Marty...he's such a ---

For about two months I've been trying to figure out what Marty (the horse) was telling me he needed to make his deformed, I am sure, painful knees easier to live with. I was getting frustrated that all I heard is something that sounded like Cal-solomide? HUH? What the heck is Calsolomide?
Feeling like I exhausted all avenues, Wednesday after one of the lectures I asked Linda K, if she'd spend some time with Marty. Maybe she could understand him. She said yes. The next morning while taking a shower (yep, Kellie's connection tank) I was told to write Cal-solomide backwards, which I did. I cannot recall the series of events which took me to what I found, but I found two things....Salicylamide http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salicylamide & Calcitonin http://www.patents.com/use-calcitonin-gene-related-peptide-regulate-immune-response-5635478.html . which describes exactly what he'd need. The Cal is an abbreviation for the Calcitonin. The dilemma, they are drugs I did not want to use. So...I went out to the barn and asked Marty if this is what he meant? The answer was yes. I then said (mentally) "There has to be an herb that will do this for you".
His answer..."of course there is...Turmeric."
"Turmeric"? I yelled out. "Why didn't you tell me that two months ago. I have it in the shop. I could have been giving it to you, instead of you taking the LONG way around it all.
Why didn't you simply tell my Turmeric in the first place?"
What happened next made me cry. He put is nose up to my face, breath hard in my ear and I heard, "I wanted to see if you cared enough about me to be persistent to find out what I was asking for."
"Marty of course I care about you but you make if very difficult because you act like an ass so much of the time, but of course I care about you."
As he was still reaching his head out, letting his breath softly brush my cheek, I mentally said, "ok if we really just had this conversation, then you have to step forward and place you head on my shoulder.
He did.
I patted him, and said, "See, you ARE an ass". He hugged my shoulder tighter with his head.

Kellie

Howdy's Adventures

Do I get to go out side today?

I'm out now what do I do?

Can they see me?

That's not nice making faces at me

Coolin off AFTER

Auntie Kellie was riding me

         Whew...I need a nap under the Hawthorn Tree...Heidi does this too~zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz               

Rolling would be much easier if I had four legs

I'm thristy. If I had legs, it would be easier to drink

OK How come they keep running from me...do I smell? Do I look funny?

Do I have bad breath, or don't they want to be friends?

I'm IN from Out side..It was fun

Am I really getting it?

Applied Kinesiology is a method of allowing your body to tell you what is good or not good for you. Or what and how much you need or don’t need of something. If you get Herbs & Things weekly emails you know I’ve been practicing, and learning how to use the Applied Kinesiology method, that Rose Cyzrny taught at a lecture at Herbs & Things a few months ago.

I’ve limited my practicing of this method to myself and then one day I took it one stop further, trying it on my old horse Royal. In all actuality, he is helping to teach me. He’s a wise old horse, I believe who had been running wild when we got him from the killer pen 28 years ago. So who better to teach me than a horse that knows what roots and herbs that will help him.

Royal is, Cushingoid, and gets Pergolide suspension every day to keep his Cushings in check. Recently his hair started getting longer again, (a symptom of cushings), but when I give him the full 1 cc dose of Pergolide he gets lethargic and stiff, making it even more difficult for him to get up from laying down. Going on out a limb, I put my hand on his neck, used the applied kinesiology, closed my eyes and asked him to tell me where to adjust the dose to, so that he loses his hair, but does not get stiff. Very specific .8.8 cc’s. I adjusted it to that and his long hair is coming out, without more stiffness or him getting lethargic.

But let me go back a few weeks ago. Using the Applied Kinesiology, I asked him what he needed for his joints…’he then told me’ Nettles, (post below). Then I asked with the Applied Kinesiology if his body wanted White Willow Bark, (a natural aspirin without aspirin side effects), and it said yes. Using the Kinesiology I asked how much of the White Willow he needed…30 drops 2x’s a day. It does make him feel better. Now a few weeks later, he no longer wants the Nettles. With the applied Kinesiology, he lets me know how much and when to give him the Willow Bark, to keep him comfortable ( which is no longer everyday).

A couple weeks ago, I got brave and took it a step farther… Resting my open hand on his neck, closing my eyes I asked him what else he needs to help make him more comfortable with his Cushing’s disease and what I got was….Enzyme 3.

I frowned, what the heck is enzyme 3? That’s out there, but so specific. I thought my mind was just rambling. But Enzyme 3….I never heard of it or knew there was such a thing, because I know nothing about enzymes other than you body needs them.
I figured it couldn’t hurt if I researched and what I found, by skimming the surface of the enzyme world, because it is confusing place, that apparently, Enzyme 3 is in the class 3 enzymes associated with metabolic issues and digestion. Cushing’s is a metabolic disease. Enzymes also help remove drug buildup in the cells so the body can function better. Royal’s been on Pergolide for about 5 years.

