassed about her condition.

She is very thin, (#2 body rate), She walks in little steps because her feet are deformed and look like she has foundered. Her knees have huge calcified bulges, and hardly bend. So do her stifles. She has not been lying down at night since October because it takes her hours to get up. She walks with her head hanging below her withers all the time, like it is just too heavy to hold up...Very sad.

Although I have been thinking of it lately, I have not put her to sleep because she clearly wants to live. Her heart is still young but her body is failing her. Many, many nights when she is not doing well, I can't sleep because I am alternately crying when I should be sleeping, and then going out in the yard in my nighty to see if there's anything I haven't thought of that I can do to help her.

This is the diary of improvements on this herb:

DAY 1; She has her first dose Saturday 5 pm, 2 weeks ago.

DAY 2: In the morning when I went to feed, she held her head up higher than she has in the last 2 years, to watch me fill the buckets..

DAY 3: She is walking faster...(walking her up the street a few hundred feet and back again used to take 20 minutes instead of the 5 minutes it should).

DAY 4: Sadie was down in the morning.

I thought, "Oh no...she was feeling so good that she got overconfident and layed down and now she can't get up."

But she was up before I finished filling the buckets! Later in the day I noticed that her strides were up to about 2 feet long instead of her usual baby steps.

DAY 5: She is walking with energy and force today. Normally when she walks on pavement, you can't even hear her hoofbeats because she is walking so carefully on the most level surface she can find.

Today I can hear her hoofbeats, clup, clup, clup clup (a slightly hollow sound) She has chosen to walk on the uneven grassy shoulder rather than the pavement she usually prefers. That means that the soles of her feet are feeling the hard pavement and that her ankles are increasing in flexibility to be able to walk comfortably on the uneven ground.

DAY 6: Sometime after the morning meal, when I returned from an errand, I found her lying on her bad side, that is the one that she can't get up from, with her feet propped against the chain link fence.

From the tracks and hoofprints it looks like Dixie may have cornered her there, and when Sadie tried to scoot through some little tree trunks, she slipped and fell.

Gloria came over and helped me flip her over. Usually she rests a bit , then tries to get up. ..But she got up so fast Gloria and I almost got trampled!

DAY 7: For the last couple of years, in spite of my trying to trim Sadie's hind feet level (when she's lying down at night), she wears the outside more than the inside.

She very often holds her left foot in the air or cocks it when she is snoozing.

She also shifts her weight from one hind to the other frequently. She has almost entirely stopped doing this sometime in the last few days. It is a pleasure to see her truly resting.

DAY 8: Sadie is gliding around the yard! She has lost the robotic and lurching movements which make her seem so frail and precarious.

DAY 9: In spite of her uneven hooves, Sadie is standing square for the first time in years! Head is even higher now and eyes are bright.

She is getting out of the other horses' way much faster now. In fact she is getting so confident that at feeding time, instead of going wa-ay down to the far end of the yard (about 150 feet) and hiding in the trees til Dixie is penned for feeding, she is milling around at a mere 50 feet away.

DAY 10: I have seen signs on the ground that Sadie is lying down at night and getting up without a problem. The times she has had a problem in the past there were deep trenches by her feet where she tried and tried.

Her marks in the ground are very different from the other horses. Also, I can see sand on that side of her body and a little rub mark on her hip where she pushes off from.

DAY 11: Sadie took a walk by herself today. When I am working in the yard I will let her mosey up and down the street in front of my yard so she can graze on the shoulder. Gliding away from me, her metallic mane and tail rippled in the sunset glow as she browsed the ground. Haven't seen that for years .

DAY 12: Gloria came by for coffee today. As she was leaving, she immediately noticed how bright eyed and alert Sadie was (so it's not my imagination)...just like the old Sadie in the days when she rode Blue and I rode Sadie on the trails.

DAY 13: Today she is even more alert and sniffing the ground and fence near Romeo's bucket, scrounging for wisps of hay and forgotten bits of feed. It is like a whole new world of senses has opened up for her. The other horses do this, but I have never seen her do this.

