Monitoring and distracting (complete with lots of boring video)

so damn cute.

I had not-so-secretly hoped that if I left Riley alone for a week (while on heavy amounts of magnesium) that I would arrive to the farm Saturday to a bright, happy and pain-free horse.

Not so.

He was bright and happy enough, but only in his stall.

My plan had been to run through a few tests with him again to see how the Mg was working and possible get on him to see just how bad things felt under saddle. He managed to spring the heel on one of his shoes (so riding was out) -- it was just barely sprung and not twisted or anything so the farrier said he'd come out a few days later to tack it back on. I wrapped it up in vet wrap just to make sure he didn't make it any worse and stuck another bell boot on him!

First I stuck him in the round pen to get an idea of how he was doing:

As you can see, the head shaking is about as bad as a was last week. I would be lying if I said I wasn't pretty heart-broken. I know it's naive of me to think he's suddenly going to feel better, but the problem with head shaking is that it makes you feel a bit nuts, like you are making up the symptoms or imagining things!

So I tried him with a nose net (home made with some old pantyhose) and he was actually worse. Lots and lots of sneezing and plenty of head shaking.

Riley's expression and distinctive head shake in this video of him at rest show his very clear reaction to direct sunlight. The head shake looks as though "a bee flew in his nose".

I've been keeping a record of the temperatures and pollen counts for the last month not surprisingly, the warmer, humid weather = higher grass pollen counts = worse head shaking. Last week he was much less symptomatic, but the weather was unseasonably cool, overcast and the pollen counts were next to nothing. This week things are warming up again, with high pollen counts, so we'll see how he fairs. He's still coming in during the day and going out at night, though his turnout buddies keep removing his flymask overnight, so we might have to turn him out alone.

The plan is to keep him on the loading does of Quiessence for one more week (as last week was so uncharacteristically cool and mild) and then scale him back to a normal dose. If his symptoms stay the same or get worse in th enext week, I'm going to have the vet out to talk about further treatment. 

Over the course of the weekend, I decided that since I can't ride Riley and he's happy enough inside, I would try doing some clicker training to stimulate his mind and maybe help give him a distraction. There's a very cool woman on Youtube named Shawna Karrasch (who was once a Seaworld trainer) that uses clicker training to encourage wanted behaviors and to discourage bad behavior. Her techniques are useful in all sorts of situations (like having a problem trailer loader or a spooky horse). I started very basic with Riley training him not to be a brute about food. I rarely, if ever, give him treats because he learned very quickly how to be a butt head when food was involved. He became pushy and mouthy and I hate that, but I knew that being so food-motivated would be an asset in clicker training.

First lesson... introduce clicker, then reward when horses head is in neutral position (he is allowed to investigate what I am doing etc), but I discourage him from getting at the food and he very quickly learns to turn his head away for a reward.

He caught on to this pretty quickly. For reference, the clicker is in my left hand and the food is 12% pelleted grain (nothing too fancy). His second lesson was targeting, which is a stepping stone to teaching various behaviors like ground tying, self loading, desensitization to scary things, lowering head... etc.

For this exercise, I presented a "target" (little green cone) and Riley was rewarded each time he touched it with his nose. As you can see in the video, he's not always touching it intentionally, but you reward for those moments too. It's very neat to see the light bulb moment when he figures out what I am looking for though.

Each session is roughly 5 minutes long, with lots of time in between. It's just enough for him to grasp the concept, but not get dull to the experience. Each time I ask for a little bit more out of him... for example, for the second session with cone I moved it up, down, left, right and further out of his reach. He seems to really like the activity and if anything I think it will help further our bond. It's painful for me not being able to do anything with him, but seeing how miserable he is in the sunlight solidifies my decision of not riding him until he's feeling a bit better. I might try him in the equciser (which is shady and cool) to see if he can at least get some exercise and be comfortable. I'd like to take him to an indoor to see if that makes any difference too, but I am worried about how worked up he's going to get having a bridle on and if that's going to make him very aggravated.

Riley gets an A+ for his targeting lesson!

Thanks for all your kind words and support, and to everyone who has reached out to me with advice or references via the blog, facebook and email. We are so grateful to have such wonderful support from all of you guys and it makes me feel just a little less crazy to know you guys are rooting for us! Hopefully we can get to the bottom of this soon and get Riley back on track!