The view from the outside looking in

Remember a few posts back when Dr. Pollard was flexing Snoopy's feet and discovered his front feet were bothering him? 

As treatment, we've been giving Snoopy Previcox (an anti-inflammatory and pain reliever) and monthly Adequan injections for osteoarthritis. He has his days where he starts out stiff and warms out of it, then his days where he's good unless I jog him in a sudden, tight circle right. His lope still feels like an off-kilter washing machine. So I started thinking...

Perhaps it was time to take some x-rays. Not only might we see what's going on, but we would have a baseline for any future changes.

Karma was kind to me, and Dr. Pollard could only come out on the same day as Monte, our farrier. This meant Monte could pull Snoopy's shoes for the photos, then put them back on, or make changes if necessary.

My biggest fear was that we'd take the photos and not see anything. That's more frustrating than seeing something awful.

What did we see? Let me show you a diagram of how a horse's leg is supposed to look:

Snoopy's legs don't look anything like this. His cannon bones (the beige one) tilt slightly in one direction. The two pastern bones (the green and purple) are straight, then the hooves tilt in the other direction. 

As Monte said, "He gets his legs from his mom. They grow in three different directions."

The x-ray on his right leg told the story of what was wrong. Along the outside of the hoof, next to the little point (see the red arrow, but on the opposite side) there was a weird arcing structure pointing up toward the purple bone. Dr. Pollard said that was calcification, which wouldn't account for his soreness UNLESS it was combined with what he showed me on the outside of the top of the green bone - a tiny bone spur pointing toward the brown bone. 

The bone spur was miniscule, but the way his leg winds this-way-and-that, it's like having a teeny pebble in your shoe. It's not going to result in amputation, but it bugs the heck out of you.

Monte and Dr. Pollard discussed his shoeing needs and decided on aluminum bar shoes. More expensive (*sigh* Ka-Ching), but it would fortify his heels and support the sidewalls. 

We gave him a few days off, per the doctor's orders, and today I watched Niki ride him. He landed a lot easier on his front feet, and she said his lope felt better. 

I'm just happy that it's easier for him to move without discomfort. And now we know where to look when anything changes.

Glasses half empty. Glasses half full.

I haven't posted in a while. Here's the thing: Snoopy's been going through some issues with his legs. At first, we thought he had tweaked his left hind flexor tendon (I always want to call it a tendor flexon). We treated it with drugs and walking and it seemed to get much better. 

Except that when we started riding him again, his left lead suddenly felt different, as in, riding an off-kilter washing machine. His left hind leg just wasn't advancing enough to round his back and smooth the ride. Niki tried to push him into the right physical frame and he actually got mad at her, something he never does.

We thought it was up in his stifle, so we had Dr. Pollard out to watch him being ridden. The doctor was surprised, only in that what we saw wasn't what he saw. He did a flex test - this is where he holds a foot up for an extended period, then has the person lead the horse off at an immediate trot. He flexed all four feet, and what do you think he found?

It's Snoopy's front feet.

According to the doctor, Snoopy's showing the kind of stress on his front feet that jumpers show, from hitting the ground over jumps. This is all part of his ongoing need to compensate for a fused joint, a metal plate, and six screws. 

Anti-inflammatory drugs seem to be working. If they don't, then we'll go to injecting the hocks, then who knows? We're also going to talk to the farrier to see if there's anything we could do to his shoeing to help him out.

So why wasn't I detailing this excruciating process? Because Snoopy is 11 and has so far led a miraculous life. I keep telling myself that every day with him is a blessing, but the truth is, I want the blessings to continue. I want him to be the same horse he was last year, when I took him to shows and participated in the three-day trail challenge at the Pink Show.

I don't want him to show any signs of age, because I suspect he will not live as long as most horses.

The result is that I stayed under the radar, giving him drugs and walking him and denying that perhaps there are changes in his body that we have to adjust to, and some of those changes may mean the end of his riding and showing career.

We are taking him to his first show this weekend. It will be fairly low key, as he and I are both out of shape, and plan to just have fun and see what we can still do. If it works out, we will plan for the one in April.

One day at a time, one blessing at a time.

An ode to an old horse

I'm hijacking Snoopy's blog today because of a blog I read yesterday. Laura Crum's "In Praise of Henry" at Equestrian Ink, is an ode to her 23-year old Quarter horse, ridden by her young son. Henry is one of those horses: world-wise, rock-steady, gentle-as-a-lamb. Actually, he sounds gentler than a lamb, since a lamb will still kick you as it struggles to escape being picked up, but of course, you'd never try to pick up a 1000-pound horse, and this metaphor is taking me off on a tangent...