Also with Cushings, his body can’t metabolize starches and carbohydrates…he is diabetic. And what enzyme helps diabetics maintain carb levels and digest and use their foods better, but Amylase…..a class 3 enzyme. Hmm he knows more than me I guess, or my spirit guide is guiding us both. Where else would Enzyme 3 come from?

Therefore, I ordered Masterzyme from New Sun, which labels amylase as the first ingredient. I started Royal on it July 2nd 2010. I did applied kinesiology to see how much he wanted, and what I got was ½ teaspoon 2 times a day.

I think one thing I find most intriguing about this, is that when I asked if I should discontinue his Pergolide medicine and just go with herbs, the answer was no. His body needs the Western Medicine Pergolide. So if the enzymes and white willow work along with the Pergolide to make his quality of life better, it is a perfect example of where, Eastern and Western medicines are working together.

I’ll let you know if it works for old Royal and if I did ‘hear’ him correctly

Kellie

Nettles...and Old Royal

I've started my old Morgan Royal on Nettles herbal extract. How did I decide on Nettles....well...he told me that's what he needed.
I've been practicing applied kinesiology I learned from Rose Czyrny from Body Glyphix studio (google if you like more info)...and I asked him what he needed and that's what came to mind. Not trusting myself yet with this new tool, I waited over two weeks to try it, then I did. I was not sure how much to give him so again I asked him using the applied Kinseology and he told me, 30 drops 4 times a day. Still not trusting myself, I give it to him three.
After being on it for a little over a week, I've noticed a difference in his gate. It's freer and he doesn't have as much of a hitch when he trots. He even kicks at flies easier. I mainly wanted to start him on something just so it was easier for him to get up...and I think it is.
Soon I'll start him on Willow Bark too...and I will ask him again, how much he needs..
So good old Royal is kind of my Guinea pig, as I use this new tool of applied kinesiology and a few herbal remedies, therefore seeing a difference...is awesome! He's such a good old horse and I want him to be comfortable...who could ask for anything more, except maybe turn back the clock for him and let him be young again...because as a youngster, he was magnificent!
Trot on
Kellie

Games that Old Farts Play

Monday I started mowing the paths for the Meditative and Medicine Wheel Gardens. It came to me after worrying about mowing it all, that paths for people to walk upon and if I fill in the un-mown spaces with wild flowers and trees will work great. Thank you… ‘The Voice’.

Anyhow, I was mowing part of the path going south in the field, with the intention of mowing a circle where I think the Medicine Wheel will go.  I looked towards the pasture by the house where Royal and Marty were turned out, to see Marty running around, but no Royal. I shielded my eyes from the sun and let the tractor and mower continue its job of mowing, in search for Royal. I cannot see him.

Where can he be I wonder, still letting the tractor and finishing mower continue while my eyes searched for the old guy, hoping he’d not fallen in the creek upside down again like two years ago, because he ducked under the fence, decided to climb the bank out and then fell backwards. Yes it was a scary moment.

Finally, when I'm almost done with the path….I see Royal…he’s rolling, and rolling, and rolling. He is the wettest part of the pasture…he rolls some more. Often he needs to rest a minute after his vigorous rolls before he gets himself up. I usually wait and eventually he gets up with little effort.

I watch, He lies down, he lies up, he lies flat, he lies up. Hmmm I wonder is he stuck maybe he can’t get himself up because the ground is to soft. So I decide not to go back to mowing but go over and see if he needs help.

Still in the big field, I shut the mower off, turn the idle down on the tractor, he hears me, perks up his ears, and watches me as I drive out of the field. Coming from behind the pine trees on the road, I can see he is still down, ears perked. He watches me drive down Hayes Hollow, into the drive of the barn, around the corner to the house, where I stop to park the tractor. I look; he’s still lying there, watching me, still with ears perked. I turn my head to shut the tractor down and lower the mower. Its only a couple seconds time when I turn back to look at Royal, all the time thinking, how I am going to get him out of there.

He’s gone.

What…where is he? I get off the tractor, walk towards the pasture, leaning to peer around the shed, thinking my location is off, no all I see is an indentation of where he was…but where his he? I walk farther down the hill of the lawn and look around the corner of the house and there he his, soaking wet from rolling in the wet spot, eating grass. I say… “You old fart, how’d you do that, get up and there so quick? And here I thought you were stuck, to tired and to old to get up. What was I thinking”.

