Sad news - Kingsley

Those of you who follow Wiola's blog will already have heard the sad news that Kingsley was put down this morning.

http://freelanceinstructorsdiary.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/last-chapter-kingsley-aka-stilo-venture.html

I first met Kingsley, Wiola and Pauline when he came here in 2010, following a "navicular" diagnosis.  It was clear right away that Kingsley had as many problems with his hind legs as with his front legs, and he had the most crooked movement I had ever seen.

Despite this, he made good progress once out of his wedged shoes; as he grew better balanced feet his movement also started to normalise and we all hoped that he would follow the same happy path as so many other horses had done.

However, he suffered a severe bout of azoturia in 2011 and although he recovered from this and came back into ridden work it was becoming clear that all was not well.

His whole story is on Wiola's blog, but I think its fair to say that he has proved to have an incredibly complex series of issues, affecting not just front and hind legs but his back and quite possibly his metabolism as well.

What was the cause? Perhaps we will never know. As Wiola says in her blog, the fact that in the end we couldn't solve his problems and help him more is perhaps the hardest aspect to come to terms with.

He was a dear horse - kind, genuine and with a tremendous love of his work - and he could not have had more dedicated owners than Wiola and Pauline.