Not My Favorite Month

January was a rough month around here horse-wise. After dealing with the loss of Ranger early in the month, the hits didn't stop. I am hopeful that now we are on hiatus from horse issues, but boy, has it been an exciting month! A couple of weeks after Ranger's colic, we took a little weekend trip to West Texas for some r & r. We had an amazing day all day Saturday including a nice trail ride and some cattle work. Bailey pushed some cows around for the first time and did great! The weather was beyond perfect. In fact, it was turning out to be one of the best weekends in a long while. As we were getting ready to put the horses up and head to the house for dinner, my husband decided to go for one more short ride. Well, unfortunately, it didn't end up so well. Let's just sum it up by saying he came off the horse and landed directly on his left shoulder. He instantly knew something was wrong and I could see his collar bone sticking up a little. He thought it might be broken, but turns out he has a complete, grade 3 AC separation. After one doctor visit ending with surgery as the recommendation we went for a second opinion. It looks like he probably won't need surgery, according to the second, more experienced surgeon. We go to a third orthopedist soon just to see if we can get two opinions that are the same and to see about some new symptoms he is having. Most recently in our crazy horse life, Bailey showed up to the barn for dinner (after being completely fine at breakfast and in the early afternoon) with a severely swollen and lame left hind leg. I put her up for the night after some water therapy and a little Bute, in hopes she just banged up her leg a little in some mysterious way or another. I figured by morning she would be much improved and on her way back to normal. Well, I was wrong. The swelling and lameness was no better. We ended up taking her in to the vet fearing tendon or ligament issues or worse, bone fracture. The swelling was pretty intense so, we really couldn't pin point any one source of her lameness. After palpating her leg and doing a diagnostic nerve block in the fetlock joint, the lameness improved greatly, but nothing was definitive because of the inflammation. She had been wrapped and stalled for a week and I removed the wrap on Tuesday for the first time. I was really disheartened to see what truly looked like a bowed tendon. So, back to the vet we went this morning. I had re-wrapped her leg and not seen it in the flesh since Tuesday. I was very surprised and relieved to see an enormous amount of improvement today once the wrap was removed. She also showed no signs of lameness! Incredibly miraculous in my book. Our vet is confident it is only an irritation of the tendon sheath. Whew! I really thought that we were doomed and I had been so worried and depressed all week. Well, what was another log on the fire of crazy stuff from the past month, ended on a pretty positive note today. Bailey should make a full recovery. She is still on stall rest for 3 weeks with light hand walking and then we go back to the vet for a check up. I don't mess around with tendon, ligament, or bone issues. I want to make sure all is well before we start back to doing anything. So, we will be taking everything very slowly. I had already been planning on investing in some good support boots and now I am definitely going to be doing that. I would welcome any recommendations on brands, etc. Here's to hoping the next 30 days will be less eventful than the last.

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