Saving Ellie 9-23-05
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Ellie's story began as a testimonial on our website. Ellie's story is important for many horses that could have the same undiagnosed and untreated problem:
Ellie almost died. Ignorance? Neglect? Denial? Who knows? Maybe a little of all of these. I have no desire to blame any one person or institutions - only to share our journey and road back to health that Ellie endured. Maybe Ellie can save another horse from the same fate.
From the time that Dr. Cheri Lewis was successfully riding Ellie (lightly), the weather, the feeding program, and old problems began to resurface.
Last year, 2004-2005 was one of the wettest winters in Southern California. It was acclaimed as worse than the El Nino year. Like many horses, Ellie did not have a shelter or wear a blanket. At the time, she was refusing to move around and exercise. The weather made any hand walking or riding a treacherous undertaking. Ellie's caretakers decided not to feed her hay at the scheduled meals with the rest of the horses. Instead, Ellie and her 30-year-old companion were permitted access to the hay pile and could free choice hay at will.
Unfortunately, nobody told Ellie. She was, however, heavily supplemented with sweet feed, multivitamins, and other supplements, which she wolfed down.
I had a difficult time keeping our scheduled bodywork sessions due to the heavy street flooding which cost me work regularly that winter.
When I did make it to Ellie, I noticed she was dramatically thin, eating trees, depressed, cold, and too sore to walk. This was a drastic change from the Ellie we had achieved only months before. Her caretaker assured us that she had mountains of food and just could not keep weight on. Clearly, in their eyes, it was Ellie's problem.
Cheri kept calling asking me to work on Ellie. "Something’s wrong!" Each time she looked worse. We were assured she was adequately cared for. It was a mystery. What else could anyone do? In everyone's eyes, everything that could be done for Ellie was being done.
Finally, I arrived to work on Ellie only to find Ellie so weak she could barely stand. I was just as confused as everyone else. She was in obvious pain. During the session, I noticed the worker was feeding all the horses. Both Ellie and her skinny pasture mate stood quietly while all the other horses nickered in their excitement to be fed breakfast. Neither Ellie nor her friend expected to be fed. Both were seriously thin and the weather was still cold.
I’d had enough. I called Cheri and told her what I had seen and advised her, "If you don't get her out of there now, she's going to die. Moving her anywhere has to be better than this. For whatever reason, it’s not working.”
Two days later, I received a call from Cheri. "I'm thinking of sending Ellie up to you."
Although I was already up to my limit with horses, I never hesitated in saying, "bring her up."
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