All Things Horse & Hound _ Blog

Michelle Reilly of Mountain View Dressage & Lyric of Latimer

We began our journey with “Teddy” when we purchased him from the Hanoverian Verband summer auction in 2007.  At the time, he was a 5 year old Hessian, turned Hanoverian, who had been bred as the first “big” horse of  pony sport horse breeders. He had been ridden bareback on trails by their 10 year old daughter and had no real training, but as the former owners advised us he would happily go through any stream. His character reflected this upbringing and while we found him to have beautiful movement we also fell in love with his engaging and sometimes mischievous personality. Out of 143 horses our Teddy, then called Latin Lover, was the clear choice for us. More details about our Germany trip and the auction experience are at our blog article “Tips on Warmblood SportHorse Buying at European Auctions” but suffice it to say that after a gut wrenching experience we won the horse of our dreams and arranged his transport back to AZ.

Unfortunately, he had to arrive back in the summer and he initially had a tough adjustment period with the Arizona summer heat and an episode of shipping fever. However, he rebounded from this and was starting his training with our, then, trainer Gintara Slavinskas. Not long after his arrival, on an early morning routine training session, Teddy began to exhibit abdominal pain. He appeared completely normal during that morning’s training but he was immediately fraxious when placed in the cross ties and started rolling when brought back to his stall. Fortunately, we were all present to see the sudden transformation from an apparently healthy and comfortable horse to an animal in acute distress and intense discomfort within 10 minutes.  We quickly began walking him and attempting to contact our large animal veterinarian. This proved  to not be an altogether easy task on a early Sunday morning of December the 23rd. Luckily we were able to get him trailered down to Arizona Equine Medical & Surgical hospital where a doctor was awaiting our arrival. His rectal palpation was inconclusive so we elected to attempt medical therapy for the day but this proved to be ineffectual as Teddy continued to exhibit abdominal pain and ongoing colic signs.