Spot Update

As some of you know, Spot came up lame about 7 weeks ago and after a lameness exam it was either a bone bruise or soft tissue injury in her lower pastern or hoof capsule. After much back and forth I decided on doing an ultrasound first instead of an MRI, because honestly, general anesthesia worries me and it would be ~$850-$1000 for an MRI instead of $200 for an ultrasound. My reasoning was this:

1. Ultrasound shows something = soft tissue rehab

2. Ultrasound shows nothing = probably soft tissue in the hoof, rehab like any other soft tissue injury

3. Save $$$: Bc I ain’t made of money and nobody is making it rain Benjamins on me.

Preach it, Kenny Powers

I can’t make it rain like Kanye

So, this past week we took Ms. Spot up to the vet for her ultrasound. Let me take  a moment to say how much I love and am so grateful that Spot loads like a dream. She pretty much hops into any trailer. Thank the Lord for the polo pony!!

At first I thought we were going to have some problems during the ultrasound because Spot would not go into the stocks and was like  “Hellz NO”. We ended up just holding her while Dr. L sat down on the ground next to Spot’s front left to ultrasound, which seemed a little dangerous, but Spot stood like a rock the whole time. Dr. L and the other people around were like “Wow! what a nice mare…wish all my patients were as good as her.” #proudhorsemom

I was pretty nervous when we started the ultrasound because my brain was jumping to all the worst conclusions, but as we went along things started to look good. No issues with her superficial digital flexor tendon (SDFT), Collateral ligament looked good, and suspensory ligament looked good. Dr. L did see on the ultrasound the fibers of the DDFT looked a little less “organized” on the right side in comparison to the left side in one spot. She said that if there had been a large lesion before and this is what she saw that that she would tell me to start trotting. She did notice that Spot had some effusion of her coffin bone when ultrasounding between the heel bulbs and suggested a coffin joint injection might be warranted. Other than that, we didn’t see anything glaringly wrong or torn, so her DDFT issue could be from an old polo injury and we’ll do a U/S recheck in another 1.5 months.

To make a long story short, I’VE BEEN CLEARED TO START TACK WALKING!!! WHEEE!!!

I’m being extra cautious though and I’m going to hand walk for another week or so before I start tack walking for 20 minutes adding 5 minutes each week. Once we get to 40 minutes I can start adding 5 minutes of trot a week. Spot also got to go back into pasture turnout so she was very happy about that, though the whole time I was like “NO RUNNING!! Just eat grass!!!”. She already seems much more relaxed and chill after only a few days of TO so that gives me hope that she won’t be a wild banshee when I get on her. Either way, I’m just excited I get to get back on her. 🙂

On a side note, has anyone had experience with coffin joint injections with steroid and HA? Would love to hear your experiences and thoughts on it.