Fern’s story

A good place to start is always at the beginning. Perhaps not as far back as my childhood but we are certainly going to head back to my late teens and early twenties. The era I discovered my love for Anglo-Arabs. It was a perchance encounter, as I always thought that I was more interested in the pure-bred Arabs! Not only that, but the really pretty Egyptian and Polish types. But how on earth does this all relate to Fern - my TB ex-racehorse? Bear with me… 

It was only through a friend that I even got to view a particular grey gelding, my darling Chip of course. I was actually on the hunt for a chestnut purebred mare! If you believe in love at first sight then you’ll know why Chip and I have been together for nearly a decade now. Although, it would be misleading to say we didn’t have a bumpy start whilst we got through his more testing ‘teenager’ years.

Anyway, Chip, as well as several other Anglos I’ve had the opportunity to compete and train, taught me that they are the horses for me. I’m tall at 5’10 (178cm) and that extra height of an Anglo helps. But the breed also gives a lot of explosive power and though some may disagree, I think also a bit more trainability. And perhaps not in the endurance sense but in the more multi-purpose way of ‘let’s do the odd dressage test’ and perhaps ‘hop over the occasional log’. (Although certainly there has been less of that in recent years as my desire to jump seems to have dwindled with age). 

And so, in 2019, a rather less-worldly Bella, with a whole heap more enthusiasm and optimism, thought that it would be a brilliant idea to source a TB mare! Not only to see if I could train for some low to mid-level endurance on a non-Arab, but also to one day breed my very own Anglo from. 

Whilst I absolutely take full responsibility for my purchase, I would say I was heavily influenced by the people around me at that time. Namely my para-professionals who are no longer on my team – and that in itself is quite telling. 

By the by, the acquisition of a then 3yr old SHADOW FORCE, aka Fern, was excitedly made on a particularly hot August bank holiday, and yep, you guessed it, my car at the time even broke down on the way home with her in the trailer! Classic Bella. 

Fern only raced three times, showing absolutely no desire to be in the front and so was promptly dispatched from racing into polo. She also proved to be too slow there and it’s from there that I collected her. Fern is by LETHAL FORCE, who in 2013 was one of the leading sprinters in the world. Multiple group 1 winning, he even holds the record for the fasted 6 furlongs in history at Newmarket Racecourse.  

However, hindsight being that wonderful old thing, why on earth did I buy a sprinter? In my mind, racing was racing. Comme ci, comme ça. Lots of people over time have asked me why I didn’t get a stayer. To be honest, it makes sense now but at the time I really never put a second thought into it. 

Most importantly of all, why did I get a failed racehorse. And failure is the key word here. Again, the idea of getting an older racehorse who had shown more, even moderate, success on the track genuinely hadn’t crossed my mind. But it would have been so much more logical. One that was proven. One that showed to be tougher and sounder to stand up to the demands of training and racing. 

Nevertheless, young and chirpy Bella thought Fern moved nicely and had good conformation and she was even grey – a good hope she would throw a grey foal to match Chippy too! She had an incredibly sweet personality and so I was rather pleased with my illicit purchase overall. 

Truthfully, only my sister (and my team of professionals) knew I’d actually bought her. The [white] lie to the family was that she was in training for an owner as I did take horses in at that time. Of course, the cat was let out the bag not very long into Fern’s stay but by that point everyone had a nice thing to say about her and so her future was secured. 

The only flaw Fern really had upon arrival was a heck of a seriously wonky set of feet. For a TB she seemed to have plenty of heel height (in front at least) but there wasn’t a single foot (or I should say even a pair of feet) that remotely matched. She actually still had her aluminium racing plates hanging on within an inch of their lives from when she’d last been shod at the racing yard! 

My farrier at the time was confident we could ‘sort them out’ and she was shod for the first 9 months she was with me. That is, until I realised quite how ludicrous it was to be shoeing a horse that was in the field doing nothing. At just three years old, I felt it really important to give Fern some time off and importantly time to settle into her new home. As you all know, I’m a huge advocate for turnout and field time and I think this took Fern a bit of adjustment as, my goodness, did she know how to pace a fence! 

In the March of 2020, now four years old, I thought it would be nice to do some light work with Fern and just keep her trickling along with six or so weeks of pottering before having the summer off again. I don’t mean to keep putting myself down but young-Bella (whilst I believe always kind and well-intended) didn’t have the same knowledge base that I have now. I think my version of light work then was too much and so looking back it isn’t without surprise that we had some bad reactions and some explosive behaviour which sent me crashing to the ground quite a few times. 

