still come back and qualify for the 2012 London Olympics. So she packed up Anton and went to Florida, partly to keep her options open and partly because the veterinarian was based in Florida. By the time the winter was over it was obvi- ous nothing was working to resolve Anton’s problems. They trekked
Anton’s massage therapist, Paul Wood, who noticed that Anton was depressed when he was turned out after his injury and suggested to Belinda that Anton be moved back to the barn and be ridden again.
back to Canada for the summer of 2012. “Our team vet at the time said, ‘I would put him in a field and see what happens.’ But, he didn’t really give me any posi-
tive thoughts about Anton recovering. And I think after that period of time they were also feeling very discouraged, because nothing was working or helping him. So I put him in a field in May of 2012. When I found out Anton might have to be retired, it was a feeling of complete devastation. I felt like I lost my best friend,” recalls Belinda.
Enter Two Key Players Belinda still wanted Anton to feel important, so she contin- ued with his massage therapy even after he was turned out. Paul Wood, Anton’s massage therapist, talks about his role in Anton’s story. “I worked with Anton as his massage therapist for quite some time before his injury and in that time had developed a relationship with him. Anton is a very
expressive and emotional horse and has always seemed to know he is special,” he says. Paul focused on stress relief, maintaining overall muscle
tone and pain relief. He included kinesio-taping for physi- cal support of Anton’s injured area. During his sessions with Anton, he noticed something. “During his recovery period, though healing physically, he became depressed; the light was just going out of his eyes, except when he could see Belinda! He just seemed to light up for that moment. I knew then it was his connection to Belinda that he needed most to heal. He needed her and I was pretty sure she needed him. I just went to Belinda and said, ‘Get on him, it’s you he needs. He will improve for you.’” On Paul’s advice, Belinda moved Anton back into the barn
in the late summer/early fall of 2012 so he could feel like he was part of the action. She started riding him at the walk to make him feel needed. “I don’t know if I would have gotten on him again if Paul hadn’t said that, because it was just so heartbreaking. I thought ‘how much do you keep trying and when do you just accept that it isn’t going to work?’ All these questions go through your head. So that’s what I did, I got on and walked him. I walked him for months and months and months. He wanted to do more, but he resigned himself to walking,” says Belinda. By the early part of 2013 Belinda slowly increased his
work, starting to trot again from time to time. She says he actually got better and better but she was still scared to even hope that he would return to top-level competition. Her thought at that point was that maybe he could partner with a rider to teach them the lower levels. In early winter of 2013 Dr. Usha Knabe, a licensed veteri-
narian of 25 years who five years ago had also studied East- ern medicine alternative therapies, started coming to Belin- da’s barn. Belinda credits Usha for Anton’s return to FEI level. “She’s the one who really turned him around and made him a top international horse again. She did it all through acupuncture and chiropractic work—nothing else. He’s not had injections or anything else since 2011. What she said is that it was a front-end lameness, but his sacroiliac was weak, so he had to compensate and then you get wear and tear on the front.” “I saw that he was really locked up behind and was really
Posing at the Pan Am Games last summer, left to right: Anton’s groom Lynsey Rowan; Anton’s veterinarian, Dr. Usha Knabe, and Belinda Trussell, Anton’s rider.
30 January/February 2016
tight. His whole body was not happy,” Usha recounts as she worked on his body. “I wanted to see how he would react. I picked up his leg to see what he would do and he was very suspicious.” Usha lists two key words in her philosophy in working with horses and people: trust and confidence. “You have to have the rider’s trust, the owner’s trust and work on the horse’s trust. The horse has to have confidence in your abil- ity and that you are not going to hurt him. You can work on a horse all you want but if they don’t have trust and confidence in you, they won’t show you where they are sore. Same goes with the rider—if the rider doesn’t have trust and confidence in you they won’t go down that path with you of trying to fix the problem,” she continues.
Courtesy of Dr. Usha Knabe
Courtesy of Oakcrest Farm
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