Equine Predicaments

I stumbled across this diagram on the internet recently, at approximately the same time as many of the horses here were stumbling injured into the barn.

Once in a while it get to feeling like a veterinary rehab hospital around here, and the past couple weeks have put me squarely back into the role of head veterinary technician.  Fortunately I enjoy the job, despite the bummer of having several horses out of work.  While I'd rather be riding and training, there are times when horses aren't having issues due to behavioral problems but medical ones, and I'm grateful to have a good team to lean on consisting of veterinarians, an equine massage therapist, and my own experience in the veterinary field.

First I have Note, my gelding who tried to cut his foot off earlier this summer, though I don't know how he did it.  He sliced through the artery and nerve in his left front pastern on the inside of his leg going clear through to the bone.  He somehow miraculously managed to miss critical structures like tendons and the joint capsule, but the wound didn't have edges that could be sewn back together so he's been in heavy duty bandages for months.  Because of the nerve damage we won't know if he'll be sound for quite some time, it's a wait and see situation.

Next is Raven, who irritated her roommate a month ago and got herself kicked.  It was a thorough clobbering on her right side yielding a long mark from mid-ribs to past her flank, and she's been very body sore since then.  Because of compensating for this soreness she then popped a splint on her right front leg.  None of these are long term problems, but she's been lame for just over a month as she recovers from this stuff and has periodic treatments from the veterinarian and massage therapist. One discussion about applying kinesiotape to Raven's sore muscles led to a demonstration in which Rizzo fell asleep on the hay bales while having tape applied to her as an example.

Ritzy had the chip in her right front fetlock, and went to CSU for surgery just over a week ago to have it removed.  So far she's doing great, though a little frustrated with me keeping her on stall rest.  At least she has several small mesh hay nets hung around her stall (anywhere she tends to stand and paw, I hang a net to distract her).  She can also still touch noses with her friends and watch them through her stall door, and she can see the arena and grooming areas so she has all day entertainment while I attend to the other horses.  She is also in a bandage for the next several weeks.

Darby has a host of soundness issues, but recently he's been more uncomfortable than normal.  After an initial evaluation by Dr. Landes we determined he was due for another sacroiliac injection, which was done at CSU last week.  Thankfully he's feeling much better and now is jogging around comfortably with his friends in the paddock.

There were some shenanigans in the big gelding paddock  and Silver was kicked on the top part of his right front leg.  I saw it shortly after it happened, and while they were minor abrasions, the injury offended his delicate thoroughbred sensibilities and by the next day he was declaring the limb was broken and we needed to amputate.  I kept it clean and applied ointment, and wrapped the lower leg.  Adding some pain medications to his mash helped and now a week later he is looking much better.  However, if you ask him, Silver will still tell you that it was a dramatically serious injury and no, he was not exaggerating.

Dewey was also dinged up a bit in the boys' shenanigans, and he ended up with a minuscule scrape on his left front leg.  Dewey declared he was eligible for workman's comp and needed time off and his own standing leg wrap to encourage healing and minimize swelling.  Once that was healed, he immediately got himself a stone bruise on his other front leg.  Ah, Dewey.  You're the most accident prone horse I've ever had here.

Ferriana decided she couldn't be the ONLY one without medical attention, so she somehow banged up her right hind leg.  It probably was while everyone was messing around and playing in the cold weather, but she's been off work for about a week while we wait for the swelling to go down and her to start moving comfortably again.

I have a new horse in for training, and we discovered he has neurological issues.  We're currently trying systemic steroid injections and doing testing to see if we can discover the cause and whether it's treatable. These are frustrating cases, especially because this horse has approximately six years of
his life when we don't know where he was, what was done with him, or why he ended up at an auction.  He also has an incredibly nice temperament, is a good size, and is one of the kindest souls you'll ever meet.

It's been a hard couple weeks, made harder because Miles is not with me to assist in all the doctoring of horses.  Rizzo has done her best to assist, but while she tries her best it's not possible to cram ten years of wisdom and experience into a young pup in just two months of training.

Miles would always stay with me until the bitter end of a day of nursing injured horses.  One summer I was taking care of a gelding with a significant eye injury that needed treatment every three to four hours, including through the night.  Miles was there with me every second.  He refused to go to the garage to his padded dog bed unless I'd turned the lights out in the barn.  He would wait just outside the stall for me, or in the stall with me at the horse's head if I needed help keeping the horse calm.

Back in July we learned that Miles had a mass above the hard palate in his head, obstructing his sinuses and making it difficult for him to breathe.  The mass grew, and two weeks ago we had to put him down because he was having such trouble breathing and was so disoriented.  Losing any of my animals is terrible, but this was an extremely hard one for me.

Miles has been with me for ten years and he is the only dog I've ever had from puppyhood as everyone else has come from rescues.  I've spent more time with that dog than probably anyone else in the last ten years, as we worked, played, and traveled together all day everyday as coworkers and best friends.  I desperately cling to my theory that we have a large ranch in heaven, big enough for all the animals and people we've loved.  I imagine Miles is now running there with his friends who went before, a happy doggy reunion if ever I could imagine one.  He's probably managing the equine herd as well, and napping with his old friends the barn cats in the hay.  There will have to be irrigation ditches too, so Miles can submerge entirely except for his eyes and play "gator".  He's probably herding storms off the property simply to demonstrate to his friends that he's still "got it".  I miss him terribly and will continue to miss him until we meet again.  Greatest border collie ever.