That summer, a mysterious lump developed on the front of her left knee. The paranoid Bella you all know and love, was just as hysterical then as she can be now and so despite complete soundness and no heat in the leg at all, we went to the vet for a full lameness work up. She was completely sound on the hard, soft, straight and circle and negative to flexion and the vet felt it was excessive to even bother to x-ray it. Me being me, I pushed for the images and I’m glad I did as we discovered an old fracture. The prognosis at the time was bad and I was told to consider euthanasia as the risk of a break was significant. However, a few days later my vet called me back and after consulting a number of other vets and numerous text books it was decided that whilst her potential as a performance horse was now zero she should at least be sound enough for a general riding horse. 

After a summer of doing nothing I tried again in the autumn to do a little bit more with her but by now she was quite a different horse to the one I had purchased a year ago. The sweet mare and sadly turned into an unhappy angry horse under the saddle and despite the physio at the time reassuring me session after session that there was nothing wrong, I had one fall too many!

The concussion of that fall gave me a headache that lasted nearly six months. My words were jumbled for a week and I couldn’t coordinate my fork and knife to eat at the table for several days either. It scared me a lot. Possibly more than when I fractured my back. The fall literally knocked memories out of my head that I haven’t to this day regained. 

In desperation, I contacted another physio for a second opinion and she immediately flagged her belief that Fern had kissing spine (KS). This was something I was vaguely aware of but hadn’t ever experienced with any other horse before so I spent the winter doing groundwork trying to ‘rehab’ her. By the March 2021 it was evident that my efforts were having little effect and so she was booked in for surgery pronto. Again, looking back I think I went into this all a little blind. The pressure to make a decision and utilise the insurance money within your policy year is overwhelming. I know I can’t go back and change it but I just wish I’d felt more educated about the process and had more opportunity to do different types of groundwork. 

I know so much more now and to berate myself for my past decisions is neither constructive nor helpful. However, if you have a horse with mild KS x-rays, like Fern did, then I wouldn’t go ahead with the surgery. I would instead utilise Osphos, steroids and Arthrimed – maybe even explore some stemcell therapy. Fern’s x-rays were never truly bad enough to have surgery. I feel perhaps a little exploited. Funnily enough, I’m not registered with that vet practice anymore either. And I only went to those vets as that’s who the new physio advocated for. 

Aside from that, my previously straight moving horse came out of surgery with her legs akimbo but altogether a happier horse. I could see the difference in her facial expression within 10 days and so I felt happy with my decision at the time. I did all the rehab work, despite the fact she couldn’t seem to keep her limbs straight anymore, and kept on being reassured by the vet and the physio that she would regain her correctness once we’d re-established her core strength and her back had fully healed. 

It was around this time that I was also diagnosed with osteopenia (low bone density) and so it’s fair to say that my confidence took a bit of a blow with ALL the horses around this time, not just the idea of riding Fern. So, whilst in theory I could have got back on Fern in late 2021 I truthfully was scared of her. I didn’t really want to. I felt she and I both needed more time.

As you all know, the idea of having a foal was predestined and both my Granny and the vet felt that it was an excellent solution to giving her more time off and more time to forget the coined term of ‘pain memories’. 

I put her into foal using AI as I didn’t want to risk her precious back with a live covering and she was scanned in foal at the first attempt. Throughout 2021 and right up to April 2022 I kept up all her groundwork. She was the happiest horse she’d truly ever been in her time with me to date. She was settled in her herd, she enjoyed her lifestyle, she seemingly had no back pain anymore and was all round such a pleasure to own. 

However, the next vets bill landed with a thump as she got no less than 8 sarcoids all in the most random places (her neck, her withers, on her stifle, her rump) in quick succession which I had lasered off. Again, I hadn’t much experience with sarcoids other than knowing that taking them off quickly is the most important thing to do. Whilst the laser surgery was gruesome, the sites healed well and we saw no more sarcoids for a little while at least. 

She foaled out of the textbook in May 2022 (my darling Zesty Girl of course) and proved to be the most wonderful mother too. I truly believe Fern enjoyed having a foal on the ground more than she’s enjoyed anything else in her life. She was just so natural at it without being needy or stressed. She allowed Zest to be introduced into the herd at just 5 weeks and was more than happy for Zest to go off and play with Spice. The partnership between them has always been so relaxed and without anxiousness that I was able to wean Zest entirely naturally. Neither of them has known the gastric ulcer-inducing stress of a cold-turkey weaning that sadly so many foals and their mothers experience. 