At any rate, Henry has taught Laura's son to ride with both confidence and joy, something Laura wouldn't trade for anything, not even the $5,000 she paid for him when he was nineteen. Yeah. Five thousand at 19 - from her uncle.

Who said blood was thicker than water?

It made me think of a horse I bought for too much money, one that I've never discussed here. Several years ago, when Snoopy was a mere baby, I came to the ranch to do something - ride, teach, I don't remember, and a new horse had been hauled in. He was a big sorrel gelding named Call Me One. His barn name was Uno.

He was in the cross-ties, and Niki was grooming him. Now, I had known Niki for a few years, and she had always shown the same personality, of being friendly, but businesslike, and a little reserved. On that day, a Niki I'd never met before was currying this horse, so full of joy I thought she was going to sprout wings and fly.

Uno had been Niki's horse for awhile, back when she was a youth rider. He wasn't her first horse, but there was apparently something about him. I didn't ask her to describe it. I just watched it.

Uno was used at the ranch briefly, as a lesson horse, before Christine bought him and showed him for awhile. He was nothing flashy at any event, but he was a serviceable horse who would get you around at a show without worry. He could do pleasure, horsemanship, trail, and even a little hunt seat eq. They teased that his name was Uno because he only had one brain cell, but he was just a journeyman kind of horse. Tell him what to do and he did it.

Not that he didn't have his quirks. He was afraid of livestock, and once wouldn't come out of the roundpen because he could see the sheep in the front arena. He was also afraid of EZ-Ups, and would startle at them EVERY time he passed by one.

When Christine got too busy with her other show horses, she sold Uno to a couple, Dolph and Irene, who took turns taking lessons on him. I don't think they ever showed him, but they had plenty of fun with him. After a little bit (the years sift by so quickly I'm hesitant to say how long), Dolph went back to school and neither of them had enough time to give to Uno and they started looking for another owner.

Uno was 20 by now, and a little gimpy in his left front leg. We kept it wrapped, with a little medicated gel, and gave him isoxyprene and a dash of bute every day, just to keep him comfortable. I couldn't imagine who would want to buy him, especially at the price they were asking, which was $3,000.

I only knew two things: 1) he was a nice, agreeable, stead-eddy horse to ride, and 2) every time he came out of the barn, Niki lit up like a lighthouse beacon. What could I do?

I bought him. Tina thought I was crazy to pay that much for him. I don't know what Niki thought. I just knew that I'd make certain he lived to the end of his days here. For the next year, I had a great time riding him in lessons (he was the only horse Niki made me apologize to once, when I yanked too hard on his mouth), I used him as a lesson horse, and he got plenty of carrots and currying.

 
Uno was a fiend for the curry. The rubby-scratchy motion of the rubber nubs would make him stretch his neck into the next county, his lips pursing together like a happy camel. Nothing makes you feel better than making your horse feel that good.



Irene scratching Uno



After a little over a year, he started limping at the jog. Drugs, rest, and therapy didn't help. Dr. Pollard took x-rays, then came back a couple of weeks later to take more. They were showing what we suspected - he was foundering. Oddly enough, it was his heel that was sinking through the hoof, not the toe. The x-rays showed a significant change in only two weeks. Dr. Pollard gave me the bad news - Uno would have to be put down within the next month.

"I know you need time to process this," he said. "But I wouldn't wait too long."

It was a cool morning in July, just before we left for a week's vacation. Everyone told me how they never attended this event because it was too hard. Yes, it was hard. But I felt I owed Uno my presence.

I know some of you won't believe what I'm going to tell you next, but we've had the whole talk about magic in a previous post. Believe it or don't.

Dr. Pollard had just given Uno a tranquilizer, and was preparing THE SHOT. Our groom was holding Uno's lead rope; he was strong enough to guide Uno to the ground when everything took effect. I stood at the side, out of harm's way.

Uno turned his head toward me and looked at me. What I heard in my head was:"Sorry about the bum leg."

"It's okay," I whispered. "Just get back here to us."

You learn a lot from old horses.

A brake in the action

Yes, I mean "brake", as in "putting on the brakes."

To recap, we're trying to find the source of Snoopy's discomfort with his left hind foot. The fracture has healed. Dr. Fischer thinks it's tendinitis, at least the equine version. The exact wording was, "the superficial digital flexor tendon was enlarged at its insertion and had hypoechoic areas in each branch."

