As it has been a bit emotional for us all I forgot to write about losing Kit. kit was 28, arthritic and had developed Cushings disease. All under control and she seemed happy – I had brought her nearer home to a yard she had been to before and had spent a lot of her years enjoying. After settling in and finding a feed she would eat she put on weight and enjoyed a little light exercise in the school and around the woods.
As she was so well schooled and knew all verbal cues I let her say when and if she wanted to trot and canter.
During her last 2 weeks she began to head shake quite violently – I tried face masks, extra fly repellent thinking that may be the cause. The vet took bloods and they came back normal.
One morning I got a phone call saying she had fallen over in the stable and couldn’t get up. The vet was on the way and all the yard staff were with Kit. The vet gave her painkillers but still although she tried Kit could not get up. Liz, my daughter was working locally so managed to get to the yard before the vet put Kit to sleep. Kit had been Liz’s Pony Club pony, the pony she shared lots of emotions with when younger. Kit excelled at everything, dressage, jumping x-country. Even turning a hoof to endurance riding at the age of 24.
The vet thought the head shaking may have been brought on by a brain tumour, as a grey pony she had a lot of melanomas and possibly internal ones too. There were no reflexes in the hind limbs, so it was the only choice.
We will remember the good times we had together – from the first dressage test I did on her, as 5 year old, where we spent more time jumping the dressage boards than doing the test and gained a mark of 48%; to one of the last tests Liz did at Oldencraig (a large local dressage yard) where Kit beat all the very posh warmbloods to win with a score of 72%.
More recently she had been a therapy pony for Equine Partners CIC, and equine assisted learning centre in West Sussex run by Liz’s sister-in-law and mother-in-law.
Positive Horsemanship. 