Page 9 - Summer 17

The Story of Graínne – How homeopathy changed the life of a Connemara pony By Beatrice Milleder, Germany
Graínne, a grey Connemara pony mare was diagnosed with severe laminitis in the depth of winter at the age of ten. I need to add that Graínne is my pony, in fact is the first foal I bred, so from the beginning she was very special to me.
She was born in 1988, a quick birth only 15 minutes and she drank 30 minutes later. She is a homozygote grey, born black – a colour that is associated with melanomas, which she started to develop at the age of 12, but we get to that later. She has been in a herd from day one, and always in open spaces with access to a stable if wished. The mother, who was 14 at that time (and it was her 9th foal), developed severe attacks of asthma, one so bad we thought she would suffocate. When the vet examined her (I was just starting to study veterinary medicine at that time), she said, the mare would probably not reach an old age; her lungs sounded so bad. She received conventional treatment, which was mostly cortisone and clenbuterol and recovered within 2 months. Interestingly enough, I remember then giving her a medication, which later I understood was a complex remedy made of several ingredients, one of which was Kalium carbonicum in D6. I can’t recall the name of the preparation, but it did help and she got it for quite some time, all the while her foal was suckling.
When her daughter, Graínne, developed laminitis at the age of ten – in December – I still had no real concept of classical homeopathy. She received Belladonna and Hypericum in low potencies for acute symptoms, but I think it was mostly due to the knowledge of my hoof technician that she survived those terrible first months. Her bone came down at an angle of 14%, and ultimately the sole opened on both sides, which probably saved her life because the pressure in the hoof went down and she could walk again.
We put her on a strict diet to reduce excess weight and she recovered to the point, where she could be without shoes. However, the bouts of laminitis came back three times and the third was bad – she was 15 then.
Graínne was and is a perfect pony. Not once while growing up did she ever look like the proverbial ugly duckling so many yearlings or two year olds do. Whenever I showed her she won her class, even as a three year old she ended up reserve champion mare – no small task for a young pony. Her mane was always on one side, never a hair out of place. She was a pony set for routine, wanted her day to be structured, never really liked being groomed, never needed to be close to any other pony in her herd, but couldn’t do without them either. She was and is very low in terms of herd structure, shy and easily spooked. Outbursts could be almost violent, and she was most definitely stubborn, but not in a mulish kind of way, more in the way that things seemed to easily overwhelm her. It was easy to stress her out, and hard for her to come down from it. I only noticed that later, but when I look at pictures of her as a three year old, I can already see bumps forming above her eyes.
Just before the laminitis occurred I tried to get her in foal and failed, she did not take, but when you look at the picture you can see the metabolic problems she was carrying inside, including the fatty neck and even the bumps above her eyes. (Graínne summer 1998, main photo)
Almost from early foal-hood Graínne was suffering from what we thought was allergic cough and we watered her hay. Due to my breeding activities, she was regularly vaccinated against Herpes and Influenza, as it was required for stud service and showing. When I got more into complementary treatment I stopped vaccinating her and found a way around it.
So let’s go back to the summer of 2003. It was wet, that much I remember and that
particular night it was pouring down. That very night Graínne managed to get some hay from a bale next to her paddock and because she was still on food reduction, she happily stayed out the whole night to eat as much as she could.
In the morning I found her in the worst bout of laminitis, since she developed it five years ago. Classical symptoms with feet far in front of her body, standing on the bales and hind legs far under to reduce weight in front. She was shivering from the cold.
I took a deep breath and then went home and finally did a repertorisation the way I had been trained to do and read the Materia Medica, thinking of Ars. Alb, Sepia and maybe Bryonia.
The remedy that finally caught my eye was Kali carbonicum. James Tyler Kent wrote about the remedy and said it was often hard to recognize, even more so in an animal patient, because the problem usually develops deep inside and slowly. He also says that most patients are too weak to process potencies above a C200.
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Oedema day 2 Oedema day 1