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| Dusty is not speaking to me right now so I had to use this older photo of her |
Yesterday Dusty walked out
lame again in the morning. Lucky for her, our vet was scheduled for
a visit to administer the remaining vaccinations. She came out of the catch pen
sound and jogged ok. That figures. But standing on the crossties
while getting the x-ray equipment set up, she developed a slight pulse in her
right front. It seems walking in the paddock reduced her lameness and the pulse
in her foot, but standing exacerbated it again. Hmm...
Dusty has had laminitis in
both front hooves and has foundered also. I’m always
apprehensive each Spring waiting to see if she’ll have a
reoccurrence of either condition. Our vet took an x-ray of her
hoof/foot and found some astounding results. Originally, her coffin
bone rotation was 6 degrees for one foot and 9 degrees for the other.
Well, her x-rays showed that she is almost totally back to normal.
Apparently, our farrier is a genius/miracle worker. Thank you Tyler!
I’ve read a lot about
coffin bones and my understanding has been that once you have a rotation of the
coffin bone it may not get worse but it's usually difficult to get much
improvement afterward. I’m not educated in many things concerning the
hoof just the basics of anatomy. So I may have interpreted things incorrectly.
I didn’t have much hope that her coffin bone would ever return to its original
position. Glad I was wrong.
The vet thought that, along
with the potential for a slight flare-up of laminitis due to the spring grass
coming up, perhaps since her toe was a little overgrown it could be
contributing to her lameness. Our farrier is due today to shoe her and a
few of the others. Just to be safe, she's back on a bit of bute for a few
days, some isoxsuprine for a month, and a grazing muzzle (sorry Dusty!)
for the rest of the year. So hopefully by the weekend her lameness will be a
thing of the past. She’s not very happy with us right now about the
muzzle, but better safe than sorry. So she can be as annoyed at me as she
likes but as my mother used to say “it’s for your own good!” (I always
hated when she said that, by the way, even if she was right.)
Until next time
Quote for Today
Our perfect companions never have fewer than four
feet.
