Loves the Vet

Yesterday I was too freaked out to post anything, I had posts ready to go and then I just pulled everything. Last year when TC went lame I posted immediately, I wanted to know what you all thought and to include you in my slowly increasing panic until the vet came out.

This time when he went lame, I went rapidly through the stages of grief until I got to INSANITY, and then I stayed there all by myself. That's a stage of grief, right?

Change that first bit to "Life with Horses"
to make it more accurate

Let's start from the beginning.

Monday: TC and I have a lesson with trainer, detailed in this blog post, aptly named The Beginning of Collection (since this one could be named The Delaying of Collection).

Tuesday: I took a lesson on another horse with my dressage trainer, then longed TC on a big circle in his normal chambon + side rein combo. He bolted two or three times and I found that putting him on a 10-15m circle (just one or two) in shoulder-in was a great way to get his focus.

Wednesday: I threw my horse at my trainer to ride so that I could go to the gym and not ride my crazy baby horse in the dark for a week! Trainer reported that TC was good, he rode him mostly on super light contact, trying to get him to reach out, and he also worked on the collection in the canter.

Thursday: TC came out fine, we wandered around the ranch a bit and then worked at the walk. He picked up the trot and felt okay, but a bit stiff. Then I realized that the inconsistent connection was consistently inconsistent where he was head bobbing on the right front leg. The one with the suspensory. FUCK. I got off. I longed him and.... fucking nothing. He maybe looked a touuuuch stuck on his left hind but zero head bobbing. So I walked him for a LONG time, lots of shallow haunches-in and shoulder-in, some leg yields, really focusing on getting him loser on the left side of his back and butt. Trotted him out, let him canter a bit, and he was fine. I still kept the ride light.

Friday- you can always tell when TC has been in
a trailer, ugh

Going places!

Friday: I had this whole post written and then deleted it. I took TC over to the ranch for some fun and experience in a different place. He was SUPER GOOD there! I even cantered him undersaddle! By myself! In a new place (well, he's been there but it was the first time going to the arena)! But not before having to longe him down a bit, I used the shoulder-in on the circle technique quite a bit to the left because some people were walking with their family and TC has never seen humans before so he was quite upset. Never took an off step though.

Saturday: It was supposed to rain so I asked for a lesson with trainer. We did a ton of walk work to start and then... TC is lame again, head bobbing on the right front and stepping short on the left hind. Trainer palpates his butt and says that he's probably just really sore from the hard work on Friday (and Wednesday?). I convinced myself it was his suspensory though. Gave him some bute, surpass, and threw wraps on him.

Sunday: Get to the barn in the morning and TC had eaten his wraps off of his legs and peed on one of them. Okay. Butt still super sore, bute, surpass on the suspensory, and no wraps.

Monday: I decided I was too crazy to deal with this with the ol' wait-and-see. If he was lame, I was calling the vet. Trotted him on the longe line. He was lame. Frantically emailed the vet. Spent the next six hours searching for hind end lameness that also includes front end lameness that also includes sore butts. Stifle injury. FUCK. I (equine) Web-MD-ed myself into a panic and barely slept.

Tuesday morning: got an email from my vet saying he was out of town but that his lesser (IMO since I'm picky) yet still highly qualified (esp in lameness stuff) vet was around. Okay fine. Got a call from the vet confirming at 1pm. I was sick anyway so barely made it through my first meeting and then got in the car. Sat at the bagel shop drinking a weird boba smoothie thing that was way way too sweet for honeydew but was still good and ate half a bagel (for dinner I had the other half and some ice cream... good life choices all around!).

Yum, wraps

Ugh

So now the vet check itself. By this point, not only am I convinced that TC has a career ending stifle injury, I've already made plans to find a good home for him, give 30 days notice, cancel his smartpaks, cancel the clinic this weekend (well, that's for sure out anyway), etc. I was wavering strongly back and forth between sobbing and numbness.

The vet palpated him all over. The vet tech held him and tried to have a nice conversation with me:

VT: how long have you had him?
Me: a bit over a year
My brain: and you won't have him for much longer
Me: *gets choked up*
VT: he's so cute, how old is he?
Me: five
My brain: and already had two severe injuries, you're a great horse owner
Me: *holding back tears*
VT: what breed is he? He looks super fancy
Me: he's a friesian... *sniff* friesian oldenburg
My brain: and you'll never be able to afford one like him again because no one will ever sell you another horse
VT: wow that's so cool
My brain: she knows you break horses all the time and she hates you for it

Hi mom I just want you to know how much I love the vet

I happily handed the horse off to her and sat off to the side sort of ignoring the whole process. I'm lucky that my mom is nosy helpful, since she had come by to yet another vet appointment. She kept an eye on things and asked the vet what he saw.

Loaded him up with a bit of dorm after he wouldn't trot with the nice vet tech and instead tried to bite her to get her to play with him. Lame on the left hind and right front. Because they often compensate, it wasn't clear if it was a) the suspensory acting up so then he overloaded his left hind and hurt it or b) hurt his left hind and overloaded his suspensory, making that get sore.

We went to longe TC to see if it got worse on a circle (it did), but TC, who had been off since Saturday was NOT having it. I watched him leap across the ground, spin toward the handler, and rear up about half way. All I could think was damn, he's so elegant.

More dorm.

Horse quietly trotted around in the circle. I ask the vet whether I can get some dorm. He thought I meant for riding the horse. I mean yeah both of us could probably use dorm on a regular basis.

At the vet check

After all that, I had a couple of choices. Do we block the suspensory or do we assume it's the suspensory? I know his suspensory is a bit fucked up, sure. But I also know that it was totally fine a month ago at the last ultrasound and that he's honestly not had such hard work since then to suggest a reinjury (plus it wasn't swollen, just a bit sore when palpating it, which honestly, if you palpated the ligament damage in my back, it'd hurt but it doesn't hurt when you don't poke it). So by blocking the suspensory, we could find out whether the lameness behind was compensatory (so he'd get all better with the block) or something else.

I had no idea what to hope for. He was still lame. So it was something in his hind leg.

The next step could have been to block up the hind leg. But the vet was fairly certain that it was either a weakness in his stifle (but not an injury because he palpated normally) or that he was chiropractically out in his SI joint. I'm not the hugest believer in chiro for horses, but let me tell you that I am super super lame when my SI joint is fucked up.

Either way, the prognosis was the same at least at first: chiro/acupuncture and then ease him back into work and lay off the collection for a while. Then if it comes back, we treat the stifle with an injection or blistering. Vet is fairly certain that my extremely unofficial, driven-by-insanity diagnosis of a stifle injury isn't the case. Phew.

TC's first experience with acupuncture was ridiculous,
he's settled here, but his face when they put the needles
in at first was hysterical 

Apparently it's relatively normal for a big young horse to have trouble with their stifles as they grow up? Much of the information I found on stifles was from injuries in older horses where they slipped or fell. That plus me getting sick and being pumped full of cortisol already made me jump some huuuuge boundaries to get to all of my terrible conclusions.

It's not over yet. Well, we can hope that he just comes back totally normal and good. But it's not good news per say (honestly though the only news that could have been good news is them telling me that I've won a million dollars and that my horse is now a cyborg and won't ever go lame again), it's just not terrible terrible news.

So we wait. We wait five days of hand walking and then we start trot work. A week later my trainer leaves for a month. And by leaves I mean tries to leave and then gets locked in the trunk of my car and made to stay.

We'll see. Right now I'm just trying to stay positive and ease the cortisol (and mucus, ugh, I'm home sick) out of my system.