Beginning 2011

Spring has joined us for a few days.....in the 50's, and the snow is melting.
Which makes mud.
Which makes everything filthy and slippery.
Including what the horses are walking on.

I'm not sure which is worse.....the cold and snow.....or mud.

Mud clings to everything, especially horse's feet and legs. Mud's more slippery than snow making slips and strains easier. Or it will hang onto one foot while the rest go sliding. It clings to the pasterns and legs, allowing for "scratches" and other nasty skin problems. Guess you could say I'm not a big fan of mud.

2010 was, in many ways, not such a good year. But, in other ways, good things DID happen. Horses we sold went to happy homes....and I always like that.

Lilly did not break (bummer).
Athena twisted a gut (devastating bummer).

And we've been treating Star for a fat leg.

Star was not bought to be a halter horse....she was bought because she can MOVE!
She has an old injury on her left hind leg, which looks like a wire cut but no one is really sure what cut her. It was not treated early enough, and so her hock always looks "fat". On Christmas Eve, our friend Caren was kind enough to feed the horses for us so we could make a trip into Michigan to see Roy's family. SHE is the one who noticed that her leg looked fat. She called us to let us know. Naturally, we checked her when we got home, but, it really didn't look much worse than normal.

Ho, ho, ho.

I worked Christmas and the day after, and hubby told me her leg was not looking good, she was not a happy camper and did not go to demolish her grain.

Rule No. 1 at our place.....if the horse won't eat.....CALL THE VET.

Temperature check was 102. Time for SMZ's and Bute.

Monday, he went to work and I came home. When I checked on Star, I was stunned.
IT WAS A TREE TRUNK! Vet came out that afternoon....well really close to noon. (I have GREAT vets and he snuck me in before going on the rest of the afternoon's calls.)

Temp down.....leg down (I had let her out earlier and she had been bouncing around in the snow).

But I learned something. After he checked her over, and finding nothing specific (we had checked her over for any new wounds, naturally), he said he felt it was due to the old injury. He said that sometimes the lymphatic system can get "clogged" at the old injury site, and things will back up. There does not seem to be a rhyme or reason for it, it just will. He gave her a shot of Banamine to help drop the swelling, and we've been continuing on with the Bute and SMZ's....antibiotic is a "just in case we missed something" thing.

She's pretty much back to her normal self, although the leg is still a bit puffy.
She doesn't like taking the dose of SMZ (Carrots help that) and she really is not a fan of powdered Bute in her grain. That kind of surprises me, because the powdered Bute has a taste of apples in it, while the tablets taste like....well, chewing aspirin.

But it's a New Year....with New Hopes.
Here's to it.