Nova

One of the first warning signs that something was different about Nova back before her spay was her sudden inability to have her hooves trimmed. She had been seeing the farrier every 6 weeks for years, but one day she could not handle the touch of a familiar hand on her hind leg — anywhere behind her withers, really. Even the lightest of touches would cause her to squeal and kick and become quite dangerous to those handling her. After her spay, we gave Nova a bit of time off from asking anything of her, including having her hooves worked on, as she rested and recuperated. As she healed, many signs pointed towards Nova feeling a whole lot more herself — she certainly didn’t seem as finicky and reactive as she had back when she still had ovaries — but a true test would be how she reacted to the farrier. With her first post-spay farrier appointment in the books, we held our breaths and crossed our fingers in the hopes that she would be back to the Nova of old.

And indeed, she was a perfect lady for her hoof trim. She had no untoward reactions to having her legs handled, even the hind ones, and gave the farrier no trouble. In fact, she seemed to enjoy her pedicure, and all of the subsequent pets she received for standing so well.

This was not a one-off. Each trim since the spay has seen a well-mannered and polite Nova, fine with any stray brushes of a head or hand against her flank as her hooves are lifted and rasped. Clearly she is feeling a whole lot better, and so are we in the knowledge that we no longer have to delay her basic care for fear of injuring the carers!

Trudy M, our stupendous Saturday barn staff, has been spending some time grooming Nova during the past few months while she has been in recovery from her spay earlier this year. We have given Nova some time off, and while her expectations for work have been low, she has still been getting her itches scratched with Trudy’s help. Here is what Trudy has to say about Nova and their time together:

“Have you ever met a horse that captivated you from first glance? Where you can’t take your eyes off them when they move out freely in a field and you look forward to every small interaction with them? That is Nova for me.  

I met Nova three and a half years ago when she was still being referred to as one of ‘the fillies’. She has outgrown that title long ago now, as a well grown, long-legged and muscular mare, who I once watched clear a six-foot wide bank of tires to reach the hay bag she wanted most, because going around is for wimps. This spring, Nova has been recovering from surgery. Each weekend, I’ve offered to ease her recovery with a few choice scratches. This girl cannot resist a good scratching. 

As she has physically recovered from her spay surgery, we have been watching carefully to see how she would recover emotionally. Would we get to see more of that sweet Nova we remembered from before her cycles began? Would her volcanic moods even out without her brain being repeatedly flooded with intense bursts of hormones? So far, so good. She is no longer striking out at the slightest touch. Women who’ve had a particularly intense cycle and whole body wrenching cramps may be able to relate to how a light touch in those moments can feel like the jab of a hot poker. Nova is beginning to remember that touch can be very pleasant. 

She has eagerly accepted grooming from nose to tail, leaning into the particularly itchy spots under her mane, between her front legs and along her back. If I’m scratching just right, she’ll even bend her long neck around my body and gently massage me with her lips, just as she might with another horse in a herd.

She contorts her body to press into the brush. Nova is not a fan of light touch, she’s more of a deep pressure kind of gal. She likes to be brushed firmly, to really feel the bristles through her coat. If I find just the right spot and brush just the right way, she makes the most ridiculous faces.

”

Nova’s journey from foal to adulthood has been a tumultuous one to say the least. She was a delightful and friendly girl for the first two years of her life…but then we started to see changes. Her heat cycles, which started out normal, became problematic. She began to exhibit more and more hormonal behavior, and as she got older, she started to show worrisome signs of aggression,  What made Nova’s situation so challenging to manage was the unpredictability of it all, her lightning-fast switch from docile to dangerous. While it was difficult not to rule out behavioral components entirely, the suddenness of her transformation made it seem more physiological than anything.

