Two Month Recheck

Tuesday morning I was planning on going into work, but my boss had me switch my WFH days so that I didn't have to sit in traffic for so long and then turn around and sit in traffic again to go to the ultrasound. So I let myself sleep in a bit and then worked until 9:45am when I hopped in the car and headed out across the bay.

A wonderful thing about the rehab center is that, not only are they taking amazing care of my not-so-amazing horse, they hand deliver him to the vet clinic! They have a standing Tuesday hauling day where they haul out, so they just stuck TC on the trailer and I met them there. This meant that poor TC was on the trailer from 6am to 6pm (since the rehab place is far away and they had two other horses to pick up before they left) except when he was at the vet. Oh well, good life experiences for him. Rico was imported from Germany (before I got him) so had to spend more than that many hours on a plane.

My mom, for no reason other than to solidify her place as best mom ever, also showed up, having driven the hour and a bit from the ranch. I appreciate having someone else there at the vet checks. Sometimes I get crazy so having someone who remains calm is good. I also love her perspective, she asks a lot of really great questions because she was a vet tech when she was younger.

Look how gray this baby horse is! He's got gray hairs all over his
body now instead of just in a few places

I couldn't concentrate in the morning so I left early, and it's a good thing I did. I got a call about fifteen or twenty minutes into my hour drive saying everyone was there and asking whether I was coming. Um, yes but I will be there ON TIME. I told them to drug him if he wasn't handling his shit very well, nothing like a reinjury during a recheck of the original injury.

I fought through the horrible bay area traffic (after rush hour wtf) and got there to find the owner of the rehab facility and my vet chatting about my horse. I heard something weird though... it was nothing. No screaming, no slamming against the wall. He must be drugged, I thought. Stupid horse.

I went to see him and he was contently staring out of the stall with a hind leg resting. The owner of the rehab place said that he had a little bit of tranq for the ride over, since they had never trailered him and didn't want to fight him if he didn't step right on, but that he was totally sober since obviously it had worn off.

Apparently he came off the rig, whinnied twice, was put in the stall, and other than some pawing (which he does in all situations), he was completely content to hang out for the 45 minutes it took me to get there.

WOW. This horse has grown up so much in the last two months. I'm so proud of him. That alone made my day.

Hard to see soundness because he's looking around the corner,
but this is after a flexion- no head bobbing (that isn't related to
staring at stuff)

As did watching him trot. They did give him a little bit of dorm to keep him settled while they trotted him out since I said that we'd had some airs above the ground the last time he was longed. My vet mostly wanted to make sure that he was sound and to observe how far his fetlock was dropping.

The good news is that TC was totally sound, which is to be expected at this stage, and that he is dropping his fetlock much more now. It's not completely even, and the suspensory still is filled in (I saw that last time I saw him) a tiny bit, but my vet was really happy.

TC's trot is so floaty, guys. He trotted on the longe line super round and fancy, like he was showing off for us a bit. He was probably so happy to be trotting in general. He's also so much fitter now- my vet was impressed with that. He's an expert swimmer, doing three laps every day in the pool.

Such a dork, but this is the right front fetlock drop

And this is the left front fetlock drop- you can see this one goes
down a tiny bit more

After some more dorm and xylazine, he was sleepy and we actually clipped his bridle path after he got his leg clipped.

The ultrasound showed two bad things and one good thing.

The good news is that his suspensory is completely healed!! The ligament itself looks completely normal- no sponginess. For a suspensory that we thought had two tears in it, I'm extremely happy with that.

One of the bits of bad news is that the suspensory IS adhering to the splint bone, which is exactly what we do NOT want it to. The nice thing about this is that a) it is only adhering for 3-4cm right at the origin site and only on the medial side, where we expected it to be, b) there is no tearing due to the adherence between where it's adhering and the rest of the suspensory, and c) TC is not showing any signs of pain due to the adherence- no lameness and no palpation sensitivity. What this means is that, while adhering isn't something that we like, it's not your typical oh-my-god-do-surgery-asap adherence. Good because I have no insurance on him at the moment.

To fix this, we're going to have TC walk on the eurociser more. The nice thing about swimming is that he gets to get stronger without any pressure on his legs. But the downside is that he doesn't get ANY pressure on his legs and what we need is that suspensory to break up and stretch out the spot that's adhering. If we can get the spot that's adhering to be looser than the suspensory itself, then it will never bother him.

Gotta love this view, ugh

The other bit of bad news is even more fixable. It's that the bone under the point where he ripped the suspensory out of the origin is weakened. Basically my vet described it like this- glue two pieces of plywood together, then rip them apart. It's not going to be an even split- one of the pieces will splinter and the other piece will have bits of it stuck. So when he yanked the ligament out of its origin site, it grabbed some periosteum (outside covering of bone) at the same time. It shows up as muddled dark gray on the ultrasound when it should be bright white.

We gave him an injection of... something that will strengthen the bone, I'm sure it will show up on my bill and be something that makes me cry because it's expensive- not as expensive as stem cell though.

I've also ordered a two month supply of Osteon, which is a supplement by Platinum Performance for bone strength, which he will stay on until the next ultrasound. And he'll continue to be on alfalfa for the calcium. The VERY good news is that my vet expects this to heal not only as strong as it was before the injury, but possibly STRONGER than before. He's not worried about this at all. I can remember back to the hock x-rays at the vet check when my vet found a roughened bit of bone at the origin site of one of TC's hind suspensories and said that he had probably slipped and it had healed itself.