I finally have a break from my drawing, headaches and depression and have taken the horses out for grass, staking out Romeo and Toffah (who would be at the other end of the county if I didn't) and letting Sadie loose. I had Dixie on a lead rope, but the snap came loose and she wandered off next door into their jungle of tall grass (saves them weedwhacking).

Sadie walked about a 1/4 mile up the street (glistening with an orange glow) and back again in about 10 minutes, weaving in and out of drainage ditches for the odd clump of grass that wasn't brown. The drainage ditches get deeper the closer she gets to my yard. They are 3 feet deep here. Up and down she goes without hesitating. Before this she could only walk on level ground.

She was feeling so full of herself that she ducked into the yard to join Dixie to eat the only green grass on the block and stood within 20 feet of her without fear. I brought the other horses in for dinner, Sadie, always last and taking forever to get back in the yard, was very close behind the others...she actually started trotting behind me as I made my way to her dish. It was a low profile, very little trot, but the suspension and rhythm was there!

That night, 11pm or so, when I went to say goodnight to them, I stopped by Sadie to give her haunches and rump a little massage. Instead of the taut, hard as rock muscles they have been for years, they were loose with a little tone in them.

When I press hard she usually leans in to the massage, and loses her balance a bit. But this time she widened her stance and pushed me off balance with her strength.

DAY 14 : This morning Sadie was up front in the pen by the driveway. When I walked out to the van to take Laura to school, Sadie talked to me with her head and neck almost as upright as my Arabian. Her eyes were a glistening, deep black. Her whole face has changed.

This evening she almost ran me over for her dinner. One minute she was in the yard...the next she was in front of me in Toffah's pen. As I brushed past her she did a rollback to keep her nose near the bucket in my hand.

*****

According to my vets she has arthritis and the beginnings of Cushings...a lot of people think it is navicular and/or founder...None of the arthritis treatments have ever worked on her. I felt like I was banging my head on the wall.

About 2 weeks ago someone on another group crossposted a list of symptoms from a group on a disease called DSLD/ESPA. I joined the group and found that one of the 2 main treatments for it is J-herb. Horses who seemingly have arthritis (or some other disease with some of the symptoms) actually have DSLD, but DSLD cases do not respond to arthritis treatments and joint supplements.

An Ultrasound and a biopsy of some tissue in the ligaments can verify this. If my vet doesn't have a portable Ultrasound machine and Sadie keeps improving, I may be able to get her in a trailer for the first time in five years, to go to the vet. He always comes here to do the shots and teeth and chiro.

Now that I know how the J-herb affects her, I can add the second substance recommended to treat this...something called AAKG. They are used in combination. I started using the J-herb before I joined the group and didn't know about AAKG. And here's one of the best bit of news...they are very inexpensive.

This revelation is the best news I have had since I got Sadie, my first horse, nine years ago. Mind you, she is about 25 years and this will not cure her, but there's a lot to be said for her being more comfortable and active.

This treatment has only been discovered the last year or so and it's helping a lot of horses. DSLD is not a leg or joint problem. It affects all the connective tissues, which is why there are so many symptoms, mimicking many diseases.

It explains, among other things, her being able to smell better now (she probably had stuffed sinuses), lack of elasticity in her muscles (those tight haunch muscles), post-legged stance in her rear end and toe-stabbing (hence the robotic movement), and more.

90% of the cases have dropped fetlocks to varying degrees and sometimes oval shaped hooves. Sadie is in the 10% or less that have very upright pasterns. Also they eventually develop Cushings Disease.

If anyone has a horse that is not responding to arthritis treatments, you might want to look in to this group: DSLD-equine@yahoogroups.com

Until she has the tests, I won't know if she really has DSLD.

If she doesn't have it, I may never know what her problem is, but I am so happy that I found something that will help her. Two weeks on this herb has taken her back 5 years in time.

Thanks for listening and everyone's help, Margo and Sadie