08/04/2026
I've gone back and forth on whether to share an update on Mouse. But over the last few days, I haven't been able to stop thinking about his diagnosis, the pressures our industry places on young horses, and what it truly means to be good stewards of them.
With the summer heat, all of our horses have been on night turnout. When we brought everyone in one morning, we found Mouse standing in the pasture with his head hanging low, unable to lift it above his knees. When he did manage to raise his head, he would stumble and fall.
One call to our veterinarian, and we were loading him up for neck X-rays with concerns of either a cervical injury or Wobbler Syndrome.
The bestest boy walked onto the trailer, and carefully off we went. In the back of my mind, I knew there was a chance we might come home with an empty trailer. As emotional as that thought was, it was impossible not to prepare myself for every possibility.
After a neurological exam and neck X-rays, we got our answer. Mouse had suffered a minor fracture to one of his cervical vertebrae, likely from a fall in the pasture. While the fracture explains his soreness, the bigger concern was a diagnosis of Wobbler Syndrome.
Wobbler Syndrome is a neurological condition where the spinal cord becomes compressed within the neck. That compression disrupts the nerve signals traveling from the brain to the limbs, resulting in weakness, incoordination, stumbling, and sometimes falling. It can have a genetic component, but it's also associated with rapid growth in young horses.
And that's where my mind keeps going.
Mouse isn't a horse we've pushed. Physically, mentally, or in his training, he's been allowed to simply be a two-year-old. If you've seen him at horse shows, you've probably noticed he's one of the lankiest, most immature-looking horses in the pen. He's all legs, all heart, and very much still growing.
As I look around at some of the other young horses competing, I can't help but ask myself some difficult questions.
Should our yearlings and two-year-olds look like fully developed horses? At what point are we asking bodies that are still growing to mature faster than nature intended? Are we thinking about what those horses will feel like not just at four or five years old, but at fifteen or twenty?
Do I think Mouse likely had a predisposition to developing Wobbler Syndrome? Probably. Given how slowly we've allowed him to develop, this may have happened regardless. But his diagnosis has still challenged me to think deeply about how we raise and develop young horses moving forward.
For now, under the guidance of an incredible veterinary team, Mouse's job is simply to be a horse.
Our goal is to slow his growth as much as we safely can, giving his vertebrae time to catch up with the rest of his body and allowing his neck every opportunity to heal. We won't know whether he'll ever be safe to ride for another six months, and possibly up to a year.
That's a hard timeline to hear when you're excited about a young prospect.
But the horse doesn't know our timelines.
He doesn't know futurities, show schedules, or training goals. He only knows how he feels today.
So today, that's what we'll honor.
I'm incredibly grateful—for a veterinary team that has been honest, realistic, and hopeful all at once. I'm grateful that his neck fracture wasn't worse. I'm grateful no one was hurt, because this just as easily could have happened under saddle. And I'm grateful that we're in a position where we can simply give him time, without feeling pressured to rush him back before he's ready.
Maybe one day we'll be back in the show pen together.
Maybe we won't.
But if Mouse has taught me anything already, it's that our responsibility has never been to force the outcome we want. It's to do what's right for the horse standing in front of us.
For now, that's exactly what we'll do.