We tested Nova’s hormone levels in the fall, and while there was a slight elevation in her testosterone, it was back within the (higher end) of normal range by spring. We ran other bloodwork to check for granulosa cell tumors — no evidence. We ultrasounded her ovaries, and while one was larger than the other, there was nothing that stood out to the vets as a clear-cut issue. We started Nova on Regumate — first 10mls, then 15, then up to 20. We had her on first Mare Magic, then magnesium, both known for their calming properties. Nothing made much of a dent in her behavior. While she did have some ‘good’ days during the fall months, a return to form of the sweet Nova we knew and loved, from one day to the next she could morph into a horse we didn’t recognize. After additional consultation with our vets, and feeling like we had exhausted our non-invasive options to help Nova, we decided to set a date for a spay.

Spaying a mare is not a common practice, as it is more intensive and specialized than a gelding surgery. With geldings, we have the option to perform them on site here at SAFE — such a thing is not possible for a spay. In addition, because it is not routinely done, not every vet can perform the surgery. Luckily, our vets at Rainland had plans to host a surgeon from WSU, and we were able to get on the docket for Nova’s spay. They set a date in late January, and we eagerly counted down the days until we could — hopefully — finally help Nova.

Arriving at Rainland Farm Equine Clinic

To prep for the surgery, we had to cut Nova’s food way back, as they wanted her colon as empty as possible for the procedure. So for the few days leading up to the date of her spay, Nova ate tapas — a few pounds of grain, top dressed with corn oil. Thankfully, if she was feeling hangry, she didn’t show it. On the day that we trailered her to the clinic she loaded easily and without fuss. The ride is not a long one, and Nova led off calmly once at Rainland, settling into her temporary digs with an almost abnormal mellowness. It is in these glimpses of what a reasonable horse she can be that really help to solidify we are making the correct choice in trying to help her through a spay.

The procedure itself, a laparoscopic ovariectomy, took only about an hour. Two small incisions are made on either side of the horse, one for the camera and the other for the tools, and the ovaries are removed. During the procedure, the horse remains standing. Modern medicine truly is amazing! Rainland kept Nova overnight following the procedure, but we picked her up in the afternoon the day after. She arrived back at SAFE bright eyed and bushy tailed, in eager anticipation of what we hope will be a new lease on life (though more realistically, probably just excited to get back to eating full meals again).

Nova is currently taking it easy, recovering in a small paddock where she can’t quite romp, but can still move around a bit. She will rest for about two weeks, and then can move back to a larger location. Her work can begin again after a month has passed, which will be around the beginning of March — stay tuned.

We are optimistic that this procedure will have made a difference in helping Nova feel better, and that removing the hormonal component from the equation will help Nova be able to live her best life!

Nova Nova Nova, no longer a baby and, indeed, making that known. I’ve spoken before about Nova’s hormonal struggles, the willingness and sweetness that can flip on a dime to something unpredictable and sometimes dangerous. She is a horse who wants attention and affection, but whose biology fights back against it (with the occasional smattering of conscious effort, a bit of nature versus nurture at work). To keep both horse and human from potentially encountering less than pleasant situations, we have made it so only staff or experienced volunteers clean in Nova’s paddock.

That means that Trudy, our lovely Saturday barn staff, spends time every weekend from afar with Nova, who is always very excited to greet Trudy’s two husky pups (safely, from a distance). After cleaning her paddock, if Nova was respectful of Trudy’s boundaries, Trudy will climb up on the fence above Nova, who slides into place like a puzzle piece. Trudy will then scratch on Nova, whose lip curls up in happiness. This, a horse who has been known to squeal and strike when approached with a halter, reduced to a puddle of sweet, itchy joy.

The classic, “that’s the spot!” face

It is primarily her hind end that Nova takes issue with being touched, though on a ‘bad’ day, that issue could extend as far up as her neck. But with Trudy on the fence, reaching down to scratch, Nova’s boundaries are a lot bigger. Recently, Trudy has stepped up her game and has begun to take Nova’s brush box out with her, turning the itching session into more of a full-blown groom. At a recent visit with Nova, she allowed Trudy to brush down her entire top line, as well as around her cinch area and down her front legs. Again, not anything that hasn’t already been done with this mare countless times, but with her hormonal spikes, something that she has allowed less and less as of late. But in Trudy, Nova has found someone willing to adjust to her unique needs, while eating up every minute of it!

