Vet Visit

Well, we have a not-so-definitive answer for the lameness. The vet came out on Monday (after lots of drama with the BO) to look at Rush and see if we could pin point her lameness.

Her awkward stance since going lame

He trotted her in our ring, then on harder ground to assess lameness and pinpointed it to right front. He nerve blocked the lower pastern and she trotted out completely sound (it was glorious), so we know it's something down low in the right front. Then came the x-rays and ultrasound (and the noise of my bank account shrinking). Nothing abnormal showed up on either, so the final verdict was that it's most likely soft tissue damage somewhere too low/deep for the ultrasound to read. Right now it's handwalking for 15 minutes and stall rest for several months.

Unfortunately, Not Better News

After the advice from the farrier last week, I talked to the BO about what to do with Rush. She's one of those ridiculously hard to talk to people and tramples all over whatever you try to say, insisting that her opinion is the only right one and that anything else is absolutely ridiculous. So instead of y'know, fixing the cause and changing Rush's feed, we put her on 2 scoops of bute for 5 days (because it's an anti-inflammatory). So she got 2 scoops for five days. I took her out on the third, I think, and had one of the minions trot her a couple steps, but she looked pretty uncomfortable so I put her home and didn't take her out again until today. Her 5 days ended on Monday, she didn't have bute Tues/Wed, and I started it up again today after re-evaluating on the lunge line.

As you can see, definitely not sound. In fact, I would say less sound than when she first started going off. There was a lot of rambunction in there due to the fact that she's been in prison for about three weeks now. After this rather disappointing but not surprising result of 5 days of bute, which is obviously not working (not that I expected it to) I left the BO a message telling her that I was not happy with the way things are going and that I want to be more proactive about fixing the problem. We tried her way, it didn't work, and I'm going to be more forceful about getting the feed changed. The BO's reasoning for not changing the feed was "she's been on cubes her whole life!" but, well, things change. She was a racehorse then a broodmare then a pasture puff, and now she's doing arena work. Those all demand very different diets.

Some Answers

 

One of the more experienced farriers that does horses at my barn came out this morning and I nabbed the chance to have him look at Rush. I had been hypothesizing that she was footsore because she seemed about 40% better after having her feet trimmed, and perhaps the workload was getting to the point where she needed shows put back on. He took one look at her front left, cut away a bit of the hoof to get a closer look, and then immediately concluded that her feed was too rich and her laminae was inflamed- he didn't say laminitis, but that's basically the diagnosis.

I was silly and didn't get pictures, so I'll take some tomorrow, but the clue was some black discoloration in her laminae- perpendicular lines that looked kind of like crosshatching (see random internet picture) . I had noticed them after she was trimmed but thought it was some weird pattern left behind by the rasp- now I know better! Now I just have to convince the BO that it is not her hock sore bothering her and she needs to be put on something other than alfalfa cubes.. sounds like a simple conversation ("Hey, BO, Rush needs to be put on Timothy for one feeding because the alfalfa cubes are too rich for her and she's getting laminitis. Thanks!") but it'll probably blow up into this huge thing and there's a 70% chance the BO will refuse to change her feed. So that'll be fun.

See the black lines at the top? Those.

I also had Experienced Farrier look at Willie's feet, since he's gone like.. 9 weeks without being trimmed and a big crack was forming. The crack was done away with, mostly, and he didn't seem too concerned about the big hole in Willie's RF from where an abscess blew, so I guess it just looks really scary but in actuality is nothing to worry about. He's been doing really well after those two months on abscessy fun, and even took care of a Little on Saturday. So proud. Although he was angry with me yesterday for leaving him in the turnout for hours and decided to forget what lead changes were...