By mid-2023 it really was time I started to thinking about getting back on Fern. Zest was now weaned and Fern was now 7 so a good age to do more. And so, with only a little trepidation, I did actually do just that and actually she was good! Very good in fact. Obviously, there was quite a lot of work to do to regain her pre-mum bod but since I had kept up the groundwork throughout we weren’t starting from scratch. 

However, disaster struck in the October when Fern suddenly became very, very lame. So lame I genuinely thought we might lose her. The vet thought it was laminitis but her x-rays and her bloods said otherwise. It is still a mystery to me but I believe she was suffering with chronic hoof pain certainly but in the mechanical, rather than the metabolic sense. 

Despite the scary and worrying set back she came good again and by December I was riding her successfully. In fact, I went for a New Years Day ride to see 2024 in on my Ferny Angel! 

Seemingly going quite well, I did what I always do and started to second guess myself and so in January 2024 I took her and Chip for a pre-season MOT at the vets. This is the vet I now absolutely trust and have total faith in as he was the one that helped me get Spice good and has kept Chip on the road for all his biggest successes. 

Fern had everything re X-rayed. Her neck, back, knees, hocks, fetlocks and feet again. We scanned all four lower limbs too. She was sadly lame on all four limbs (so my doubts were not ill-founded after all) and through blocking we discovered the lameness to be in her feet. She still had foot pain despite our attempts to improve things for her. There were changes in her fetlocks and hocks with that odd vet term they like to use ‘as we’d expect to see in a horse or her age with her history’ i.e. she’d raced… 

My sister Pheobe is also my equine podiatrist and so throughout 2024 we have been slowly but surely plugging away at improving her feet using boots and pads as needed when the ground has been hard or we’ve felt we need to give her extra support. 

This year Fern’s behaviour has been reliably good and whilst she’s always going to have a little bit more to say about life than say a Cob counterpart, I’ve largely felt safe and positive riding Fern. We’ve even had a few lessons this year and gone as far as to do some trotting. I previously hadn’t trotted Fern since October 2020! 

The summer threw up yet more sarcoids and these ones were obviously not covered on the insurance anymore either but one got so large she was starting to kick herself with her back legs. And then the next set that cropped up were on her girth area which meant another 8 weeks of being unable to tack her up whilst those were treated and healed. 

Despite yet another set back and then a broken ankle for myself, I tried again to return her to work and Fern has been bobbing along okay. So much so that I actually committed to a pleasure ride at the end of December with a friend riding Chip to give us some moral support. After all this time I thought we might have finally cracked it and be able to start the hoped for low-level endurance career in 2025. 

I managed to wrack up a fair vet bill in January 2024 but I still had some money left on my claim and so I thought it would be a good idea to have another review with the vet before the end of November so that she could have any treatment that the vet felt necessary. I was really keen to try some Arthrimed for her. In January the only medication she actually had was an Osphos injection. I thought perhaps we could give her some extra support in her hocks/fetlocks more specifically. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any horse transport that week since my car was being a tad unreliable again so I asked my vet to come to me. It happened to be on one of the snow days which meant we had a fairly limited lameness assessment but he agreed that Arthrimed would be a good idea and so she had her hocks and hind fetlocks medicated. 

After the prerequisite rest time post medication we began some more work and once again all was going well. I think it’s the first time I’ve truly started to believe that she may actually have a competitive career. Her knee has genuinely never bothered her and she seemed happy enough in her work, spritely even. 

That is until last Friday when we had a terrible ride. Unfortunately, Fern had one of her explosions that I haven’t experienced since 2020 ☹. It was absolutely luck rather than skill that meant I didn’t fall off. It scared me so much because I just cannot risk falling off anymore.

My bone density has worsened since the initial diagnosis in 2020 and I have since broken both my left wrist and more recently my left ankle from otherwise unremarkable incidents. 

It was by chance that I caught the affair on video as I’d set up my tripod to film us doing some trotting as this is/was such an exciting entity to actually be trotting around on Fern!

Anyway, I sent the video to my vet and asked if perhaps we could get her booked in for a gastroscope as we’d pretty much done everything for her limbs now. I was also confident that her back is good. I’ve found the most fabulous physio in 2022 who has really made strides in Fern’s posture and way of going. My mind was definitely leaning towards digestive pain more than anything else. 

The vet called me back and said under no circumstances ride her until he’s seen her, bring her into the clinic and let’s reassess. He said he feared it was suspensory pain as her reaction was very violent. 

