Askander Al Kabir
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Alkabir has been with us since he was a yearling, it was through seeing him advertised that we came across Celti again. He settled in with the rest of the gang straight away, always taking everything in his stride. His only downfall if you can call it that is he’s a wee bit accident prone.
Even before we bought him he’d had an argument with barbwire making a mess of his legs but luckily apart from a few visible scars there was no permanent damage.
A funny story was when we were still living in Ynys Las, when his mate Redland somehow got into the ditch, (some horses love the tips of the bamboo shoots) the only place we could get him out lead into an adjoining field, as we were walking across the field to the gateway the next thing we hear is a splash. Alkibir had decided to join us and jumped in the ditch looking very calm so much so you’d think it was his daily ritual, fortunately all the others had the sense to wait for us to come back round.
In the May 2004 he managed one night to get his head trapped in-between some rails, (he had twisted his head in-between to eat the bark of a tree) I think something had startled him causing him to panic and end up thrashing hell out of his head. When I found him he was curled up like a foal looking as though some one had been at him with a baseball bat. There was extensive damage to the right side of his head, there was a deep hole bigger than my out stretched hand below the ear, his ear was pointing south and felt like sponge as all the vessels and nerves to the ear had been crushed, a lump bigger than a goose egg was 2inches below the right eye plus numerous small cuts. There was also a lot of awful ‘gung’ running out of all the major areas including his ear and to top it all extreme concussion.
Our vet at the time, John Downes who was fantastic was coming over pretty much every other day for the first few weeks and on a couple of occasions bought Burtie Ellis and under his advice we had to smoother his skin from the tip of his nose to his shoulder blade with Vaseline to protect the skin being damaged by the ‘gung’ and to also clean the open wounds using sterile paper this was done two to three times a day, and no end of drugs were pumped into him. At the beginning both vets and us were very worried about the ear and as to whether we would have to remove it plus no one new what damage had been sustained internally.
Alkabir I’ve decided has the will of a warrior as his rate of recovery shocked us all, and the healing was noticed daily. His ear took at least 18 months to recover and due to him being grey the scars do not stand out and are hidden by his thick long mane.
Thinking we were well out of the woods on Friday the 11th of July he started stumping and falling over as though he was totally disorientated and he looked as though he’d had a stroke as his face was paralysed and his head was leaning badly to the right. Neither John or ourselves could believe what was happening. Luckily John injected very strong anti-inflammatory which unbeknown to us at the time prevented thing getting worse.
We managed after a couple of day’s to get Alkabir on the trailer and up to Oswestry’s veterinary clinic there he was seen by Mark. By the end of the day he informed us that Alkabir had developed Vestibular, which is a form of stroke caused by a massive build up of pressure in the middle ear chamber. Which in Alkabir’s case was caused when he’d trapped his head in May. He stayed with Mark for about five days to run tests, x-ray his head and work out the a form of medication. The x-ray showed due to the pressure a fracture had developed starting from the middle ear.
In fairness to Mark he scoured the internet and found that a Veterinary clinic in America had had some successes with saving horses that had developed vestibular and a few had made a full recovery. So we had to give Alkabir two sachets of bute and a large sachet of anti-biotics religiously every day for nine weeks.
Again Alkabir’s will to recover astounded us all, progress was noticeable daily but it was a long time before his head was perfectly straight, but this seemed to make no difference in the way he trotted and cantered flat out around the fields he’d obviously learnt to compensate. All this never did stop him putting his head in places he shouldn’t.
Two years down the line Alkabir has developed into a beautiful powerful horse. In that first week that he went down with Vestibular it was a very upsetting time for everyone and I personally found it hard to talk to any one other than the vets as you felt you would break down in tears. I now look at Alkabir and have the greatest of respect for him and every time I hug him which is often, they are always special hugs.
The name Askander Al Kabir means Alexandra The Great.