Iridology

Few years back I studied equine iridology with Ellen Collinson. I wanted to study iridology as at Technical University of Szczecin, where I graduated IT, our professors created a diagnostic tool for humans based on changes visable in the iris. It was also the time when I met Juliano. Thanks to Ellen I could learn more about iridology for horses. I soon found out that it is very accurate and can help horses and their owners with a lot of problems.

Once in a while I take photos of Juliano's eyes up close. I keep them on my computer and compare from time to time. If I see that something is happening in the eye (discoloration, stress lines, spots) I try to work out what's wrong either alone or with Ellen on the phone. It's a great way to prevent problems, cause you will see it in the eye before any other symptoms occur. For example calcium deficiency, stress in back muscles, problems in lungs etc. Also if you are unsure what's the source of lameness the eye will show where the problems lies. Pretty cool stuff.



The story I wanted to tell you is about Juliano and his mysterious colic in 2007. One day I came to the stables to discover that J didn't drink any water for almost a day. He pooped into his automatic drinker and no one noticed this. As he filled himself with hay and had no water to drink he soon started to show signs of impaction. I called Anna and we started standard colic procedures. He got better after few hours. So we went home after making sure he is ok. The next day J was fine, went out for a bit, got hay and bran mash but in the evening the same thing happened. He looked disinterested, sad which I know means he is not well. This scenario continued for another day, ok during day, sick in the evening. At that time we knew this was not to do with impaction any more. We consulted another vet and started thinking of going to an equine clinic in Berlin. I decided to take photos of his eyes and give Ellen a quick call. She was home and quickly downloaded J's photos. We both looked at them and Ellen said "There is something going on with his spleen, it's under too much stress even for a horse after colic". Ellen suggested giving him spleen and liver herbs, the build up of toxins also started putting liver under pressure. Ellen posted the herbs to me and soon J was on them. He was not feeling well for 5 days at that time. But after 2 days of feeding him herbs with mash he started to improve. On the 3rd day he was fine both day and evening. The herbs worked. Thanks to Ellen he was fine again cause who know what might have happened next.

Juliano never stands still like this unless he is napping

This exhausting week for both of us tough me two things:
1. Always put an extra bucket of fresh water and don't depend only on automatic drinkers.
2. Horses are never sad without a good reason, so if you know your horse well never ignore even the slightes change in behavior when the horse is at home.

Savvy string trail riding

When I first started riding Juliano I didn't even dream about riding him bridleless. I longed for the day when I would have just slight control over what J was doing and how fast he was going.


Today we went for another savvy string hack. Two horses, two dogs and us. Juliano was calm and maintained gait that I picked. What's amazing is that he can be in front of other horses now with just savvy string on his neck and I have no problems with control.