His tail is so big! And the yellow part is slowly
growing out, hoping to keep it more silver.

So while I was bummed that we can't just say "omg TC is all healed, ready to come home!" my vet reminded me that it had been only two and a half months since he was injured in the first place. Soft tissue injuries take a LONG time to heal (6-9 months), especially when your horse rips an important ligament half way out of the origin site.

The other thing that made me feel better was reminding myself that Rico came back completely from several injuries and hasn't had a lame step or a swollen leg in over a year. BUT if I were to take Rico to my vet and have him ultrasounded, I bet he'd have a bunch of shit in all of his injury sites. As long as TC can stay sound for work, it doesn't matter what his leg looks like inside.

The big news will come at the end of April when TC gets his third ultrasound (ughh $$$). At this point we expect to either a) start him trotting and prep him for coming back into training with BRH trainer or b) see that the adherence is worse (we don't care if the bone thing is worse since there are more easy, non-invasive treatment options) and make a decision on surgery (which is very likely a no unless I decide to get him insured and the insurance covers everything- still debating on that) or to sit and wait longer with him still at rehab.

Honestly, I was so happy that he was so calm during the vet check, so quiet about standing in the stall, that I didn't really register that there was any bad news for a while. I got a bit sad on my drive back home. It's just hard to have a horse who is so young be injured like this. And I miss him, him being so good at the vet made me even more eager to get him back, so the thought of "yah he's injured but at least I don't have to deal with his bullshit for a bit" is disintegrating.

Drugs are good, guess who has a bridle path now?

But the good news is that my vet and I did get to talk about the future a bit and I'm feeling fairly positive about it. Obviously this all depends on the next ultrasound, but my vet was fairly certain that he'd be able to come back fully, which is really great news.

My vet knows BRH trainer and fully approved of sending him there for a while ever. I told him my concerns of keeping TC calm so we have some ideas:

1) TC will stay at the rehab center until he is strong enough to launch me and gallop around the property without me worrying about him (obviously NOT getting launched is the main idea), or play in his stall or whatever.

2) TC will be allowed turnout when he is okay to be worked at the canter, which should be fairly soon after he comes back. I'm also probably going to have BRH trainer try him on the hot walker to give him more things to do. If I can swing it financially, he'll get turnout every morning and either a ride or the hot walker every afternoon, two fun things every day.

3) It's okay if I have to ride him in the round pen (he even said I could longe him first! YES), but I need to do the majority of the work tracking left so that it takes weight off the RF suspensory. That's fine, left was the hard way for a long time anyway.

4) TC will be given the long term tranq again and be put on magnesium about two weeks before he comes back to keep him calm during the first couple of months so that he can have the best chance of staying quiet for rehab. We also talked about something like Perfect Prep for his first rides, and I'm fully on board with that. Don't argue with me (not that anyone would but you know), I can ride my horse without drugging him, but I need his mind calm so that he'll let me fucking rehab him the way he needs to be rehabbed.

Coming back fully means also that he'll be able to trail ride and jump! The vet said to hold off on those for a while, and I said that I could wait until next spring for both. The facility he's going to has a little trail we can do every day and a lot of room around the ranch to wander- it's completely flat. There is also the 2 mile loop at Harvey Bear that is flat so he can go on a real trail ride later this summer/fall. Maybe I can drag BRH trainer along for his first trail ride there- I can pick up Rico and then go grab TC and then I can ride Rico and BRH trainer can survive on TC. Do that a few times and I'll feel confident, I've always felt more confident in the open on TC than in the ring.

And we never really jumped before the injury, so not being able to jump him for a year doesn't bother me. Honestly, I might only ever jump him over tiny fences anyway, he's not the world's most talented jumping horse and I always wanted to be careful about not pounding on his dumb feet and create sidebone. So it sounds like I'll be able to do all the things I want to do on him.

My vet's new puppy, THIS IS THE BEST DOG EVER, I wanted
to trade him my dumb horse for his adorable dog

Honestly, after seeing how quiet TC was at the vet, and after deciding that the commute was worth being with BRH trainer, I'm not that nervous about him coming back anymore. The idea that he'll be almost ready to canter when he comes back AND I'll be allowed to start the rehab in the round pen, where I feel the most safe, I feel really ready for this!

Unfortunately none of this is happening any time soon though, my timeline from my last post was not at all accurate. I have eight more visits to TC before the next ultrasound. Then it will be at least a month before I can bring him home. So we're looking at June 1st or July 1st. I'm really hoping by mid-June since that's when my parents go away for their month-long vacation and it'd be really convenient to spend every weekend at the ranch helping my brother and SIL (who are not horse people) house-sit at the ranch and actually have my awesome pony to ride every day.

So interested in things, but NOT crazy :D

Between now and then though, I know I need to work on my own fitness and strength, including my own injury that I've sort of been ignoring for the last few months. The good news is that I have an appointment with an orthopedic surgeon on March 8th and will be putting together my own rehab schedule soon enough. I'm also FINALLY feeling normal enough to work out again (after two and a half weeks of being sick), so I'll be training for my 5k. I sat a lot of trot last night and am going on my first trail run in 2.5 weeks today.

And honestly, as much as I want my horse back, I know that commute will kill me if I have to do it for too long. My lease is up in October and I'll be able to move closer to the barn. So even if he comes back in July, all that means is that I only have three months to drive so far vs the six I would have to drive if he came back in April. I can do three months of that drive. Not a problem.