PART 5 - MY JOURNEY WITH MJ
One of the hardest things about owning MJ over the years wasn’t necessarily the injuries themselves. As difficult and upsetting as injuries were, at least they usually came with some sort of answer. There would be a diagnosis, a treatment plan, rehab instructions….something concrete to focus on. What I found much harder were the long periods where I knew in my gut that something wasn’t right, but couldn’t work out what it was.
The first really major incident happened in March 2019. Mum and I were out hacking with her horse Erin and near the end of the ride MJ suddenly started behaving completely unlike herself. We were crossing a bridge at the time and she absolutely would not go forwards. She was bunny hopping, going backwards, almost standing on herself, and at one point nearly went backwards off the bridge altogether. Eventually I had to get off and lead her home. As soon as I got off her she seemed much calmer.
The following day, when I got on her, her whole back end dipped underneath me and I immediately phoned the vet. He identified that her ovaries were very sore as she was coming into season and prescribed Regumate. Looking back that was probably the start of me realising just how much hormones affected her. I remember joking to people that me & MJ were so similar “we’re both hormonal, impatient, anxious, hard-working and like to be told we’ve done a good job” lol. But at least I understood why I felt like I did with regards to hormonal fluctuation. Poor MJ hadn’t a clue….all she knew was that she felt sore and grumpy!!
Looking back now, there had probably already been signs before that. When MJ was in season she could become incredibly difficult to handle on the ground. Not nasty at all, just overwhelmed and unable to settle within herself. There were competitions where we’d come back from walking the course and she’d be spinning round while we tried to tack up, or getting herself so worked up that it felt like she might put the trailer over.
The difficult thing was that nothing ever felt entirely clear cut with MJ. Over the years there were so many times where I questioned everything. Was it hormones? Was it pain? Was it tension? Was it behaviour? Was I missing something important? Or had I just become overly anxious because so many things had already gone wrong?
I think after enough setbacks you almost stop being able to properly relax. You become hyper aware of every tiny change because you’re frightened of overlooking something significant. Every reaction feels important. Every unusual step or expression starts your brain spiralling. And that level of constant vigilance is exhausting.
Looking back now, I can see that I was carrying around a huge amount of anxiety long before I would ever have admitted that to myself. Not panic or dramatic anxiety, just a constant underlying feeling of waiting for the next problem to appear.
It’s something I recognise so often now in riders I work with, especially those with sensitive horses, injury-prone horses or horses with behavioural changes that don’t have straightforward explanations. Many of them think they’ve simply “lost confidence”, but often what’s really happened is that their nervous system has spent years stuck in a state of anticipation and worry.
At the time though, I still didn’t fully understand another really important piece of the puzzle — just how much my own tension was feeding back into MJ and affecting both of us…which leads us into Part 6 of the story.
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