I managed to get booked in for Tuesday, taking the last available slot before my vet is off for Christmas! I genuinely believed that we were going to medicate her SI, scan the suspensories and if needs must do shock wave. I thought we’d have a solution anyway. I’ve been trying for so many years with Fern, to get it right for her, and we seem to have overcome so many challenges, that I didn’t for one minute think we’d reached the end of the road. 

At the vets we were able to assess her on the circle on the hard and soft and also do some straight line assessments with flexion. I was shocked and gutted to see her so lame.

Essentially, bilaterally lame behind and after not too long into lunging she even showed the odd lame step on her front right (not the fractured knee leg). By the end of the lameness assessment she was lame on three legs showing a regression rather than an improvement in ‘warming up’. 

We had a long discussion about what work I’d done with her since having the Arthimed treatment, and her 2024 as a whole, and things were looking quite bleak. Whereas before she was lame in her feet, she was now lame in her fetlocks, very lame from her suspensories and suffering with some secondary pain in her SI. The trigger, just doing that little bit more work with her. 

Positively, her back was good! She had full mobility through her spine and was negative to palpation so I’m relieved to say at least the six-weekly physio sessions and made-to-measure saddle haven’t been in vain.

It was one of those awful conversations where I was made to face the facts. Fundamentally, she’d done too much too young and I was never going to be able to undo time to reinstate her otherwise previously healthy joints. 

The minimally increased workload had proved to generate secondary pain into her suspensories and SI which in turn, in just a three-week window, had become a primary pain. The only option (which let’s be honest was never really an option) was a neurectomy. I don’t actually feel very comfortable with the idea of it and my vet said he wouldn’t let me go through with that option anyway as she’d still be lame from her fetlocks. 

The biggest indication of success (or lack of) overall was actually her inclination (or again lack of) to be a ridden horse. I know it’s not nice to think about but pretty much every single horse has an issue to some degree at some point in their lives. We shouldn’t have to ask our horses to be stoic for us but many of them are, and some of them are not. That’s okay, humans have different pain thresholds and tolerance levels too. 

Fern’s reactions to her mild KS back in the day tell us that her tolerance levels are low. Her joy at being a mum and her resignation at being a ridden horse are telling. That Friday when I went to bring her into ride she dragged up the field unenthusiastically. 

Poor Fern is in pain and she doesn’t want to do it. Why would I keep asking her to. 

And so that was really that. No viable medical solutions and a low-desire to keep trying when she clearly doesn’t truly enjoy ridden work - the unanimous decision was retirement. 

Positively, my vet feels she will make big improvements with field rest and has no concerns about her ‘success’ as either a companion horse or broodmare in his words ‘for the next 20 years’. I am, as I’m sure you can imagine, truly quite gutted. After so many years of trying to get it right for her I do feel like I’m giving up. But there is also some peace knowing it is the right decision for her. 

There is also a great deal of gratitude for my vet for his honesty. There are many vets that I’m sure would have let me spend thousands of pounds more trying to get her to come right only to ultimately come to the same conclusion only a little further down the line. 

It is not the story I hoped to write for Fern. I’ve never stopped trying with a horse before. Somehow, I’ve managed to always pull through, against the odds, but this time I’m defeated. I think that has been a difficult pill to swallow. It goes against the grain. My very personality type is ‘determined’. My goodness, giving up has often been the path of least resistance and looking back there have been lots of things at work or in my personal life I should have given up on far sooner. But it’s not a nice notion, synonymous with failure, it doesn’t feel good. I feel sad, so sad, even though I know it is the right decision for Fern. 

Enough dwelling, I’m sure you all want to know what the immediate and long term next steps are. Well, in the short term I’m going to give her a couple of weeks doing nothing at all. After that I will recommence her pole work 2-3 times a week. What I fear most is losing her posture again and her core strength that I have worked so hard to regain. I think it’s going to be important for her longevity that she stays as strong as possible. Naturally, these sessions are going to be exclusively in walk, with more straight lines than curved lines and they are likely to last less than 10 minutes each time. On a quiet sunny day, when the inclination takes me, I might even take her for the odd walk around the village off Chip. She does seem to enjoy her mini-excursions and it might be nice for her leave the yard every once in a while. 

Her new official long-term job title, with no career progression or promotion on the cards, will be ‘Chip’s wife’. I think she will get a great deal of job satisfaction from this role. She will be, in effect, a full time stay at home wifey now. I doubt she’s going to start contributing much to the housework but she will offer companionship and solidarity with Chip in their dramatic eye-rolling of the young one’s antics. Although, I’m sure from time to time Fern and Chip will be the instigators of said field antics too!