Monday, June 29, 2015

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.

16 comments:

  1. yay for a good vet visit! :) I love love love rescuing and taking in horse's that need help. Even after almost 3 years of Red being with me, every time I see even a tiny improvement I get so excited.

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    1. It is very rewarding!! You've done such a fabulous job with Red! I get excited when you share his improvements too. :D

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  2. I know we always wonder how and when Winston came down with laminitis. We did remember him having instances of foot soreness, but we could not nail an exact time either. I hope Rocky comes through as well as our boy did.

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    1. It's frustrating not knowing, isn't it?? Drives me crazy. I think he will be fine. I'm feeling much more confident since both the farrier and the vet are saying the same thing and aren't worried at all. Also I think he has thrush worse than I realized. We treated it tonight (post tomorrow), so hopefully that will help alleviate a lot of his pain.

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  3. I'm so sorry about Rocky, but I'm glad that it is something he will recover from. He's so cute!

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  4. Glad to hear that everything is ok! Those Easyboot Clouds I po are a therapeutic/laminitis-type boot, so you probably don't need those. He might need boots on occasion, though, so I would look into the other Easyboots or Cavallos.
    Sounds like everything is in good shape!

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    1. Thanks! Yes I'm going to get him normal boots for when we start riding because I don't think he needs to be on asphalt unprotected after having mechanical laminitis.

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  5. Sounds like you've taken a number of steps in the right direction - it's always awesome watching horses make such positive progress :o)

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  6. I kind of wondered if he might be having hoof issues, because in several of the pictures you posted here (http://rdxhorses.blogspot.com/2015/06/rockys-first-ride-turning-boys-out.html), his right front was turned in. Some horses are just pigeon-toed, and I wasn't sure if it was coincidence that the hoof was turned in within several pictures (like he was going into or coming out of a turn) or if something physical was going on with that hoof or leg. My farrier said that Rock had laminitis at some point in time, but not recently. It must have been before we owned him, but he definitely has had ouchy feet before I started him on the barefoot trims. He likes to stand with his front feet in a water trough. The other day I ran a hose over his legs while he stood in the trough, and then I laid the hose in there and let it fill up. You could tell he was enjoying it even though this time of year the water is always hot.

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    1. You are so observant!! I had noticed he toed in on both front feet but I didn't really think anything of it. I would not have been riding him at all if I had known. I'm just glad all we had was two short rides. He was so forward, eager and sound that I never would have guessed he was in pain until he started limping. He was not at all hesitant. We are treating his really bad thrush and I'll get a post up as soon as possible about it. I was going to do it last night but we were having power outages.

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  7. You'll get through this - it might just take some time!
    Hang in there!
    Frequent trimmings, no grass (however that is possible, I can see how nice and green you've got it!), soft surfaces to stand on, and extremely light exercise to start once he's ready.
    You can do it!

    I'm sure, now that I've gone through many of the other posts about him, that he's been dealing with this (weather off or on.) for a while... And you're his ticket out of it! :)

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    1. Yeah I'm beginning to think so too. I'm glad I have such a great vet and farrier to help me get him through this!! I can already see difference in his comfort after one thrush soak so I'm hoping that is a big part of it.

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  8. Glad the vet visit went so well and that Rocky has such a good outcome. The abrupt change in environment could have caused it, especially if you had more grass than his previous home, but don't beat yourself up over it. He will turn out great and if the grass issue becomes too much, grazing muzzles are your lifesaver. Good luck with the thrush, I am dealing with that myself!

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    1. I hope that isn't what caused it... :( I'll feel awful if it was my fault. We are considering making a dry lot... if this continues to be an issue, because yeah we had a lot of grass due to all the rain. I didn't think it would be an issue since he'd been out on 100 acres with no feed or hay (so grass was all he was eating), but he did spend a month in her small, weedy pasture (again with no feed or hay) which is why he was losing weight. So all he's been eating is grass, but maybe he overindulged or ours is richer or something? Not sure. He's been eating a lot of hay here though too. I also put him on the Empower Balance ration balancer, but protein isn't supposed to cause laminitis, so that shouldn't have caused a problem... he only gets a pound a day and I eased him into it slowly. I thought I was doing everything right, but this is new territory for me, so who knows...

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