Rehabilitation is hard. It takes a lot of time and money to rehabilitate a horse. When I get horses in for rehab they can start to feel better with some work and treatments. Owners see the improvements and think the horse is better. They have improved. The horse does feel better. That makes the next conversation hard. Many times even though the horse is improving there is still something underlying that needs to be addressed. I can see that while we have improved, there is still an issue that needs attention. Sometimes owners don’t have a trained enough eye to see the issue under the improvement. It became easy to ignore the issue but doing so will get the horse right back to where they started. Rehabilitation happens in layers until we get to the root problem. Then we can rebuild and learn how to maintain. When I encourage my owners to keep digging, it’s not because I want you to spend more money. It’s because I know if you do not spend the money now, it’s going to cause you more financial drain and emotional drain later. Improvement doesn’t equal healed. It just indicates progress in the right direction. I know, having done this for years, how quickly a horse should progress. If we are hitting a wall, it’s time for more investigation. It saves you in the long run. Rehabilitation, on average, takes 1-2years. The horses generally spend 4-10 months with me and the owners must keep doing the work to maintain the horse when they take them home.
Wisdom Wednesday
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