I first got Missy when I was 15. I was looking for a horse and I went to see her, because the owner contacted me, as she had seen my wanted ad in the local saddlery.

I went to see Missy and she was so quiet which is what I was looking for, but VERY skinny. My parents decided to buy her but everything was my responsibility, which was the rule from the start.

So I had her home. I had this skinny, malnourished horse with a sparse, horrible coat. I tried feeding her up but nothing really seemed to work and there was a lot of trial and error. She was very food sensitive, and would heat up at the drop of a hat with some foods, so I tried her on a natural diet of Lucerne chaff, breeeda, seaweed meal, dolomite, copper, sulphur and apple cider vinegar, and she started to pick up right away. After a long, long time on this diet, I had her at the perfect weight. Missy looked awesome, only her feet were not the best because the paddock she was in was wet a lot, so her feet were always a bit powdery and always had splits. I would get on top of it one time and if I was a week late getting her feet done, they would split again.

One day I went to the paddock, only to find she had been in a horrible attack by two horses. They put her into a barb wire fence with the wire wrapped around her pastern. They did damage to her cartilage in the shoulder where they kicked her and she almost bled to death. Basically, if she didn't have a winter canvas rug on she really would be dead, ripped to death I'm sure. After trying to walk her out of the paddock, a vein opened up and blood was spurting out like a hose, so I applied pressure and a vet was called. When the vet was done and Missy was bandaged up, the vet said I could not leave her in the paddock (wasn't going to) or they really would kill her in that condition, so I had to walk her across town over a railway bridge to a block of land. In the following days she wouldn't eat or drink and developed colic. She was on high doses of penicillin and bute, so I looked up what I could on the Net and through books and found that penicillin can cause severe gut aches and to give Vitamin B12, which I did. Bute can weaken the the blood cells and cause internal bleeding, so for that I gave Vitamin C, in high doses and Missy started eating the next day-- not a great deal but it was a start.

Unfortunately, this was the day she needed her feet done so I was really worried about that from past experiences with her feet. A week passed, then 2 weeks, 3, 4 and they were fine. Don't take me wrong, they needed doing but even the vet said I couldn't get them done. After 2 months they were perfect (crack wise) with no splits, no powdering, no nothing. They were just really long. Even now 6 months later, I can only do 2 feet as she can't put pressure on the leg, because she has muscle atrophy in the infraspinous fossa of the scapula, but once again in reverting back to natural, massaging her shoulder with EMU oil and once again the natural way is helping.

All I can say, with natural feeds is they work, don't knock em' till you try them!.

Michelle with a thin Missy

Missy in good condition

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