Nina was off again on Wednesday, not quite right on the RF.
I do not have the money right now for scans and tests. (vet house call with scan $400-500) and the scan is not going to tell me that much anyway. I can palpate and feel that the suspensory ligament is inflamed. She walks and trot perfectly sound on soft or hard ground, but the leg is NQR on a consistent basis. This ligament is in charge of stability and that's what you can see, a very occassional wobble, very slight. The heat is gone, the auxiliary swelling and fluid is gone, the ligament is just not healed, no pain involved.
This makes it somewhere in the middle of a minor damage scale, which is what a scan would tell me anyway. SO
She never really got any time totally off, because I thought it was a bruise at first, and very light work, while probably not hurting anything, is not helping it to heal, so I decided that Nina is grounded.
She get shod on Monday and that would give her 6 days of standing around doing absolutely nothing. She is getting 1gram of bute. I put treats in her beet pulp, hand walk only enough to go to the wash rack and hand graze on the way back. I am trimming her mane into extremely short, but very nice and orderly. The long periods of cold hosing have tightened up the other three legs into legs of steel (since I am standing there I might as well get them all). She is being very mellow. I think hot afternoons and planning and plotting for the bute to end up on me instead of in her are keeping her busy.
If this doesn't get some healing started so that I can start light work, then I think our summer is over.
And just as a formal protest - I think that it is extremely unfair for horses to be lame in the summer and rideable in the winter. There should be some sort of horsey union regulations against this.
I do not have the money right now for scans and tests. (vet house call with scan $400-500) and the scan is not going to tell me that much anyway. I can palpate and feel that the suspensory ligament is inflamed. She walks and trot perfectly sound on soft or hard ground, but the leg is NQR on a consistent basis. This ligament is in charge of stability and that's what you can see, a very occassional wobble, very slight. The heat is gone, the auxiliary swelling and fluid is gone, the ligament is just not healed, no pain involved.
This makes it somewhere in the middle of a minor damage scale, which is what a scan would tell me anyway. SO
She never really got any time totally off, because I thought it was a bruise at first, and very light work, while probably not hurting anything, is not helping it to heal, so I decided that Nina is grounded.
She get shod on Monday and that would give her 6 days of standing around doing absolutely nothing. She is getting 1gram of bute. I put treats in her beet pulp, hand walk only enough to go to the wash rack and hand graze on the way back. I am trimming her mane into extremely short, but very nice and orderly. The long periods of cold hosing have tightened up the other three legs into legs of steel (since I am standing there I might as well get them all). She is being very mellow. I think hot afternoons and planning and plotting for the bute to end up on me instead of in her are keeping her busy.
If this doesn't get some healing started so that I can start light work, then I think our summer is over.
And just as a formal protest - I think that it is extremely unfair for horses to be lame in the summer and rideable in the winter. There should be some sort of horsey union regulations against this.
Awww! Poor Nina. Poor you. That sucks! But she needs to heal well and completely. I guess you're going to have lots of bonding time for a while. ;)
ReplyDeleteI agree that is should be outlawed. I hope she heals quickly and completely. I head to the vet tomorrow with my guy and am hoping for the best of news on his legs though I cannot help but worry that our summer is over too.
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