09.03.06
Another setback in young horse progress
It’s hard to believe, but Gilford started favoring his left hind leg yesterday. Emmie called me saying he was bouncing around in the riding ring being spooky at the wind, so she got off and put him into the round pen and suddenly noticed he was dropping his left hip at the trot. She had not felt anything strange when riding him and he had not seemed to slip or take a misstep… but there it is, a slight limp.
No heat, no swelling, no obvious tenderness or sole bruise, no limp at the walk, no idea what he did to himself. But very paranoid at this point because it is the same leg he pulled a ligament in last year, about 2 weeks before he was supposed to go to an AWS inspection, and he was laid up then for 2 months of stall rest.
That injury of course was much worse than now, and from it we learned that he can be quite a wimp if he has any little pain because he was dead lame on the ligament, and it was just bruised, perhaps a bit of tearing… it took splinting it to get him weight-bearing on it again. That’s another whole story which I will probably blog about before long.
But for now, Emmie is cold-hosing and applying a cooling liniment. After she checked him today, he is no worse but no better either, it appears he is not flexing his fetlock joint in that leg and so is moving stiffly at the trot. Yet he’s going forward willingly, so it can’t be TOO painful.
Our plan is to rest him and continue with the treatments, and if he’s not better after a couple days we’ll have a vet come check him out. Meanwhile, our best-laid plans for the Warmblood inspection may be going down the tubes, and if that happens we will not know if we can even take him to Acadia– which reservations were made since January 2.
Keeping all our fingers crossed– if anyone out there has advice or comments, we’d love to hear!
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Connie Moses, petArtist– self-built website: PortraitsWithHorses.com
(horse and pet portraits)
