Hey y’all!
How about a Willow update, since she’s determined to make me pull all the hair out of my head and all the money out of my wallet? Her cellulitis was nipped in the bud well enough that by Saturday, while she still has the scabs on her legs, the swelling and heat was gone out of the whole leg. Per the vet, I was allowed to put her out in the indoor, or a small paddock, for a little while. So I stuck her in the indoor, where I could keep a close eye on her for a few minutes while I cleaned her stall and did my usual morning business. She trotted around a little bit, and then hung out by the gate watching me while I watched her.
I finally decided, after we stared at each other for another 10 minutes or so, that she had had enough, and I’d take her out for a bit of a stroll and go in search of the good grass. I put her halter on before I did my usual check of all her limbs and picked her feet out (we just got new sand!) and noticed that her LEFT front leg was warm. What?!
Into the aisle we went, so I could see with better light. Sure enough…
I said multiple bad words, cried a little, and I may or may not have thrown a fit in the wash rack. What is up with this horse? I was convinced that she’d totally blown the tendon… because really. Look at it! I put in a call to the vet, but it was after office hours, so I didn’t expect an immediate response. In the meantime, I cold hosed her, dried the leg off (it’s a bad idea to wrap a wet leg), rewrapped her, gave her a bute and put her back in her stall (which I also added another load of shavings too, as I’ve always been taught that you bed deeply for tendon injuries).
The rest of the weekend was pretty uneventful. We came home and I made a batch of cookies while Shannon was napping, mostly for the sole purpose of eating the dough. This is not a healthy living blog, just in case you all were mistaken.
Shannon is working on the ‘b’ noise and her current favorite phrase is “oh boy oh boy oh boy”. It’s adorable, but the little bugger refuses to do it on camera. We’ll get there! She’s also been obsessed with her books. She was gifted some awesome cardboard books from her Great-Grandma (thanks!!) and she can’t get enough of reading. It’s the most adorable thing to watch her collect her little pile and then sit on the floor and read to herself.
She will sit on my lap and we’ll ‘read’ (so she’ll turn the pages as fast as she can) all afternoon. It’s getting a little bit harder, since my belly is getting in the way and there is some serious wiggling, but the kid come from a long line of book worms so I guess I expected it sooner or later! I’m glad that we are in a books are better than TV stage, and I can now recite “Brown Bear, Brown Bear” from memory. If anybody needs a story before bed, let me know…. I got it down!
Saturday night, I went out to the barn with the expectation of a broken horse. I figured she’d have herself hanging from the rafter, or missing a limb, but all was well. I unwrapped her (standings wraps should only be on about 12 hours at a time before being taken off and re-set) and cleaned her stall while I let her legs breathe a little bit. The swelling had gone down significantly, but it was still really really hot. Back to the wash rack for us for a soak. Rewrapped, and let her have a few minutes of grass behind the barn before we got chased back inside by the horseflies. We had to wait for Rocket to finish lounging in front of her fan before I could put her back though. Silly cat.
I have an amazing husband, who let me sleep in a little bit Sunday morning, before I went back out to reset her wraps. Things were actually looking much better on the leg front (whoop!) and he even cleaned my stall for me. He’s a winner, that one. I hosed her again, chatted a bit with a few other boarders and then came home just as Mike and Shannon were devising their latest method of Dixie torture.
Poor dog.
We hit up Once Upon a Child downtown and I was pretty disappointed by what a mess the store was. We got a few things for both girls, and then called it good. The furniture was… scary, and I was not up to wading through all that mess. *shudder*
Back to the barn, where Willow was looking good (although quite angry that she was out of hay). I hosed her leg again after chores, and then grazed her a bit while it dried and I killed multiple giant horseflies that attempted to carry both of us away. The bugs down here are really something else.
Are you totally bored yet?
Today the vet was able to get out to ultrasound the leg. She seemed really pleased that I had managed to get all the swelling down, and agreed after she saw the picture that she was glad that I called! So the prognosis?
No tear, however there is a spot that she was a bit concerned about, towards the very top of her superficial tendon. She wasn’t sure if it was a new injury, or something old that she tweaked out in the arena. Interesting. We are going to keep it wrapped up tight for a bit, and she’s going to spend more time inside. From there we are going to slowly work her back up to outside time. She said the most important thing right now, to make sure that we don’t blow it wide open, is to keep the tendon supported as best that I can while she’s out and while she’s working. Luckily I’m not riding her right now so we’ll give the spot lots of time to patch itself up. I’m on the hunt for a solid pair of turn out boots for her now. Polo’s are my best option for work, per the vet. Finger’s crossed that it doesn’t become a problem that we will be continuously dealing with, and that because I’m so anal in my leg checks, I caught the issue in time, before it turned into the tragedy that I was pretty well convinced it would be. The vet agreed, after seeing the picture, it looked like a classic bowed tendon to her and she was shocked that the damage wasn’t more. If she was being truthful, or just realized that I’d just funded a new truck for her and was being nice, we’ll never know. All I know is that I’m so thankful to have had teachers and mentors throughout the years who have taught me to really LEARN every inch of my horse, so I can catch things like this before they get worse. It’ll save lots of time, money, and heartache.
Willow was the perfect lady during the entire visit, happily snuggling with me while they clipped and ultrasounded the leg. They had nothing but wonderful things to say about her and how well behaved she was, which is always nice for me to hear, since we had a bit of a bumpy start.
Anyways, I’m sure that y’all are screaming for this to just be done by now, so I’m off to use the rest of nap time to research boots that will be easy for Mike to put on properly and stand up to being worn a lot, as well as buy some new standing wrap quilts… mine are looking a bit deflated!
Any boot suggestions from my readers?
The best little helper ever!