Writer of the Year

The Story of Titch

By Shirley A. Wilsher

continued.........page 2

I took Titch home and because he was so young, Tessa had to stay in the box with him. She was very good and patient but kept banging into him - not a happy situation. We managed like this for one month. By then, Titch was 5 months old.

We sent Tessa to a livery yard for a month and Titch went for more x-rays. The x-rays showed that although the joint had not improved it had not got any worse.

At first Titch used only about four square feet of his stable - enough to eat, drink and lie down to sleep. He was often sweating with pain but was not allowed painkillers because he would then begin to use his leg. I fed him a Hilton herbal anti?inflammatory and minimum subsistence diet with unlimited hay.

Titch was stabled across the road from home and this was a blessing because, work permitting, I could go over at frequent intervals. On numerous occasions I would go home in tears, desperately unhappy, having watched Titch getting up and down on three legs (at which he became very adept). I looked at his pain filled eyes and wondered if I had made the right decision. I knew I only had to ring the vet and he would come out and put him out of his misery.

After a while he began to use a little more of his stable hopping around, chewing the door and generally looking a little brighter, but still very lame and also still 'falling' down and struggling up on three legs - the affected leg rarely touched the floor. During these early months Titch had been given a shot of painkiller at intervals, when he was very distressed, to give him some respite from the pain.

One day a friend told me about a man, a healer, she had seen on television, Charles Siddle. As I was now at the point of desperation, utterly convinced that I had made the wrong decision, I decided to send for him to look at Titch but no one knew how to contact him. I eventually rang the television studios and finally got his address. When I wrote, he replied saying he would come but I would have to wait for a week or two until he had more animals to look at. I decided to help this along and approached an acquaintance who had a pony with apparently incurable lameness, asking her if she was interested in sharing a visit. She was, as was another person in the same livery yard. So, Charles Siddell came.

As soon as I met this small, bearded gentleman I immediately felt reassured. I felt instinctively that I could trust him, that here was the one person who could help Titch and give me hope.

Continues........

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