Trolltapp

This guy was a very special horse with the odds stacked against him from the start. I´ll leave you with a bunch of pictures as he ment a lot to us and still do.


Standardbred trotter born in 2002.
Sire: Tap In dam: Rosatrollet.

We got him from his breeder as a yearling in the summer of 2003. He´d fell over and hit his head during the winter as a weanling and had been held in a boxstall for 6 months. His owner was a kind, elderly gentleman but with a disoriented colt full of energy he couldn´t handle, so he just kept him stalled up. His coordination was off, his head tilted to the left and as you can see in the picture his "hat" was on crooked.


The first thing we did was have his neck, head and back x-rayed to make sure there was no structual damage to the skelleton. That was one condition for us taking him and the breeder complied.



After the x-rays came back clean we concluded that the damage was probably neurological. We hoped that by letting him use his body and muscles the damaged nerve-ends would be stimulated and hopefully heal some. We let him out in a paddock and boy did the little horse run. After the first wobbly, disoriented steps, he soon got to trust his body again and just went tearing upp that paddock!! Both me and Annelie had tears in our eyes when we saw just how happy the little bugger was to be let out again!

Trolle let out for the first time in 6 months

After a few weeks he was stedy enough to be let out with the other colts and that did him even more good. He got to play like the rest of them and by the following winter the only thing wrong with him was that tilt of the head and his stooped ears.






One pretty funny moment was when I was out in the pasture one morning with the camera, trying to get some pics of the horses with the sun rising in the background. All of a sudden I hear Trolltapp coming, full throttel, on a ridge heading right to the spot I wanted them. When I raised my camera to take a wonderful picture of a horse flying with the rising sun as a backdrop, he stumbled and fell and came crashing down, sliding to a stop in a cloud of snow right smack in the middle of that sun! He got up, shook of the snow and took of again. That was Trolltapp in a nutshell!






By early spring it was time to break him to drive. He was a high energy, possitive horse but a bit studdy, if you just took your time with him and was deliberate he was fine though. Everything was going good and on schedule. He was in the speedcart and had been jogging for a month or two when tragedy struck again.



We had a pretty bad storm early that summer. A bunch of big trees fell all over the place. One of them in the colts pasture. Before we had time to cut it up and remove it, the little horse got his foot caught way up in the rootsystem of the fallen down tree. None of us were at the stables when it happened and a neighbour saw the horse stuck and called Annelie right away. When she got there the horse had fallen down with his hoof still stuck way over his head. Another neighbour showed up with a chainsaw and they were able to cut him loose. The vet was called emediately but it took a few hours to get to our remote location. In the meantime he was put in his stall and given some painkillers to relieve him somewhat.

When the doc got there and started looking at him he quit his examination after finding his elbow broken in three places, not much use continuing...

He was put down then and there.

Still makes us sad thinking of that brave little horse...