Great Vet Visit!

 Chrome staring at himself in the window

 while waiting on sedative to take effect...

The vet visit went really well!  Chrome was up first.  She said his teeth weren't bad at all and there were no sores in his mouth.  After finishing his teeth I let him stand/graze in the yard while his sedative wore off.  Have I mentioned that I love that my vet doesn't tie the horse's head up??  She leaves their heads loose and just moves with them, even getting down on her knees when needed.  Chrome kept moving his head side to side and she just followed him.  She said, "That's what everybody needs first thing in the morning is to dance!"  Hehe.  Too funny!

 Sorry for crappy cell phone pictures.  

This was after while they were grazing. 

 I was too busy talking to take pictures during the visit.

Then Rocky was next.  We talked about his hooves and she looked at them.  She said my farrier is doing everything just as she would have recommended.  She said x-rays aren't necessary right now unless we just want them.  She said we could get some once his hoof angles are corrected so that we have a baseline and know in the future if he ever has any rotation.  I think I said all of that right lol.  She also said we should wait on the vaccines since he's been under a lot of stress with moving, laminitis, getting trimmed and now getting his teeth done.  I totally agree with that.  :)

We told her that we didn't know if he'd ever had his teeth done.  After he was sedated she walked up to him with the power float and he started backing up.  Hubby stood next to him and asked him to whoa.  He did.  We told her how smart he is and that he learns new things quickly, often in one lesson.  He was tense for a minute and then he just accepted it and relaxed his whole head and neck and didn't fight at all.  He didn't even move side to side like Chrome did.  She agreed that he does learn quickly and she said it looks like we got ourselves a diamond in the rough.  :D  She really liked him!

She said if all of his teeth had been like his left side that he wasn't in too bad of shape, but his right side more than made up for it... he had half inch hooks and a ramp on that side.  She got him floated and I can't wait to see him eat supper tonight!  He's going to be so much more comfortable.  I can totally see why people get addicted to rescuing.  Every time I do something to make him more comfortable and healthy it just makes me so much happier!  :D  When it's regular maintenance on Chrome, it's just regular maintenance lol.

Rocky was so funny when he was sedated.  The vet picked up one of his hooves to show me something and he lost his balance and went backwards down onto his knee (he actually caught himself before hitting his knee) and she jokingly said she taught him to bow.  It cracked me up.  So she just explained what she was trying to say about the hoof instead of trying to make him hold it up.  He was still more out of it than we realized.  Then he was wobbly and walked over to a tree and rested his head against it like it would hold him up or something.  So cute!

Since they were sedated she checked for beans on both of them, just like last time.  Chrome didn't have any, but Rocky had two.  One of them was long, pointed and probably an inch long!  Ouch!  Rocky isn't going to know what to think after all of this hehe.

We also talked about Zep and she said she's gelded donkeys before.  They react different to sedatives, but she's never had a problem with dangerous bleeding.  She leaves them open to drain like horses.  We will probably go ahead and get it done this fall since she seemed completely confident about doing it.  She agreed he definitely needs his hooves done when he's sedated for gelding.

We let them graze in the yard a little while and then put them back out into the pasture and fly sprayed them.  Zep is bad about being obnoxious around sedated horses so we trapped him in the round pen away from them.  Since he had no shelter we put him in our makeshift squeeze chute (out of a third of a hay ring haha) and fly sprayed him.  He wasn't happy about it, but he did well.  I scratched him all over the face too hoping he will remember how good it feels.  I can't wait until we can build something temporarily in the round pen so I can lock him up and work with him.  I think I could make progress if I just spent time touching him and showing him that it's okay.

Anyway I also found this picture that my friend sent to me the day we picked up Rocky.  This was taken while he was being trimmed.  They were working on his rear hooves so I chopped the picture in half since I don't have permission to post their faces on a public blog, but you can see how long his front hooves are...

King of side eye lol.

So they were really long, but they actually don't look as bad as she made it sound... of course his right front is the one that grows really distorted so I'm sure it looked worse.  The angle isn't directly from the side either, so they may be longer than they appear in the picture... not sure.

I don't know if we will ever know what exactly caused the laminitis, but since both my farrier and my vet think we can get it fixed right up I'm going to stop worrying about it excessively.  We will just keep him trimmed, I'll look into getting him some boots and we will be strict about his diet and weight.

P.S.  The vet guessed the exact same time frame for the laminitis that my farrier did, so it happened a month or so ago.  The weird thing is tomorrow makes five weeks we've had him..... so did it happen while we had him or before we got him?  Could the trim have caused it?  Was it our grass?  I'm so confused!!  He was never lame at all until this week, well not since we've had him...  my friend mentioned he was ouchy on his front hooves  the week before we picked him up... she thought it was a stone bruise...  I'm wondering if it happened when she said he was bruised and his hooves are just growing out faster than they think because of the ration balancer I have him on with the protein in it.  It had only been a few weeks since he was last trimmed when she did his hooves this weekend and there was already almost an inch of growth to trim off!  I just think I would have noticed if he had laminitis since he's been here...  sorry for rambling.  I'm writing as I think so this is not organized at all.

P.P.S.  I have an idea!  I'll take a picture of his founder ring today while holding a measuring tape up to it showing how far down it is, then take another picture in five weeks to see how far down it is.  That will help me guess when it happened.... also yes I'm know I'm obsessing again.... it probably doesn't even matter when it happened exactly, but it makes me crazy not knowing for sure!  Feel free to ignore my rambling lol.