Someone is ready for their closeup! The fall leaves and Nova go together like apples and pie — a winning combo.

Nova has spent the entirety of her life here at SAFE. Her first breaths, steps, and moments were here on the farm, witnessed and overseen by the people who would go on to take care of her as she grew from a gangly filly into a long-legged mare. It is safe to say that we know Nova quite well.

When she entered her fourth year, Nova underwent a change in demeanor that was uncharacteristic. We first noticed it when she was getting her feet trimmed, something she was no stranger to, having seen the farrier every 6 weeks since she was a tyke. But at this visit, the brush of the farrier’s shoulder against her flank as she reached for a hind leg sent Nova into a tizzy. She was inconsolable from that point on, with every attempt to touch anywhere near her hind end resulting in a great deal of squealing and kicking.

This was behavior we had never before seen from Nova. Sure, she was at times a rambunctious young lady, still in the relative early days of her training, but we had not had any trouble brushing her rump, combing through her tail, or picking up her hind feet. But now, it was as though a switch had been flipped, and her rational mind was clicked off. And perhaps it was, in favor of something more base: hormones.

And said ‘horror-mones’ did seem to be the case. Nova’s season hit her hard and strong, clearly an unpleasant time for the lady, as well as for anyone who was tasked with handling her. We had our vets out to draw blood and see if the cause was, indeed, hormone-related, and if there was something more serious going on. When we first described the behavior to them, they wondered about the possibility of granulosa cell tumors, a common type of tumor to affect a horse’s ovaries, causing changes in demeanor. Blood work would help us pinpoint if that were the case.

When her results arrived, they showed that Nova’s testosterone was slightly elevated (normal range being 20 — 45 pg/ml), with Nova’s reading at 52.3 pg/ml. Because of this slight elevation, our vets recommended re-testing in 60 days, which would also coincide with fall, a time when her cycle should be breaking. If her testosterone levels were continuing to increase, it may be indicative of an early-stage tumor. However, when we drew blood for a recheck several months later, her testosterone was back in normal limits again, leaving our vets to believe that a granulosa cell tumor was not a concern at present. However, with her symptoms still in full force, they gave us the all clear to start Nova on Regumate to help try and suppress her cycle.

We were also curious if some of her reactivity was behavioral. We have had some experience with mares whose.. sensitivities, were not entirely related to things outside of their control. We were hopeful that in helping Nova understand that things touching her didn’t mean the sudden onslaught of a stallion, she could dismantle some of those intense reactions. And after a few days of consistent work, there did appear to be some changes happening — while still reactive at a rope or flag petting her hind, she was a bit less so, and she started each day a little more accepting than the day before.

Then, as we crept back into fall, something happened: Nova settled back into the mare we were more familiar with. She stopped having the same over sensitivity and reactivity to her hind end being touched. She allowed her back feet to be handled and trimmed again. All the while she looked at us with those sweet doe eyes of hers, as if to say, “who, me?” We were still cautious with her, but such a dramatic shift in her behavior seemed to belie that hers was, indeed, a seasonal problem above all else.

So as spring came back around, we shouldn’t have been so surprised that so did Nova’s tendencies towards the ‘kick now, think later’ approach. In this new year, we had also made the decision that Nova should have some time under someone else’s saddle, but when we loaded her in the trailer bound for our good friend Dylan’s training program, we sent the Regumate right along with her, hopeful it could play a nice second fiddle to the great work we knew Dylan would do with her.

And indeed, under Dylan, Nova continued to blossom into the lovely riding horse we had started to know her as. Her issues, for lack of a better term, seemed to be confined to her hind region, and over in Ellensburg, along with putting her through the normal paces, Dylan spent a great deal of time trying to help her through the sensitivities of her hind end.

