Hard Days and Better Times – Part 2(A long and multi-part post but it is the full story)

While attending college in the mid 2000's I never thought that my training in Culinary Arts would take me anywhere but into the kitchen of some restaurant or hotel, or into a bakery if I was lucky. While I did allow the thought of transferring into Equine Nutrition to momentarily cross my mind, I didn't think it would become reality. After returning home from the vets office we were on strict orders to feed only a soupy mash to Vae. Since chewing was not an option in the beginning, I had to figure out how to get the best nutrition into him that I could. After a few fails we settled into a routine of soaking the smallest pellets I could find in water for at least 6 hours to break them down into the start of a mash. Once we were ready to feed we added enough water to make it really thin and used the only thing we could find to mix the weight of a 5 gallon bucket filled with Alfalfa pellet mash thoroughly ... our hands. 3 times a day, to start with, we would dive mid bicep deep into a 5 gallon bucket to mix bottom to top and fish out any still solid pieces of pellet, then dump it out in portions in a hanging bucket so he could eat. In order to bypass the fact that he could not bite and chew Vae would literally dive into the bucket mouth wide open and ended up spilling about half the feed on the ground by the end of it. Comical is one way to describe watching him eat at the beginning. However, horrifying also worked with the fear of him drowning in his feed bucket was also a feeling that crossed my mind a few times. After the first 2 weeks passed and he was still alive with functional plumbing and no issues we added a feed balancer into his ration to make sure that he was getting all the nutrition that he needed. Month after month he continued to eat and maintain weight, however, we started to notice that the muscles on the right side of his face were showing signs of atrophy. He had regained the ability to close his mouth all the way after the swelling had gone down and about 70-80% of the mobility and strength of his tongue by month 5. With the guidance of my vet we decided to change up some of the mash and instead of all soaked pellets we were doing some soaked hay cubes to add in some pieces that he would have to work at and chew. It was still soupy and we had switched to feeding out of a 30 gallon tub instead of the hanging bucket, but it was progress. Our next step was trying something out of left field for most. While it might be seen as natural in a more show centered environment, equine chiropractic and acupuncture work is just about unheard of in many rural areas, but I was desperate to get my boy back and that is exactly what I needed to find as a last ditch effort to try to get his face back into fully functioning again... (Come back next week for Part 3)