White Horse Pilgrim

On panic attacks

I went out to the barn intending to complete the treatment of the trailer's interior timber floor. That task I completed in a broadly satisfactory way. I would have liked to clean it using the nice Bosch vacuum cleaner from home, but have more sense than to try. So I swept the floor then painted it liberally with the timber treatment solution.

Whilst the floor was drying I slipped off up to the field, gave some attention to both horses, and was greeted by the vet who has a horse in the adjoining field. She adminstered Brena's flu and tetanus innoculations which are necessary if we are to attend a riding club camp in four weeks time. Indeed this is almost the last moment to start as tetanus requires three weeks between the two shots.

Then my phone rang. Well actually it rang twice. First D asked me whether I had fed the cat - Tiger who has just had several rotten teeth removed. He was making a pitiful spectacle of hunger and woe. Of course I had fed him. But thanks to splendid acting he received a second tasty meal of premium wet food. Clever old "Toothless Tiger".

Then a friend called me. She had suffered a panic attack on the previous day and wanted to talk about this. I won't go into her details, obviously, however I do have much sympathy for her predicament. I've been in that situation too.

Back in Transylvania, when I was forced to rely on an unreliable office manager, an untrustworthy accountant and banks whose employees varied from incompetent to plain corrupt, doing business could be a struggle. When I was out riding away from home five days a week I had to rely on the office manager and accountant as a minimum. There was a time when I was trying to make some investment and, frankly, whenever I was away problems occured. Telephoned instructions were ignored or modified. The accountant submitted paperwork with basic arithmetic errors. After a week guiding a group whilst on and off the phone again and again trying unsuccessfully to resolve idiocy I received more bad news of a financial nature.

At that point I began to feel quite unwell. I lost interest in my surroundings, vision receded to a tunnel and other senses faded away. My heart hurt. Without actually caring about the outcome I came to the conclusion that I was suffering a heart attack. At that moment truly I would have welcomed death. After so much struggle and such a lot of senseless opposition there seemed to be little to live for.

Obviously after a while I felt better. Clearly I am still here. I did make a long train journey to receive comprehesive medical tests which showed that I was physically quite fit and healthy. I have always been robust physically yet that experience knocked my confidence.  

Only later did a doctor explain that I had suffered a panic attack. I wouldn't have come to that conclusion myself, perceiving panic as a matter of running around crazily out of control rather than an essentially passive experience.

What I felt was not an explosion of energy so much as a cloak of darkness drawn across the sky and all around me. It was like a curtain being closed on life.

That experience was the nadir of a lifestyle whose highs included wonderful rides in a wilderness of mountain and forest.

Clearly that splendid and varied life had strengthened me to the point where I could survive such a trial and remain philospohical. What does not kill builds one up.

The fact that place made me grow did not mean that I should remain there. Why remain and become spent physically and emotionally (and financially) in a place that, in the end, I came to outgrow?

I have emerged able to appreciate how a friend felt at a particularly horrible point in her life. I've been able to be there for her and give a little advice. I have been able to say: "it's not the end of the world" - which such attacks can feel like.

Life has moved on a long way since that dark day.

Not only has life become safer and in some ways more rewarding, it has put me in a position to use my experiences to benefit others.

Actually I am quite happy with that outcome. Gaining the ability to apply experiences is a precious gift.

More backs and back ends

This is a rather typical view of D in his stable. Focussed on eating, as usual. The barn manager comments frequently on how much D eats and drinks (and consequently defacates and stales) for a horse of his size. However, he eats and drinks no more than he did in Eastern Europe, and probably he eats a higher proportion of roughage than the TB types in the barn with all their bagged feeds and worries about colic. Although not tall, he is a 600kg (1,350lb) horse. It's good to know that the barn staff are observant too.

Stallions are known for defacating in piles to mark their territory. This makes them cleaner than geldings and mares, in theory anyway. D's paddock contains one nice neat pile of droppings. I have noticed that, on familiar local rides, he likes to leave his droppings in the same few places too. So, he is marking "his" trails.

Since having my back adjusted by the chiropractor, I have lengthened my right stirrup by one hole. After mobilisation of a sacro-iliac joint and adjustment of a twisted pelvis, both legs are the same length. (Odd as it may seem, previously they were not. If I lay down flat, my right foot came up half an inch shorter than the left. Blindfolded, I'd have walked in circles.) I've also slept through every night after adjustment without pain (only somewhat spoiled by worrying about the still-outstanding historic divorce papers), and that is a very welcome improvement after the past couple of years.

Beeches and backs

Doru spends each day in a paddock with a pretty backdrop of multicoloured foliage. My favourite is the splendid Copper Beech tree, an ornamental cultivar of the European Beech tree. I have only ever seen these trees growing individually, and that makes them all the more impressive, especially since they can attain massive proportions.

Even in a relatively populous land such as Britain, there remain significant relics of ancient woodland. Many of the surviving European Beech trees across Southern England are such, even though clearance of woodland for farming began in prehistoric times.

I spent a productive hour with the chiropractor this afternoon. The good news is that my blood pressure and heart rate are very respectable, and that my back problems are expected to respond well to treatment. So far, muscular tension has been relieved, a jammed sacro-iliac joint mobilised, and some spinal misalignment worked on. I have a series of exercises to practice, and another appointment in a couple of weeks.