Unfortunately, it did not appear that the Regumate was making significant changes in her demeanor. She was due for her annual dental, and we decided to have her more thoroughly checked out under sedation to ensure we hadn’t missed anything last time we’d drawn blood. Nova was seen by the folks over at Central Washington Equine Hospital, in particular by a Dr. Lindley, who was able to palpate her ovaries under sedation, where she found her left ovary to be significantly larger than her right. She once again drew blood to check for hormone changes, but when the results came back, they revealed that Nova’s testosterone was still in normal range. So the mystery as to why exactly her reactions to her heat cycles are so intense remains an ongoing puzzle that we continue to brainstorm ways to solve.

Nova has since returned from off-site training, and is back at SAFE where we are evaluating the next steps to take to help her feel her best (and stop trying to kick people, that too).

Our lady Nova has been off at training for the last little while, and while we miss her tall, dark, and handsome self, we couldn’t be happier that she is getting a quality education under the blue skies of Ellensburg. Nova will likely always be a mare who is her best self when in regular work, so her time at training has been excellent for her in so many ways. Under Dylan’s tutelage, she is putting those long legs to good use, and making all kinds of positive strides under saddle.

More about the specifics of what Nova has been up to later. For now, I just want to share some beautiful photos that our good friend Candi K took of Nova at a recent visit. She sure is stunning to look at!

What is that saying, girls go to college to get more knowledge? (I think there’s a part about boys in there too, but it’s a little less kind). The girl in question here is Nova, and the college is a place in Ellensburg with teacher, Dylan Palm. With a great start already under her belt, Nova has just been in need of a bit of dedicated time spent to really polish her to a shine, and we couldn’t think of a better place for her to spend a few weeks than with our old friend, Dylan. We are certainly missing her while she is away, but we are excited for the day she returns and she can show us, and potential adopters, all the old tricks she’s brushed up on and all the new tricks she’s learned.

The nature of SAFE is that it is a transient place, meant to be a pause in the life of the horses who come here, a comma in their lives, not a full stop. What this means is that things change on a regular basis – we play musical paddocks quite often (though all of the horses have a chair at the end of it). What it also means is that herds grow and shrink as horses come and go.

For Nova, born on property, it is only to be expected that she has seen multiple shifts in her living situations. Over the summer, she was turned out with her fellow SAFE-born baby, Rae, and more recent addition, Valentine. The three enjoyed months of grass together and nights spent sleeping under the stars in what we colloquially call ‘the filly’s paddock. But Rae had a clinic to attend, pulling her from the group and into a separate space where she could quarantine upon her return, and Valentine found a home, leaving Nova without a herd.

Valentine, Nova, and Rae having a romp together this past summer

But, as I said before, things never remain stagnant for long. We had intakes coming to SAFE who needed a place to land, which meant it was the perfect time to get a herd together – specifically, a mare herd.

Introducing horses is always a bit nerve wracking. As herd animals, they are born to work things out amongst themselves and establish a pecking order, but it certainly is difficult to remove the human emotion from the event. Our new mare herd would consist of 6 horses, all with different personalities and established roles in their own, smaller herds. There was bound to be a little drama. And there was, of course. Some kicks were aimed and some running was done, but everyone did, in the end, work it out, and we breathed a sigh of relief.

So – back to Nova. This herd, of which she is a part, includes:

her childhood friend, Rae, who she greeted with exuberance once they were re-introduced. Nova has always been the boss out of the two of them, and though she was clearly happy to see her friend, wasted no time in solidifying that dynamic between them.

Bijou, who Nova initially flocked to, the two of them getting into friendly spats over which hay box is the best one (“Oh you’re eating from there? Actually that’s the one I need to eat from!”).

Frosting, who despite being a youngster, has learned quite a bit about being the boss from Fancy, the herd’s current leader and Frosting’s long time friend. Frosting and Nova get along famously, and even though Frosting will pin her ears and Nova will squeal, the two have been seen snuggled up on multiple occasions.

