Stanley-Giraffe is 'raring to go - and feeling great'!

Eaimbry Endeavour and Elli Darling

Elli Darling’s background in eventing ensures that she still enjoys jumping, but the Suffolk-based rider and trainer now specialises in dressage and last year, when her parents bought the then five-year-old Eaimbry Endeavour to join the other nine horses on the yard she shares with her partner Tori Bahal, it was the realisation of an ambition born a year earlier.

Standing 16.3hh, the San Amour gelding Eaimbry Endeavour is known affectionately as ‘Stanley-Giraffe’ and Ellie says: “We first saw him as a four-year-old and managed to buy him a year later. We did the five-year-old classes, but he was sharp and quite naughty – you could be riding along quite nicely and then all of a sudden, be facing the other way without having time to work out how you got there!
“I did a couple of novices with him at the end of last season and he came out this spring to do the six-year-old classes. He felt amazing, we had the changes sorted and were aiming for advanced medium, but then he went lame in April.

Heading for advanced medium at the start of the season.

“It started with him feeling a bit ‘iffy’ for a week, being really argumentative and difficult, yet when we went to a show at the end of that week, he was brilliant. After a day off though, he just didn’t feel right and when I went into trot, he was very wrong – and our vet duly found a shadow on a scan indicating he had injured a front suspensory ligament.
“Nerve blocking proved this was the problem, but although the shadow was tiny, the severity of his lameness had the vet worried about the true extent of the injury. 

He told me it may not repair fully, as Stanley has an extremely athletic action in trot and doesn’t know what ‘half power’ is, so it was going to be difficult to keep him sane during rehabilitation.
“Not only that, but he is too sharp to hack because he’s terrified of traffic, including bicycles. So although he’s not spooky or tense in the way most riders would understand, he uses any excuse to have a ‘hooley’. He doesn’t ‘wind up’ but does whip round – and round – and round – and if he changes direction, it can be a bit unseating. I knew that if we couldn’t rehabilitate him successfully, he didn’t really have a future as he obviously couldn’t go jumping either and he would never be someone’s hack!

“He was put on strict box rest and it was at that stage one of my clients suggested I look at the ArcEquine. I hadn’t heard of it at that point, but she persuaded me to ring the company and I duly did. That conversation, and the fact that I felt I had nothing to lose, resulted in my decision to give it a go – and so far – brilliant!
“The vet has just been out again and on this latest scan, the leg looks normal again and Stanley is feeling great. I adore the horse and so I’m still taking it so, so slowly. We’ve progressed to trotting and are looking at more weeks of trot work, steadily introducing lateral work, before we canter. He still loves to play about, but he never tries to really get me off and knowing him so well helps me to keep things going in the right direction.

“I’m obviously delighted with the result we’ve seen and I now use the ArcEquine for maintenance on the other horses too. I’ve never tried it on myself yet, because it’s either on a horse or on charge. Maybe we need another one!”

Images courtesy of Ana Goodrum, White Cat Photography. www.white-catphotography.com