Got that?

His recommendation was to handwalk Snoopy for 30 minutes a day and bring him back in 60 days for more tests. This might be fine if we hadn't already been walking Snoopy for the past, oh, eight months or so with no improvement. My insecurity about Dr. Fischer's diagnosis comes from watching him do the ultrasound - he never seemed to have that "AHA" moment, when he points to something on the screen and says, "Look at that." He only waved his finger about and used words like "seems to be", "looks like", "maybe". I don't care how sure he was about his diagnosis when he spoke to me in the office, I didn't see that same degree of certainty in the examination.

Oh, and NOTE: **To All Horse Owners Who Have Ultrasounds Performed** When they are doing the ultrasound, request that they print at least TWO copies of the ultrasound pictures. As state-of-the-art as my equine hospital may be, they cannot save the ultrasound electronically, like they can their digital x-rays. So everytime I want a second opinion from another vet, they have to send the original to the vet, along with a SASE to send it back when the vet is finished with it. This is important to know.

I called UC Davis and spoke with Dr. Nieto, who talked to me about Snoopy's problem for about 20-30 minutes, then said he'd rather not look at medical records, he'd rather see the horse at this point. He told me that the first thing he'd do is perform his own ultrasound, then do pain blocking to pinpoint the source of Snoopy's pain. This is also called "diagnostic anesthesia" - you numb the hoof, see if the horse still limps, then numb the fetlock, and work your way up the horse's leg to find out where the problem is.

Dr. Fischer had refused to do this blocking. According to him, you risk injuring the horse by allowing him to put full weight (or full range of mobility) on a hurting limb. The other vets I spoke with disagreed with this. Their arguments were that: 1) you only trot the horse briefly to see if it still hurts, and 2) after you perform the procedure, you put the horse back in his stall until the anesthesia wears off.

I scheduled Dr. Pollard to do the pain blocking. He had to cancel the first appointment, but he was on time the second time and I watched him work. We started with the hoof. There was no change in Snoopy's trot; full stride on the right and a half-stride on the right. It was a little funny to watch Snoop walk the first few steps with a numbed foot - he couldn't find his foot or the ground, so he kept lifting his foot uber-high, then kind of slop it down. After awhile he figured it all out and was as good a patient as he could be, under the circumstances, the circumstances being that Dr. Pollard didn't want him sedated while we trotted him.

Dr. Pollard next went to Snoopy's fetlock. Snoopy was, by this time, very happy to be out of his stall and be allowed to trot, even if it was supposed to be slow and even, with a stud chain. Poor Niki has bad knees and a broken toe, but Tina was sick with some kind of crud and couldn't jog very far, and I'm the mom, so no one trusted me with him. (This is okay, I understand. I taught him all his bad behavior.)

The fetlock numbing made him trot a lot better. Not 100% better, but a lot better. Dr. Pollard officially described it as 80%. He wrote me a note to describe his findings and told me to call UC Davis again and offer to send them the x-rays, the ultrasound and his findings, to see what they have to say.

By the time I got home, it was too late to call, so I emailed Dr. Nieto, reminding him who I was and what we discussed, etc. The next day, I got this email from him:

"Dear Gayle, I think you have the wrong person. I have not talked to you about your horse. Sorry, Jorge Nieto"

WTF? His was the name I heard when the woman at the office said she'd transfer my call. His name was what I heard when the voicemail picked up. No one else on the website has a name even NEAR 'Nieto'. Did I spend 30 minutes talking to an imposter?

Honestly, I felt like someone had punched me in the stomach.

I emailed back: "I'm sorry to press one more time, but I called UC Davis Large Animal Hospital, Equine Clinical Services on Friday, March 6th and explained my horse's problem. They transferred me to the voicemail of Dr. Nieto, and I left a message. About 20 minutes later, a doctor called and we discussed my horse - I perhaps assumed it was Dr. Nieto? Or is there another doctor on staff whose name sounds very much like yours?"

I'm hoping that sounded like perhaps I made a mistake but perhaps you just forgot about that Friday phone call - because, because, um, it was Friday afternoon and you'd already had a few gin & tonics?

Today I decided to start all over again and leave a message for Dr. Snyder. I called UC Davis, only to be told that Dr. Snyder doesn't have his voicemail set up! Sigh. The lovely young girl told me to call on Monday, during regular office hours and they'll help me.

In the meantime... we walk.