These girls get up to daily shenanigans, mostly consisting of playing games of tag and making little plays for dominance. Other typical activities include rounds of ‘ring around the hay net’ and mid-day slumber parties.

Each morning at turn out, Nova gives a gleeful little buck as she runs off to join her friends at the haybox, encapsulating the way we all feel about watching a happy horse in a herd: yeehaw!

Long-legged Nova will celebrate her 4th birthday this November. In the meantime, she has been working on her physique with some trot pole work. We think that Nova has it in her to really take on some fences one day, but for now, we will stick with cavalettis.

Nova is a tall drink of water. Or, perhaps a bit more appropriately, a tall drink of soda – something with bubbles, the kind that dance and pop above the glass, sparkly and effervescent. The word ‘coltish’ also springs to mind, certainly due to those long legs of hers, and the way it sometimes feels like she is still getting used to them. Not that she is ungainly, just that she possesses a looseness to her movements on occasion, much like a big puppy not yet done growing. And the comparison is apt – she is indeed a young thing still filling into herself. 

For a while, she was getting turnout with Jill only – we rearranged the herd, and the two girls had a few weeks in a new paddock together. Even with a hay bag for each of them, they chose to eat together from one before moving to the next, Nova the taller of the pair often knocking alfalfa leaves into Jill’s mane. 

Recently, however, they have been reunited with their old friend, Rae (in Nova’s case, the two of them were practically born together), and the trio have settled into their old routine of stretching their legs, napping in the sun, and testing the waters by moving each other around. They have also acquired some new fence neighbors – Pepper and Esme, who are quick to participate in the various dramas of teenage mares from the next paddock over, and Darla, who is a bit more aloof. With these fence introductions, the herd may be seeing an expansion soon, so stay tuned. 

Nova, as a young, growing girl, has been given much of the winter off from work. Recently however, she’s taken some trips to the round pen again to reacquaint her with having her head in the game, so to speak. We worked on transitioning smoothly up and down through the gaits, as well as getting her ‘with me.’ Nova is a pretty mover, and although it takes her a moment, once she settles into a long trot or smooth canter, it is a pleasure to watch her. She requires lots of quick transitions to get her with you – leave her too long in one gait or another and you risk dulling her out. When sending a horse around, the goal is to make yourself as interesting as possible so they look to you for direction and connection. This is easier to accomplish with some horses, and Nova definitely challenges you to be a focal point. These transitions help to draw her attention and to keep it. 

One of the biggest hurdles to overcome is maintaining her focus in a situation where it is being pulled elsewhere – most notably when she is separated from her friends. We have also added the joys of a young mare coming into season this year so the hormones are definitely in play now and an added element to working with her. In these scenarios, it is very difficult to draw her attention back from where it has been taken. The best way to go about doing so is by making the place where she wants to be – typically by the gate of the arena – more difficult, and the place where she does not want to be easy. This looks like: when she heads towards the spot she wants to be, making her “work” there, and then releasing all “work” once she turns towards the area she doesn’t want to be. “Make the wrong thing difficult and the right thing easy.” Easy in concept, harder to execute. Still, when she is ‘with you,’ working with Nova is a real joy.

As her training resumes in full this spring, it will be wonderful to continue to watch her grow (both physically and mentally), and I hope to have further opportunities to work with her. 

Nova is growing into a stunning young horse! She’s got legs for days and looks a lot like her mom. Nova is definitely lower on the filly totem pole than Pippi or Rae, but this little herd is all best of friends! When Jill joined the filly paddock, Nova was the only horse that welcomed her in, so Jill was attached to Nova at the hip for a while. Now though, if you look over toward the fillies, chances are you’ll see at least one random pair grooming each other, often you’ll see the whole herd of them piled up together! No filly ever drinks by herself, they go in at least sets of two to the water trough. It’s been so fun to watch them grow up and develop into their own little family.

Since Nova is now two years old, she’ll be entering our horsemanship program! More to come on this, stay tuned…