First up, Mollie's foot/mystery lameness/weight saga. I was going to be a good blogger and take pictures of all her feet/new set up to share with you, but I forgot. So sorry.
If you remember Mollie had been NQR for a little while now, but it was very slight and there was no heat/swelling/etc. I have a short video where you can see a slight hitch when she trots, and that was more or less the extent of what was wrong.
I was playing it by ear, waiting to see if anything alarming jumped out and screamed "this is wrong!" but it never quite happened. I knew if I called the vet out they would find something wrong, but she's a 17y/o horse riddled with arthritis. Of course they could find something to inject/treat but I knew that wasn't the route I wanted to go. The other issues were:
1. She's overweight, which never helps anything
2. She's out of shape, so in general not as strong as she used to be
3. Her feet were getting close to being due, and although she's gone longer in between trimmings she will sometimes get ouchy if her heels get too low for her liking
Since the farrier was due to come out soon my plan was to keep riding (she wasn't getting worse with work) and wait to see what he said.
The first thing he said was, "that horse is obese". The second thing he said was, "She's seriously in danger of foundering." Fuck.
He did agree that her heels were getting a little low, so he made her a little pad (which I swear I was going to take a picture of) for her front feet and that seems to have made a difference. She's been feeling great since having her feet done and since I've been riding 4-5 days a week now that I'm out of school. Between all of those things I think that's just what she needed to be feeling a little better.
While her feet are feeling better, we now have the problem of getting weight off of her. Again. But that deserves a post all of it's own :)
I hope you find out what is going on with her <3 My own mare went through a bout of unexplainable lameness last year that sidelined her for a good two months while we figured out the problem. I found that having her walk around (in pasture) was good for her, since she has a lot of arthritis. I also put her on Previcox to decrease the pain and imflammation.
ReplyDeleteShe doesn't look obese in the part of the video that I saw (but I only watched the tiny version of it!). Apollo was "off" last summer and when he lost weight he was sound...maybe that will help?
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