With his ears perked and his sides expanding huge with a big intake of air, he bellows out a whinny, as if to say, “Na, Na, Nana…fooled ya…I wasn’t stuck at all”, and started eating grass, peering at me from the corner of his eye, with what seemed to be a smirk on his gray muzzle.

I smiled with a warm fuzzy feeling inside towards him… “You silly old fart…I love you and your huge hearted personality”, and walked over and gave his muddy wet neck a hug…he hugged back.

I can make a General in five minutes but a good horse is hard to replace.

Abraham Lincoln
1809-1865, Sixteenth President of the USA

Arnica...or not

Tuesday, April 20th, I watched my 38 year old horse Royal in the pasture, stiffly walking around. My heart felt sad. His one hind leg is giving him trouble, causing pain from arthritis and muscle spasms in the hip, making it difficult for him get up and sometimes merely walk. He no longer seems his happy self. So, I made a decision that would kill him or make him feel better.

I've recently started to learn about homeopathy and decided try giving him Arnica. I went into the pasture, and gave him four tablets. Then watched for side effects. He's on Pergolide for cushings. Within 10 minutes I saw an improvement. He's was more comfortable.

I continued with 3 more doses that day, and  again four times the next. Starting Thursday, he's been getting four tablets twice a day. 5 AM and 5 PM. I will do this until Tuesday, April 27th...one week.

 I've seen a marked improvement, not only in his walking ability, but his whole attitude. He's happier and brighter, somewhat like when he was younger. When I gave him Bute, it did not have this affect on him and I worried about his stomach also with the Bute.

Words cannot explain how thrilled I am the Arnica is working. He looks 10 years younger.
Thank-you Kathy Crone/Pipecreek Farms & B&B for introducing me to Homeopathy!

Remember though, this is not a replacement for your veterinarian...this is an alternative and or, additional source to make your Equine friend more comfortable. For Royal it worked.

The Horse that Slept with Goats

Heidi had been without a horse for about one year after giving Glory, her horse of 6 years, away to a good home. Then one day she realized being horseless was not for her, decided it time to get another and immediately began looking through the paper, on the internet, anywhere horses were for sale, for a new equine pal.

A short time after Heidi started her search, a friend of mine called to let me know an appaloosa horse was for sale in Eden NY. Though Heidi was certain she did not want an appaloosa, with excitement of the prospect of a new horse, we made a trip to Eden, thinking, hey one never knows.

We found the house number we were looking for, and pulled in the driveway. We were disheartened with what we saw. Things were, well let’s say, not so neat, with the pasture and barn in disarray. I told Heidi, “it might be ok, my barn is no palace.”
“Maybe not… but your place does not look like this.”

The grasses were long and wild around the barn and all kinds of—stuff— haphazardly speckled the yard, in and out of the pasture. In the middle of the pasture was a large mound of manure or possibly dirt. Atop that mound, a brown and white goat lay curled up sleeping.

Doubts and thoughts of we should leave follow us up the sidewalk. Then at the halfway point between the house and leaving, a woman comes out side. Our first impression in a matter of seconds, though she seemed nice enough, her girth was not as tight as it should be. She asks us if we are there to look at the horse. We tell her yes.

Heidi and I follow her, while carefully walking around, over and through stuff, and enter the barn. Once inside we see one big stall and hay thrown everywhere. Goats are everywhere too, climbing all around us. If my memory serves me correct, four more goats were inside the one big stall. There standing out side the barn, at the stall door looking in… the not so pretty appaloosa.

A man joins us. I can’t recall if it was the woman’s son or husband now, but she instructs him to go get the horse and bring it in the stall. He tries. But the not so pretty appaloosa, unruly, rude and obnoxious drags him in the stall, swings him around, pushes him up against the stall, and then steps on his feet and stays there for a while, oblivious to his pushes to get her off him.

The woman says, I don’t know what’s gotten into her, she’s usually not like this. Heidi and I give each other that, yeah-right look. Heidi nicely tells the woman, “Sorry, I don’t think this horse is for me.”

With an animated voice, the woman says, “We have another horse for sale if you’d like to see him” and points out in the pasture.
Heidi and I let our eyes follow her pointing gesture. We don’t see anything and look at each other with a questioning look. We read each other’s thoughts, shrug our shoulders, and conclude what the heck we are here. So with skepticism, we crawl under a board, walk through the goat stall and in to the pasture with the woman, wondering if the Appaloosa from hell will push herself upon us, step on our feet and hold us against our will, or will we be run over by goats.

Its then the woman starts chanting, “Baaaaaaaaby…Baaaaaaaaaaby, cluck, cluck, come on Baaaaaaaaaaby, cluck, cluck, cluck, some one is here to see you.
Heidi and I look at each other….Baby?

