This is my horse, Unbridled’s Catkan, AKA Bubby. Bubby is a registered Thoroughbred gelding foaled March 19, 2004 here on my farm in Montana. Bubby has been very special to me from the moment of his birth as his dam died foaling him and I became his instant mother. Besides being an orphan, Bubby was also a very sickly foal and that March was a cold, wet and windy one here in Montana. We had a very nice barn, but it was a metal building with no insulation. We putheat lamps up all around Bubby’s stall and went down to the local thrift store and bought several down vests and woolen sweatshirts which we cut the sleeves out of and every night before bed, I would put him in to his pajamas as we called them and would tuck him into his straw bed. I also wrapped all 4 of his legs in thick polo wraps to help him conserve heat. Getting Bubby to eat was a real challenge because he was so sick and weak that if he had to work too hard at it, he simply would not eat. Everyone said to get him on a bucket as soon as we possibly could as it would make it easier on everybody, but every time I attempted to introduce a bucket, it seemed he came down with another illness and the only way to get him to continue eating was to give up and go back to the bottle. The bottle feeding in itself was a real challenge because we couldn’t find any bottle/nipple combination that he would readily accept. We must have tried 10 to 15 different combinations before stumbling upon 1 that he took to and would readily nurse from. I bottle fed Bubby every 2 hours for weeks as we worked our way through his different ailments and issues. My wonderful mom alternated nights with me whenever she was able so that I could get a full night’s sleep from time to time. Other people volunteered to take feeding shifts from time to time, but Bubby would have none of it and would only take a bottle from me and Mom, and there were times that Mom was not even good enough, it had to be me. Exhausting, frustrating, and downright discouraging as it sometimes was, to walk into the barn with bottle in hand and call out Bubby’s name and get back that wonderful little whinny was extremely heart warming and gratifying to say the least. Until he got too big for me to lift, my vet was having me pick him up and stand on a bathroom scale each day to check to be sure he was gaining weight at the desired rate, which, for the most part, due to his troubles with eating and being so sick, he rarely did. We finally got the majority of the issues under control and I was able to get him drinking out of a bucket and started on eating solid foods when he was about 3 months old. Once he was strong and healthy enough, I would let him out of his stall and he would follow me all around the farm as I did my chores and worked with the other horses. None of my other horses would tolerate him for any length of time, so I just let him tag along with me where ever I was working around the place. He loved to stand at the arena rail and watch me ride the other horses, and changing sprinklers was a real treat with his ever present help. Once I weaned the other foals, I put him in with them in a field of their own and he did eventually learn that he was a horse, not a human, but, to this day, all I have to do is call his name and, where ever he is on the farm, as long as he is within hearing distance, he answers with a whinny and comes running to the nearest fence to where I am. Bubby grew up straight, strong and healthy despite his rocky beginning and was showing great promise and athletic ability when, November 27, 2007, I went out to feed in the morning to find him on 3 legs in his field and completely unable to use his right front. He would hop along on 3 legs, with his right front dragging along uselessly. I coaxed him slowly in to the barn, a walk that we would normally make in about 90 seconds that ended up taking nearly half an hour. My vet came out right away and, after several xrays, we determined that Bubby had broken his shoulder blade. My vet’s first suggestion was to put him down, and, had it been any other horse but Bubby, I would have, but, because it was Bubby and we had been through so much together already, I couldn’t just give up on him and asked my vet to see if he could find anyone who might be willing to try to repair the break. It took a week of calling and sending xrays out to different surgeons around the northwest before we found a surgeon who would at least be willing to come and take a look at Bubby to see if he thought anything could be done. All the others just said there was nothing that they could do, but this one flew in from Arizona and after examining Bubby and taking further xrays, he was willing to try to repair the shoulder blade and so we loaded Bubby backwards into our 3 horse slant trailer and hauled him 4 hours to a surgical hospital where, after 6.5 hours of surgery to insert 3 plates, we anxiously awaited his awakening from anesthesia to see if the repairs would hold. It turned out that he had broken the shoulder blade in 4 pieces with several chips and fragments of bone that had to be removed. If it weren’t for the week Bubby had spent between getting hurt and having surgery done learning to negotiate around his stall without using his leg, including standing up and lying down, I feel certain he would have torn the whole thing apart standing up out of anesthesia, but, because he had spent that week without the use of that leg, he stood up just as he had all week, using only 3 legs, and the repairs held. Bubby spent the next 2 months in the hospital as we waited for the bones to knit together and become strong and stable enough for us to haul him the 4 hours home again. He developed an implant infection a couple of weeks after surgery and there was the always present threat of laminitis. Getting enough nutrition into him was a real concern due to his lack of apetite because of stress, pain, and the ordeal he was going through. We had to try to get the most nutrition into him that we could pack in to the smallest amounts as small amounts were all he was willing to eat. The surgeon suggested that we put Bubby on Platinum Performance Equine as it would be very beneficial in getting the required nutrients in to Bubby and would also help promote healing and post operative recovery. We also ended up putting Bubby on Osteon to further help the bone heal. After 2 months, it was felt that Bubby was stable enough to make the journey back home, and so, February 2, 2008, we once again loaded him backwards into our trailer and made the slow, careful trip home. At that point Bubby was still basically hopping on 3 legs and was fairly unwilling and unable to test the leg. They gave me stretching and rehab exercises to do with him daily and, although the progress was excruciatingly slow, the day finally came that we could take a few halting steps out the stall door, then to the end of the breeze way and back, then back and forth a couple of times, and, on a lovely spring day in early April, at last Bubby and I could step outside the barn to stand in the sun. Over the next 8 months, Bubby and I spent endless hours in rehab exercises, building his strength and confidence again. By late November, 1 year after being injured seriously enough that most people would have put him down, he was romping around our indoor arena, and January 1, 2009, I welcomed in the New Year back on Bubby’s back. He is now, for the most part, 100% sound. Cold and wet days still cause him to be a bit stiff and sore, but he is now turned back out in a large field with my 2 two year old fillies during the day and to be able to call his name and hear those 4 strong and steady hoof beats come racing across the field in response to the calling of his name is a real joy. I feel that Platinum Performance Equine and Osteon played a very key roll in Bubby’s recovery and I will keep him on the Platinum Performance Equine for the rest of his life. It is a wonderful, powerful product that I think has fantastic benefits for horses of all ages and types and I highly recommend it to all my friends and clients and proudly show Bubby off as a prime example of its beneficial effects.
Tonya McCluskey- Hamilton, MT
Tags: Thoroughbred
