An Update on Lumps McGee

Thanks for all of the ideas with the fly spray! I think for right this moment, I'm going to avoid any fly spray until he's totally better and we're done with this show, then I'll be very careful about trying one at a time and only like, on one part of him that won't bother him if he has a reaction. 

This post is just a boring update about his hives. 

So I noticed the hives last Wednesday night and immediately bathed TC to get rid of the excess fly spray. Luckily for him, I only missed one spot under his right hind leg where some fly spray had gotten and I had apparently not washed him, so he got the crusty skin stuff there again. That didn't appear until Saturday morning so I washed him all over again.

All he wanted was hugs, thanks Peony for the
visor! Incredibly necessary for this area lol

Sunday morning in his rainbow polo wraps (another
excellent $10 purchase from Camelot)

Starting Thursday, I put him on Benadryl and he remained on that through Sunday, when I was able to get my hands on some hidroxyzine, which he started on Monday. 

I rode him bareback on Thursday morning and he seemed totally great, spooking at shit and trying to eat all the trees (which is a new and stupid thing he likes to do, he KNOWS it annoys me but he does it anyway). 

Friday evening I decided to try an actual ride. His bumps had all gone down except a big patch of edema on his belly. My BO saw me taking him out and said that it'd probably be good for him to move around to get that edema to go away. 

TC was a little tense about the saddle and then took off with me when I got on. He walked on tip toes for a little bit and I couldn't tell why. Was it because he was in pain? Maybe. Was it because I was thinking he might be in pain? Maybe. Was it because he was excited? Maybe. It's hard to tell. He settled into our walk and had a really nice time marching around the field.

Close up, they're pretty awesome

He saw me putting stuff in the trailer and this is
how he watched me

When we got to the arena he was hesitant. I hadn't put on spurs just in case, and I figured I'd only work for as long as he was comfortable. 

He didn't seem comfortable at all. I keep telling people that his trot is manufactured, that it took me a long time to get him loose and over his back and to change the scope of it. I sometimes stop believing that because his trot is always so nice when I ride it. This time, it was TERRIBLE. It felt like the trot he had as a young horse- stiff in the back, on the forehand, leaning into his knees. Bleh. So we stopped and I got off. He immediately just wanted to get hugs and then try to take off my visor. So we just walked back to the barn and I brushed him and put him away. 

Saturday morning I took him on a hand walk and then discovered the skin issue under his right hind leg, so I gave him a bath. 

Sunday he was finally looking somewhat normal, so I put him to work a bit, nothing too difficult because the edema was obviously still bothering him. And Monday he looked okay as well, but I was coming back from the bay and it took me way longer than I expected (because I went to teach on the peninsula, then Waze thought it was a good idea to take me through SF in rush hour and a better idea for me to get OFF THE HIGHWAY into DTSF to take a short cut. Um not listening to Waze ever again). 

My mom wanted to make sure I took
the meds she was giving me for TC

This morning I rode him, there was still the tiniest bit of edema, but he was willing to work if a little behind my leg. Until the end, that is, when I decided to stretch him out at the trot. He was being great until he bolted with me. My reins were long so he was able to get going pretty good. I almost came off the left side of him and he really slammed me backward with my long reins! I jammed my finger and have a bit of neck pain, but I did stay on.

He then had to do a bunch of simple changes and leg yield zig zags. And he was great at both! It was hard to remain mad at him after that...

Definitely Allergic to Fly Spray

Remember last fall when I fly sprayed my horse and he got hives? Yeah, that sucked. From then on, I didn't fly spray him.

Luckily my previous barn really didn't have *that* many flies (maybe it's all the garlic being grown down there?) and it was going into winter anyway.

This spring though, moving to the new barn, I realized that there were some nasty flies up here! I was out riding one morning and kept feeling these little pinpricks on my back, which I realized were flies biting me! Those dicks.

They really started to bother TC, with him getting irritated at them while we were riding and constantly wanting to rub his face on his wraps, which would twist around and get gross. He's never been one that cared about flies all that much, but I think they were biting him.

Soooo it became time to do something about the flies. At expo I bought him a mask and had talked to a barn mate about potential allergies. She said she had surprising luck with the cheap Bronco fly spray, and that even though it smelled like chemicals, it didn't seem to bother her very sensitive horse.

Watching the feed cart

I used that on Monday at my lesson, but it didn't seem to help very much with the flies, they were still landing on him. Tuesday I saw that one of my barnmates had FlySect outside her stall. Since he hadn't had an allergic reaction to the Bronco, it was in the back of my mind that maybe in the fall it was like, a change of hay or something that caused the bumps. So I put that on him.

NOPE.

Definitely the fly spray. I came out to ride him on Wednesday to find him pawing incessantly at the ground and feeling itchy. The hives hadn't appeared yet so I rode him and we had kind of a shit ride. That's not unusual after a lesson so I just left it and started looking up toys for him (because pawing = boredom?). Then Wednesday night I came out to check on him and sure enough, bumps everywhere. They're hot and sensitive and he was standing really weird.

I washed him with anti-microbial shampoo, which I'm not sure was the right call but it was quite literally the only shampoo I had that wasn't whitening shampoo. My BO was there but didn't have any hydroxyzine or anything, so I just left him.

Thursday morning I rode him bareback around the ranch and he seemed like he was in good spirits, but he was still both itchy and painful. It seems like the more sensitive skin near his belly/flank is really painful, and the rest of him is just itchy. He kept turning around to itch at himself and one time just bit his shoulder and held his skin in his mouth. I curried him all over and put him away.

At this point I just feel terrible for him. The hives are really hot and clearly uncomfortable. He has some under where his saddle would go, though those ones don't seem as bad, so I have to wait to ride him.

I'm also just totally pissed off at myself for fly spraying him again. No more fly spray for him!

Trying to bite my foot

In the immediate future, I washed TC on Wednesday when I noticed it and last night gave him some benadryl to see if it will go down. As of this morning, a lot of the bumps on his body are gone but there's a ton of edema on his belly on the left side mostly. He doesn't seem as uncomfortable after getting benadryl last night. He'll get it again tonight and through the weekend hopefully.

As long as he's not irritated, I'm going to try riding him lightly tomorrow morning. I mean, we have a show in a week, but he's going so well that I feel like if my first ride is when we trot down centerline, we'll still be fine, if not a bit explosive.

In the long term future, what the hell! The barn keeps flies out pretty well so most of the irritation is when riding, or I'd get him a fly sheet or something. I don't know how to keep the flies off of him while riding without fly spraying him... if I do try more fly spray, I'm going to just spray a tiny bit on one part of him and wait to see what happens. It could be just one ingredient that isn't in all fly sprays.

Any advice is appreciated, have any of you dealt with a fly spray allergy??