Gianna Calabro - 2025 Clovis Horsemanship Award Essay
Clovis Award Essay-Gianna Calabro
My name is Gianna Calabro and I will be competing on my horse Carlchen. Carl is an 15 year old Oldenburg gelding. My mom and I got Carl in 2021 and he quickly won us over with his goofy personality and exceptional work ethic. Being a grey horse we were not surprised to find a few melanomas, but we did not expect to find a rather large one in his inguinal areas. Carl has undergone several surgeries to remove the larger masses for him to move comfortably including a complicated stay at Tuft Vet hospital. He is currently on the Oncept melanoma vaccine that helps keep the masses from growing too fast.
Carl made his D4K debut in 2023 with one of my older “barn sisters”. They had a great show and even won a few of the perpetual awards but two days after coming home from Saugerties, we think he injured himself in turn out. Our local vets couldn’t figure out where it was coming from so we took him back to Tufts Veterinary hospital for a lameness work up. They found he had injured his right distal seasmoidial ligament and the treatment was 2-4 months of stall rest.
On stall rest he was very agitated and needed daily meds to keep calm, but the stress was too much and he coliced the second week of stall rest and needed to go back to Tufts and was hospitalized for 3-days. Thankfully no surgery was needed to fix the displaced colon and he was released with a higher dose of calming medications.
Throughout the winter he stayed on stall rest with twice daily hand walks, we discovered that the longer he was on stall rest the worse he walked (like stringhalt). Every six weeks we would bring him back to Tufts to check on the injured leg, it became clearer that he was becoming worse overall with his hind end movement. Neurology did an exam and determined that he could have wobblers syndrome. They did neck x-rays and discovered he has severe osteoarthritis in his neck that could be causing some of the neurological issues. We did steroid injections in his neck and started his rehab.
During stall rest we were constantly looking for new enrichment ideas and keep him mentally happy. We made hanging treat balls made of apples and carrots, ground feeders that he kicked around, hand walking to see friends, we make licky mats with his favorite mashed up treats, we had boxes of dog toys that he could nose through to find hay pellets. We looked for anything and everything to make life just a little bit more interesting for Carl.
The rehab of his leg and his neck was very slow and strictly scheduled. Each week we were able to walk him 5 more minutes on the lunge or in hand. He has specific neck stretches for the arthritis and in hand pole exercises to help with his proprioception and his funny walk. Eventually we could tack walk him and lunge at the trot. That turned into walk and trot under saddle. By the fall of 2024 he was finally cleared to resume normal work (but no jumping). We needed to build back all the muscle he lost, so his diet was monitored very closely. We added a higher protein supplement to help build muscle, he got 8,ooo units of Vitamin E daily for neurological support, a supplement to support ligaments/tendons and another supplement for his gastro health.
Almost two years later, Carl is sound and happy. He still has his 6 months visits to Tufts for his Oncept (melanoma vaccine) and his neck injections, he still gets Vitamin E and Adequan injections for arthritis. His neurological symptoms are gone, and the gait abnormality only shows up when walking in hand or when he is nervous or excited under saddle. We are very lucky that we didn’t need to retire him completely and I feel grateful to have the opportunity to finally participate in D4k with Carlchen.
