Page 18 - Summer 12

A case of Tiger Shark – Galeocerdo civier hepar by Edward de Beukelaer, UK
He is a nice horse but then he can be difficult as well. There are also some skin problems and signs of headshaking. Black Demon is a 9 year-old thoroughbred that is used for leisure: team chasing.
The owner opens up with: He cannot trot, he can only gallop, he just wants to go fast. He can’t support pressure or restraint, it winds him up. We go team chasing and I have to let him go and just steer him. He is also claustrophobic: he gets uptight. When it gets too warm he bites himself. He needs a fly net but under the fly net the skin breaks out in crusts and eruptions which sometimes are like big boils. (There are several 1-2 cm blackish lumpy eruptions, showing occasional signs of bleeding and crusting over his back and shoulders). He would come in to have a cup of tea, he would try anything to see whether it is edible; he will give it a go. He doesn’t respect your space. He will stand on your feet on purpose, but does it gently. He is highly strung but when it comes to hierarchy, he is the middle one of the three geldings that live together in the field.
On the team chase he just wants to go fast, he will not tolerate being restrained. But at the start he is as cool as a cucumber and does not get excited at all; he just waits for his turn. He is better when he is the second in the team chase. When he is in front you have to push him a bit.
He is incredibly sensitive to any misalignment: I have to constantly put his back in line. (The owner practices the McTimoney chiropractic technique).
He doesn’t like movement behind him; he will be off like a shot. Although he learned to look after himself, he won’t eat when he is out of his comfort zone but will eat after a while when we comfort him. He is ter- ribly allergic, will react to food: he breaks out in boils with thick blood/pus which are somewhat painful. He overreacts to everything. He is ok with other horses. Once a strange mare came in the field and he then chal- lenged the leading gelding. It raised his status.
He does not like containment: the noseband too tight, does not like box much, you have to girth him up carefully. He used to lose weight when you cantered him too fast and too much, he gets wound up easily, I have to keep him calm. It is important that he gets his say, he needs to be con- sidered, he knows that if he is going to protest that he is going to be con- sidered. But he cannot cope with somebody frightened around him; he has to know he can rely on us.
He is very aware of his surroundings; he can be excited but will not run over you or hurt you. But then he can get very wound up about some- thing flapping around him (jacket, blanket); it can suddenly become a complete disaster. But even when he panics he will not pull on the lead of his collar you have in your hands.
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He likes being groomed and he likes attention, he is open and friendly but then can be put off straight away from somebody waving their hands. He is very social. He looks after himself. He will follow another horse in the trailer: this is a team, we stick together. He is competitive; he doesn’t like to be behind on a hack. He can’t settle at low speed. He has learned to control himself by us giving him room to respond. He never tries to get away at all cost. He really wants to cooperate but sometimes he can’t. He doesn’t suffer with the cold.
Solution
I have no idea what this horse is about and set of looking for rubrics expressing two themes: being enclosed, wanting to keep going,
1 Generals, pressure agg + generals, closed room agg + mind, fear in
narrow space
2 Mind, anxiety, makes him walks faster + gen, walking rapidely amel
+ mind, anxiety anticipation + Mind, impatience when working + Mind, anxiety, time is set + dream, running + dream, running up and down + dream, running without fatigue
While selecting the various rubrics, I glance through them just to see what remedies are present and whether there are any unusual remedies. Then I started looking for a rubric that could explain the fact that he would panic and make a real scene at some small detail without at any moment hurting the person holding him. One way of explaining this is that he had a very good awareness of the surroundings. I looked in the rubric ‘Mind, senses’ and when going through the sub-rubrics found ‘heightened sense’. This rubric combined really well his sensitivity and his possibility to avoid hurting the handler during a panic. Only one remedy there, but then I had spotted this remedy coming up twice in the previous rubrics I had selected. With the remedy only being present in less than 700 rubrics I thought it was worth considering. None of the other remedies present inspired me.
His ‘presence’ comforted me in prescribing Tiger Shark (Galeoc-c-h 3 doses in 200C).
Once home I looked up tiger shark on the net. Some referred to this shark as the rubbish bin of the ocean because of their tendency to eat anything they find littered on the ocean floor (tires, bits of metal etc). I then had an explanation for the observation that he had a tendency to try anything to see whether it was edible and felt even more relaxed about my prescription.
2 months later: