Festival News & Results

The Clovis Memorial Award

Bella Perkins & Wow Factor

The mare I am bringing to YDF this year, Wow Factor (AKA “Wonder”), has been through a lot in her short 9 years on earth. Although she has only been with her current owner and in training with us for a year, we work daily to keep her comfortable and thriving. When Wonder was just 5 years old, she had severe laminitis in her front feet and had a double tenotomy (cutting the deep digital flexor tendons to stop some of the force on the coffin bones). A few weeks later, while still healing, it was found that she was not able to breathe through her nose. When an endoscopy and X-Rays were done, there was a mass seen that was blocking her nasal passage. She had a tracheostomy to help her breathe and a CT was taken. The CT showed a “large soft tissue right nasal mass, with caudoventral extension into the nasopharynx and a secondary sinusitis.” In basic terms, she had what has been described to us as a “dumbbell” sized tumor in her nasal passage and extending into her throat, and an infection in her sinuses. Exploratory surgery was the only option to potentially save her life. The surgery was a success, and they were able to remove what was, thankfully, a noncancerous polyp. She then had a long recovery from both the laminitis and the extensive surgery. 

Wonder entered our lives almost 3 years after all this. Even with all she has been through, she is the sweetest mare with a great work ethic. I would say that the biggest hurdle we have been through with her is the maintenance of her front feet. Due to the tenotomy, she tends to drop through her heels, making her toes appear long and her heels underrun. A few months ago, her farrier switched her to heart bar shoes to relieve her heels by spreading the weight more evenly. The shoes have significantly improved her hooves. Her feet are done every 4 weeks and I’m sure this is something we will have to stay on top of her entire life to keep her as comfortable as possible. 

Because of her laminitis and metabolic issues, we are very careful with Wonder’s diet. Last year, we limited her grass consumption during the summer with a grazing muzzle. She seemed to find the muzzle quite frustrating! This year we have kept her off grass and she has hay 24/7. She is also on a low sugar and low starch grain. Her weight has been great and when we tested her insulin and glucose levels recently, they were perfect. 

Wonder is understandably a little sensitive around her face due to the extensive surgery and months of healing afterwards. She is much better than we expected, as long as we are gentle when we touch her face and don’t tighten her noseband or flash too much. Under saddle, she tends to toss her head a lot, which we assume is a kind of defense mechanism. This is not something we can force her to stop doing, especially since she is a feisty chestnut mare at times! Over the last year, we’ve been trying get to the root of the problem without breaking her trust in us and ruining her work ethic. We’ve found that she’s much better when she’s ridden forward from the hind end and kept on the aids. Her early career was as a hunter/jumper, so she’s not very used to the rider influencing her as much as we do in dressage. It’s taken awhile, but she has gotten much steadier in the connection and seems more content in work than ever!