Horses=frustration

Ari's still lame.

I had the vet out last week Wed.

He was looking pretty good, I had him back in shape but he was still a little sticky on the left hind. Amy saw it in our lesson but thought he looked pretty good a week later when I had him out on XC. We had an amazing school and then when I got him up again on Monday, two days later, I could feel a pretty significant "stick."

Vet assessed that yes, he did look lame but not SUPER lame. He didn't feel that blocking would create a significant enough change to help diagnose. He thought hocks. Accupressure points= SCREAMING hocks. Everyone else was no reaction. Nothing chiropractically, nothing registered for that foot.

He asked when I'd last injected his hocks.
My answer: May.
Dr's response: Look of horror.

Cue conversation regarding frequent injections, other options such as alcohol fusion (my turn to be horrified) in which I immediately say "I've heard that is a REALLY high risk procedure!!!!" and begin minor panic.

We discussed if I'd shot xrays of the hocks yet, no, but we talked about it when he was being injected as we thought he may be losing "space" between the joints. I figured we'd have to shoot them this time around and we did.

We looked at the right hock first. As he studied them he looked fairly unimpressed. I hovered over his shoulder thinking they looked pretty darn good to me, but what the hell do I know, anyway? His response "Well, I don't see anything that makes me worry. In fact, I'm impressed with how nice they are." He pointed out a couple of things and I made a joke that if that one looked good, the other was surely a train wreck. He laughed and agreed.

We pulled up the left hock. Nothing. Nothing. He asked why I was injecting this horse? I said something about "12 year old joints" and he said "they didn't look like any 12 year old joints he'd ever seen!"

Yay! Great news! He has awesome looking hocks!!

So, uh... why is he still lame?

We shot his ankle, too, since it's a little "big" just for kicks. Again, lovely. Comments about how nice they looked. So now what?

Do another loading dose of adequan and see if that helps.

I ran him on a course of bute this week to see if it was muscular pain... 2g of bute on board makes no difference in how he moves.

WHAT IS WRONG WITH MY HORSE?! 

I'm going to have him massaged, I think, possibly shoot the abscess foot again and then probably just wait until Jump Start? Or Hagyard? to bring him back to Lexington to have him looked at.

This is killing me slowly.