Pintea is noticeably more lively following his treatment. I received independent confirmation from the stable manager who discovered that Pintea, rather than waiting at the gate to be led in at the end of the day, ran around and would only be caught once every other horse had been removed from the field. He has a good lively walk too. Indeed ,after leaving the field, he seemed to be pulling Danielle back towards the stable this afternoon. After considering giving her the run-around, he remembered where it is that we feed him. In the photo, he is being persuaded to trot for me to see how he is moving. Once he got going, rather well.

The buttercups are a common pasture plant here. They are poisonous to horses, however fortunately their unpleasant taste means that horses tend not to eat them unless very hungry and without alternatives. The fields here are rotated before being grazed bare, hence the buttercups are not a hazard. Doubtless, this being Britain, if a weedkiller existed that safely eliminated the buttercups, someone would have sprayed the fields with it. 

Chiropractic treatment for P

Danielle's horse P had his first chiropractic examination and treatment yesterday. Our farrier had noticed that the grey gelding stood stiff and unevenly whilst being shod.

This was my first exposure to chiropractic treatment for horses. Whilst I am not in general a fan of alternative therapies, as an engineer I can appreciate that a complex linked structure such as the human or equine musculoskeletal system can both get out of alignment and be manipulated back into balance. Whilst the chiropractor clearly doesn't directly move a horse's back (a massive structure that can carry a person whilst the horse moves at speed), a trained therapist can influence tense muscles to relax and allow correct alignment to be re-established.

P displayed a variety of misalignments, including a pelvis whose right side was dropped and moved to the rear. I was interested to see the chiropractor examine the horse, then get to work using very little force carefully directed. She worked first on the neck behind the head and then on the rear around the pelvis, then moved on to the parts in the middle. We had first eliminated tack fitting as a potential cause.

P is now better aligned, and has a further examination and treatment programmed for two weeks hence. He seems livelier after adjustment. We've left him a day to rest, and plan to see how he performs today on a gentle ride. He had been a little sluggish before, however now he should feel better.

Talking to the chiropractor was encouraging. She is a therapist who cares about how horses are managed and worked, rather than just fixing problems. In these days, when racehorses are run hard whilst their frames are still growing, and other competition horses seem to be pushed harder than ever in the human quest for glory, consideration and compassion for the animals can appear to be in short supply. However it is still there, perhaps more than one might think, and clearly evident in the thoughtful posts on a number of blogs written by caring horse owners.

Meanwhile D is far better aligned than I am. The lower foot (30cm) of my spine is blocked solid, including the joints between the spine and the pelvis (which should rotate to accommodate the movement of the horse when riding). So I am off to another chiropractor tomorrow for the first in what may prove to be a long course of treatment. I am looking forward to being in better shape when riding, and indeed being in better shape generally and sleeping through the whole night without pain.

Bright evening

The evenings are becoming long and bright. The Ridgeway draws the mind upward, to appreciate the great wide sky. A good part of England seems spread out at one's feet, below the chalk hills, yet the broad sky dominates. This evening, tall cumulus clouds distantly towered, whilst nearer the sun shone through haze with enough strength to keep the evening warm. A fresh breeze shook the wheat.

The diffuse light gave the belts of oak and beech that strange textured feel, like moss but larger, produced by bright sun shining through haze. It reminded me of woods of Middle Europe on a hot summer day, when the refracting eddying air makes distant woods seem close, soft, almost within touching distance.

hedgerows and pastures are white with the plant which I, like a peasant, call Cow Parsley. Danielle calls it Queen Anne's Lace. Doubtless there are other names besides. Horses love this plant, and riders need discipline to stop their mounts from snatching at the hedgerows. D had never before seen this severally-named plant (which appears not to grow in Middle Europe), but quickly discovered how delicious it is.

Sheep are out on the meadows. Climbing the scarp slope, we passed through a large flock grazing the lush chalkland grass. It must seem like a familiar sight to D, who saw so many sheep in his former life abroad, although they are unaccompanied by shepherd or dogs. A shepherd's hut, with a friendly welcome and a glass of plum brandy, would make a pleasant find in a nook of these hills.

I have found an old book published in 1936, which described and pictured these chalk downlands. I was delighted to see just how little this landscape has changed since those photographs were taken. It affords a glimpse of how England used to look under the open field system, before the land was enclosed by bureaucratic order to form convenient parcels for the "modern" farmers of the 18th and 19th centuries. There are few hedges here, not because they were grubbed up (as is usually the case where large fields exist in modern England), but rather because there only ever were a few. It is a fairly well preserved relic of a medieval landscape, and in this it possesses something in common with lowland Transylvania.

I have also discovered a good chiropractor in the nearby market town of Wantage. During an initial assessment, he confirmed that my lower back is misaligned and largely seized up. No wonder it is so stiff and sore, to a degree where I worry that I impede Doru when we ride. A first appointment for treatment is scheduled for Saturday. For now, my homework is to sleep on my back, which is the best nocturnal position for my spine. I have slept on my front for the best part of my forty three years, so this is going to be quite a change of habit.