blueeowyn | Damn Damn Damn Damn Damn (Reply)

Bloody hades. Why Babycakes? Good grief, haven't we been through ENOUGH already??!??!!!

Damnit! I can't take much more of this. My poor baby is really messed up (again). I don't think it is mostly genetics but a series of bad luck.

I just got off the phone with the vet (Peter trailered her to the local vet for work since they prefer to do block series in a relatively clean place). They did a series of blocks on Echo starting with her toe and at first, she got a little worse with each block. She started at around a .5 grade of lameness (they run from 0 for completely sound to 5 for will not touch anything with that leg) to about a 3 when they were done blocking her. (toe, sole, back of foot, top of foot, pastern, mid-cannon, high cannon, knee, bursa of shoulder) then she stabalized and they weren't able to block her sound. There are 2 more blocks they can do (elbow and full shoulder) but they can't do them now (the bursa block could affect them) so we wait. Again.

The good news is since she didn't improve when they blocked her knee, it is definately NOT the suspensory. The bad news is that it is really high up and thus hard to deal with. If she blocks out on the shoulder (or elbow) next week, they will do radiographs to see if they can find anything. However, horses are fairly big critters and getting good radiographs is not easy on anything that big. So, that may or may not answer our questions. If she won't block sound next week, the next logical diagnosis step would be take her to the teaching hospital (Leesburg or New Bolton) and have them do a full bone scan on her looking for 'hot spots' on her bones. This would show any OCD lesions, bone spurs, etc.. However, if any of THAT is going on, that is a major amount of time off and expense.

When she had OCD as a yearling on 3 joints, the surgery was $1500 and she was on strict stall rest for about a year and limited turn-out for awhile after that. I suspect that a bone-spur injury would recover a little faster than OCD but we would probably still be looking at 6 months of stall rest.

This poor mare is 9 years old. She has spent about 1/3 of her life on some variation of stall rest. A little over a year for the suspensory (once it was diagnosed), 1.5 years for the OCD (between the time of thinking she had it and when she could go out again), a few rounds of a month off here and there for the suspensory (before we knew that was what it was), and an abcess.

The part that is killing me is that I know she is stoic (which is one of the reasons we didn't figure out about the suspensory, the main symptom at first was that she didn't want to go. It was only after it was fairly severely damaged that she started showing up as classically lame. In some situations a horse will work out of a lameness (usually stiffness causing a lameness) but with her, if she is lame at the beginning, it is reasonably likely that she will get worse as you work her (though sometimes she is just stiff).

I don't want to retire her, she is a blast to ride (or will be once I get something resembling a seat back) but I can't keep doing this to her. I can't make the daughter of my beloved friend Dancer go through this much more and I can' t put me (and the others who love her) through this much more. She seems to like working (and really likes attention and things to think about) but every time you give a horse a long vacation and bring them back, the risks grow a little bit. Bone, tendon, and muscle all weaken while the critter is off and it takes a long time to get all of that re-strengthened. I can't stand the thought of bringing her back into work, working with her and breaking her down with too much work (and my weight). I don't want to be the direct cause of her having to be put down. I am not sure if I could live with myself. If she can't have a good life as a riding horse, we see if she can be a pasture pet. If she can't even be a pasture pet, I cannot see any other humane recourse and it is tearing me up. I am hoping against hope that we can get her through this and maybe next year I can ride her. I don't care if we never show (in fact, I would probably prefer it) but I would like to be able to go out and be-bop around the woods, play in the ring under saddle, and forge the wonderful bond that you can get with a willing, intelligent horse so that she almost seems to read your mind.

I just can't take this. I just can't.

Damn it

Damn it all to hell.

I wish I knew what was going on. I wish I knew how much of this was the OCD that we KNOW Eros carried (when 1/3 of a stallions foals at various farms and out of various mares get diagnosed with a developmental problem, it is reasonble to assume that 1/2 of them have it and the 1/6 that aren't accounted for are subclinical. Of course his owner refused to have him X-rayed for signs of the problem (and he has long since passed on) so we will never know if he definately had it). We only found out the possibility about 1 month before Echo was born (waaaayyyyy to late to do anything about it).

*sigh*

And of course, life being what it is, all of this expense is hitting the same time as some other major expenses (we are getting a new furnace). We'll find the money somehow, some way. It will entail cutting back on certain sources of fun, but we will get through but I feel bad doing this to Java and our finances.

Damn it. I wouldn't wish an injury on any horse, but why couldn't some other horse take his/her turn at this stuff? Maybe a rank horse who doesn't care about being with people. Why such a sweetie (everyone who knows her loves her attitude)?

Dearest Echo, I wish I could wave a magic wand and make the pain go away. I love you and hate to see you hurting. Dearest Dancer, I am sorry for the pain your daughter is going through.