Traumaversaries and animals
I have written about traumaversaries before. About how they are past trauma stored at the cellular level in the body which come back to reenact the trauma on anniversaries of their occurrence. I have watched enough of my children experience them without any possibility of knowing that they were hitting an anniversary of a traumatic event to know they are very real things. Reading the title, you're probably now expecting to read something about how one of our animals helped one of our children navigate one of these difficult times.
Since I like to keep my readers guessing, I'm not writing about that, but instead am going to tell you about Java. Since you don't live with them, you probably have trouble keeping track of all the animals around here. This is Java.
Java is the one whom we discovered is going blind with cataracts. She is also the horse who is the most fearful out of the three. Things are harder for Java. When she is regulated, she is a funny nut and a great trail horse. When she is not regulated, she is a 1000+ pounds of anxiety.
This past week we saw the anxiety-ridden horse. A lot. It was one of those weeks of horse ownership that makes you wonder why we do this and why we think it's fun, because there were some definite not-fun moments. Making sure she could see Bristol all the time has helped, but it still didn't explain to me exactly why she so significantly fell off the rails and then yesterday and today was seemingly fine.
It felt weird and out of the blue.
It felt weird and out of the blue and kind of like something I had experienced before.
And then I remembered that Facebook had shown me earlier in the week that we were exactly at the one year anniversary of Bristol and Java arriving at our house from the horse rescue, having been trailered five hours. It seemed a little crazy, but it made me wonder if Java could have been experiencing a traumaversary. I know the move was stressful for her; it took her quite a bit of time to relax and settle in. It took her far longer to this than it did Bristol. It wouldn't surprise me if the whole thing was extremely traumatizing.
But can animals experience this? J. did some quick Googling for me. It turns out that dogs can have PTSD, termed CPTSD to add the 'canine' in front. This happens usually with dogs used in the armed services. If dogs can have PTSD, then why can't horses have traumaversaries?
It's something to consider. I'm pretty sure no studies have ever been done, though I think they would be fascinating. I also think the implications would be uncomfortable, but I'm certainly not going to get into all that here. In the meantime, though, I'm just happy that Java seems to be back to her more normal self.
Since I like to keep my readers guessing, I'm not writing about that, but instead am going to tell you about Java. Since you don't live with them, you probably have trouble keeping track of all the animals around here. This is Java.
Java is the one whom we discovered is going blind with cataracts. She is also the horse who is the most fearful out of the three. Things are harder for Java. When she is regulated, she is a funny nut and a great trail horse. When she is not regulated, she is a 1000+ pounds of anxiety.
This past week we saw the anxiety-ridden horse. A lot. It was one of those weeks of horse ownership that makes you wonder why we do this and why we think it's fun, because there were some definite not-fun moments. Making sure she could see Bristol all the time has helped, but it still didn't explain to me exactly why she so significantly fell off the rails and then yesterday and today was seemingly fine.
It felt weird and out of the blue.
It felt weird and out of the blue and kind of like something I had experienced before.
And then I remembered that Facebook had shown me earlier in the week that we were exactly at the one year anniversary of Bristol and Java arriving at our house from the horse rescue, having been trailered five hours. It seemed a little crazy, but it made me wonder if Java could have been experiencing a traumaversary. I know the move was stressful for her; it took her quite a bit of time to relax and settle in. It took her far longer to this than it did Bristol. It wouldn't surprise me if the whole thing was extremely traumatizing.
But can animals experience this? J. did some quick Googling for me. It turns out that dogs can have PTSD, termed CPTSD to add the 'canine' in front. This happens usually with dogs used in the armed services. If dogs can have PTSD, then why can't horses have traumaversaries?
It's something to consider. I'm pretty sure no studies have ever been done, though I think they would be fascinating. I also think the implications would be uncomfortable, but I'm certainly not going to get into all that here. In the meantime, though, I'm just happy that Java seems to be back to her more normal self.
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