“Baaaaaaaby,” more clucking, “come on Baby…come on boy, cluck, cluck, cluck, CLUCK.”

Heidi’s eyes glaze with a dazed wild look and I wonder— is this woman calling a dog?
“Baaaaaaby come here you have some visitors.”

That’s when it happens. A phoenix of sorts rises out of the dust, from the middle of that dirt or manure pile, in the form of a small dark brown horse. He shakes himself off and meanders down the pile of dirt as agile as a mountain goat. The brown and white goat follows him.

“That’s Baby” the woman says, “he’s an eight-year-old, ¼-horse mix, that my son showed 4-H before he went to college.”
“What in the goat show” Heidi whispers.
It took everything I had not to laugh aloud, though I’m not sure if the woman would have noticed anyhow or understand the brunt of Heidi’s joke.

Baby, nonchalantly walks towards us then heads straight to Heidi. As if checking her out, he nuzzles her clothes, her hair and her pant leg. Heidi backs up a step. He follows her. She grimaces, “What the heck, is this a dog or a horse? God he smells like a goat Kellie.”

They show us, everything Baby ‘can’t ’ do. We watch in horror as he bounces around the pasture with his head and nose in the air. Whoa, means he can stop on his own time. They explain how proud they are at how road safe Baby is, because as Mrs. ‘Baby chanter’ tells us, “if they ride him down the road a certain distance and he turns around and comes back—that’s his way of telling them the road isn’t safe today” hence road safe.

What?

Yes their definition of road safe, great barrel racer, stops good, can turn on a dime, and can clean his feet (that were clamped to the ground) easy, were very much different from our definitions of the above.

We asked the woman, when’s the last time he was wormed? Has he had his inoculations this year, were his teeth ever floated, when’s the last time his feet were done.
The woman response…“What?”

Why, and with out good reasoning, a few days later, ‘Baby’ is in the barn, first order of business, name change. It took a few days. Thoughts of Ziggy, Shorty, Hey You, Goat Horse, and a few other choice names came to mind, but Billy (no pun intended) seemed to fit.

Not long after he was here, Heidi and I on warm day thought it time Billy had a bath, because the barn had taken on a noticeable goatish odor.
Billy gets an—oh god, what is it with these girls—look on his long brown face, as we giggle, tell him to stand still, wet him down, suds him up and scrub away. We find something we never expect and with great excitement, we chime giddily, “He’s brown, no he’s black, no wait he’s seal brown.” We also find as we scrub more, a white spot on his forehead—and—white hind socks. Billy looks like a very different horse then the Baby horse we looked at. He’s washed into a beautiful dapple bay, with a small star, and two white socks. No wonders he smelled like a goat and blended in the pile of dirt.

Billy, of course did not know what all the fuss was about…He didn’t care— he was a horse, or maybe a goat in disguise. Although, I can’t really say with certainty he didn’t know what the fuss was about, because occasionally he’d pick up the plastic curry or brush and almost show us where to scrub.

There were trials and tribulations in the first year of Billy and Heidi’s relationship. There was a time when Heidi wasn’t sure she wanted to keep him. Then the growth of a friendship with many fun hours and loving memories formed.
Billy taught Heidi how to have fun with your horse and about unconditional love. Heidi taught Billy that a human could love and care for him and be his friend, a friendship that brought the best out of both of them.

God makes all animals special but sometimes for reasons we don’t understand some are more special than others. Billy— the horse that slept with goats—was one of Gods specialties. What a great little horses you were. We love you and we will miss you.

With one last thought, about the horse that slept with goats. I find it extraordinary that Heidi found one of Gods specialties— her equine friend that loved her unconditionally, in Eden?


4 AM...Thoughts from Heidi about her Equine friend...Billy


Gone are the days of hearing your gentle nicker to greet me as I entered the barn

Gone are the days of seeing you enjoying the pastures on a lazy summer day

Gone are the days of our care free rides and your nonstop curiosity with all in the world around you

Gone are the days of wondering why you just aren't the same and why you're not feeling well

Gained is my thankfulness for the gentle, caring hands of the veterinarians in their attempt to heal you but eventually helping you to be put to your ultimate rest

Gained is my reminder of just how remarkable friends and family can be during our seemingly darkest days

Gained is my understanding that some day down the road my thoughts of you which are painful right now will turn to laughter and joy recalling all the years we spent together

Gained is my absolute gratitude to God for the 'gift' he gave me of being your owner


RIP Billy...Jan 14th 2010...We will miss your cute horse life loving muzzle...
Kellie