Great GCSE grades saw Caroline into a new school for her 'A' Levels.
Autumn 2003 turned out to be new beginnings for Dax too. A local family were very interested in having Dax. They could ride him daily and he would enjoy far more turnout than the restricted routine at Lee Valley Riding Centre. But just before they made their final decision, he developed a slight lameness in his left leg.
We went through all the motions of resting and testing Dax with the support of our vet, followed by some physiotherapy to his seized up sacro iliac joints and very sore poll. There still remained some kind of lameness which was hard to pinpoint at first. He had to be ridden really hard before we could isolate it to his left side. Even then we weren't confident what was going on.
Quite a few visits by our vet, Peter Briggs, followed. Peter gave Dax nerve blocks to help isolate the joint causing his lameness. The reason for blocking the nerves in each joint was to see if Dax's lameness disappeared when that joint became numb. Nerve blocking was a lengthy process. Peter injected each joint in turn, from the bottom up, sometimes waiting for the block to take effect, sometimes coming back another day to allow the previous block to wear off. Caroline lunged him and rode him up and down and in circles on each rein to watch for any improvment. We booked times when Caroline wasn't at school as it was important that Peter had a regular rider who could feel the smallest improvements in Dax's ride along with his own experienced eye.
The injections of the lower nerve blocks weren't too upsetting for Dax, he coped like a trooper with lots of distracting carrots and neck scritches. The veterinary nurse's gloves were more worrying, as were the clippers. Higher up became more troublesome and we had to twitch Dax and finally lightly sedate him, particularly for the stifle which also needed a local anaesthetic injection to deal with the pain of the nerve block injection. Walking a wobbly pony around was very funny and he mainly rested his head on Caroline's shoulder and dozed off. Both hind legs were tested, nothing giving us a clear indication of which joint was causing the problem. It could even have been the back, we had no clear idea.
Poor Dax. Pulled about, jabbed, ridden hard then restricted with box rest again for a couple of days. All this time the fields were closed down and there was no turnout, so once he was OK he still had to stay in his box.
We were now in February 2004. Our next step was to book Dax in for investigations at Beaufort Cottage Diagnostic Centre in Newmarket. He spent a couple of days here where he had radio isotope bone scans, x-rays and ultrasound to all his leg joints and lower back. Nothing in particular showed up outside normal limits. A cortisone injection and pain killer in his stifle, however, gave much improvement. So there must have been something there, undetectable by non invasive investigations.
Back at Lee Valley Riding Centre and Dax returned immediately to his normal charming self. We were able to go on short hacks and light schooling. No jumping allowed. But the rainy weather and poor fields at the centre meant Dax had been unable to enjoy any turnout since November. The days were still short so our sharers couldn't hack out on the marshes after school. And Caroline was finding it increasingly difficult to find time to ride him at weekends and give enough time to her exams.
There was no way that Dax's new family could have him - he wouldn't have passed the vetting process. We had to make a decision. Should we go on with investigations? Unfortunately, he couldn't have regular cortisone injections into his fetlock. If this was a different joint causing problems, the cortisone injections would, in time, cause the joint to seize up somewhat, curing Dax of any pain. But the fetlock is an important joint that needs to remain supple so the next stage would be arthroscopy. Under anaesthetic the hospital would insert a camera into his joint to see if they could see the cause of his lameness. They could then repair anything that needed repairing or scrape away debris that appeared.
The success rate of this procedure isn't great. There is no guarantee to restore Dax to normal health. Some interesting links about this procedure are:
The International Association of Equine Practitioners
If the procedure was successful, it would take up to 6 months before Dax could be working normally. There was no guarantee, either, that similar problems wouldn't show on his other leg in time, especially if the newly repaired joint put stress on the other side.
We eventually decided to look for a 'hacking only' home for Dax with good turnout. Eventually fate sent us the good friend of one of our sharers who has stables on the edge of Dartmoor near Okehampton. The end of March saw both Caroline and I in tears as Dax was driven away to his new home. He is now grazing happily with lots of new friends. He is back in the open hills, further south than the Welsh hills where he was born, but open nonetheless. He will be ridden by careful trekkers in the summer and sheltered and ridden at farm homes in the winter. But best of all, he is still our pony and Rosemary Hooley of Skaigh Stables will let Caroline ride Dax whenever she wants to go down to Devon.
So this isn't really the last page. I hope we'll have more to say over the years. But most of all, I hope that you, Caroline, will one day take over this web site and report back that Dax is back with you whenever and wherever you decide to settle.