Dynamic Duo

Yesterday was the appointment I'd been looking forward to, where my farrier and my vet got to have a forced hangout session. If you remember, my farrier had already come out to bring his toes back and things had been seeming a little better. 

Enjoy this weirdly cropped photos of TC and the
two sprinklers I got for him

He's like... are you serious?

The vet arrived first and the first thing I had her do was pull blood for a metabolic panel. He's gained a lot of weight on not a lot of food in the past year, so I want to make sure that we catch anything we need to catch. 

Then, we took x-rays of his feet, this time she also did views from the front to check his balance. When my farrier arrived, we had just been talking about how the balance looked much better in his feet than the previous x-rays. We spent time comparing each one to the previous x-rays and noted that his left front was worse than his right, but that both left and right were better now after he got re-shod. 

We then discussed next steps for his feet - TC didn't have quite enough foot to take any more off and one recommendation that my vet brought up was putting frog support pads on him. This would allow his heels to grow, which is what we need to encourage for his angles to get even better. My farrier had an example pad of a 3D printed pad she's wanting to use for these cases. It has a hole in the pad right behind the toe, meaning that the horse's hoof can dry out a bit easier.

This one he started out skeptical of as well

Considering it might be okay

My farrier said that basically TC's pasture is the worst possible scenario for his feet. The soil is clay out there, so in the winter its squelchy mud that balls up in their feet and then dries, putting a ton of pressure on the sole. If we don't pick all the horses' feet out all the time, we risk their feet basically caving in on themselves. Then in the summer, because in California we have an insane dry season where it doesn't rain from April through November, the ground hardens up to the point where large cracks form. 

AND, to add insult to injury, TC loves water so so much, that if it's hot, he will play in his water bucket. To the point where I had to move one bucket away from the barn because he'd flood his shavings (we call this his chaos bucket) AND I got him a big bucket that I fill up from time to time out in his pasture so he can waste well water (we call this his XL chaos bucket). But because he has pads on (necessary to keep his feet comfortable on the hard ground), it means that his feet get wet 2-3x per week and then don't necessarily dry out enough. 

So we think that these frog support pads will help with that. And I might need to take away at least his XL chaos bucket, maybe even find a way to keep him from playing in his other bucket. I feel bad considering that though, he loves it so much. 

Then it ended up being his favorite

Just a happy boy and his flower sprinkler

In addition to the feet, I figured I had a vet and an x-ray machine on the property, so I had her x-ray his hocks as well. The other vet thought he had good range of motion and didn't think that the hocks were involved at all. But he's 14 years old and I just figured that we should take a look. 

I'm glad we did, because his joints do seem pretty good for his age, but there was enough remodeling where she thought that injections would help him out. We also saw some mild remodeling in his coffin joint and pastern joints. I asked her, if money were no object and we wanted to give him the best chance to come back, what would she inject? 

She said that she'd inject all three of those joints with a biologic (she quoted me Alpha2P?), that this could give him a boost through rehab. I agreed, but she wanted to wait until she got back his metabolic panel, plus I don't think she had all her stuff there. So I asked her to give me a quote for it, which she sent last night. 

He was surprisingly gentle with it

He just wanted to hold his nose on it

Oh no, man down!

I do feel better I think. We are getting his new pads on in early October and sometime in October the vet is coming back out for all the horses' dentals, so I might consider doing the joint injections and maybe look at his front feet again then. Or I'm considering taking him offsite for the injections, my barn is clean but a clinic will likely be cleaner. Plus why not get a fifth vet involved?

My goal is to just throw everything at him for the next 12 months, whatever I think will bring this horse back, let's do it - special shoes? sure, injections? go for it, bodywork? absolutely. Because the alternative is full retirement soooo we may as well try everything one last time. Maybe this winter will be the first one I fall off of him because he feels so good! I'd be fine with that honestly.