Bar Some

I trimmed Lily's bars yesterday. Just took off the excess and cleaned them up a bit. They need the bars for support; they are part of the hoof wall.

Right front

Right hind

Left front

Left hind

Do you see any toeing-in in this photo?

All I did was balance her hooves. That's it. I can't tell you how happy I am with the results!

My tools. Friedr. Dick 12" rasp (for puny hands like mine. I take size 6.5 sterile gloves.) and Anvil Brand The Knife hoof knives. I tried to get away with just having the right-handed knife originally, but it makes a huuuuuuge difference having both: you can always angle that knife away from you when trimming bars/frog!
I didn't include the stand because it was put away at the back of my locker when I thought of taking this photo, but it is this one.

Riding-wise, we started with our single 4-minute trot session. We're still doing half an hour of work total, with 4 straight minutes of trotting smack in the middle. It's gone well; she's happy to keep on trotting. Only using 1.8 mls of ace right now. She still looks sedate though:

"Wha?" 

"Stop taking pictures and get me out of this box!"

Yesterday while mounting up I'm not sure what I did, but I somehow accidentally ended up plopping onto the Lilybird's back instead of seating myself lightly like I do 99.99% of the time. Lily was extremely offended by this. Her head and neck went up, and her ears swivelled around while still pointing straight up. They look like antelope horns when she does this. It's her "I didn't like that, I'm gonna buck any second" ears.

Yah, her ears look just like these horns.
Except this is a Dorcas gazelle, not an antelope.  But you get what I mean.

Thankfully, she didn't pull off any airs above ground and just stood there. I carefully shifted myself into position, talking to her and giving her gentle pats on the neck. 

After this, I decided she needs a million times more desensitizing-to-rider movements. So after we'd walked for 15 minutes and done our trot set, I spent the last 10 minutes doing really ridiculous stuff, like wiggling in the saddle, reaching around with one arm and patting her back and rump, taking one foot out of the stirrup at a time and waggling it in the air. She was leery about the foot out of the stirrup, but after repeating it a couple of times, alternating legs, she stopped paying any attention to it. I also swung the dressage whip around, holding it straight up in the air, shifting it from one hand to the other, and doing a big arc with it above her ears. She was absolutely fine with this. Yesss!

We repeated this today, again after the trot set, adding dancing in the saddle vs just wiggling, waving one arm at a time in the air, taking both feet out of the stirrups and swinging them forward & back then thumping her sides gently, also making the saddle rock from side to side. Her ears turned to "listen" to all the "noise" I was making, but her pace never changed and she remained completely and 100% relaxed. I probably looked like a complete retard, but I did this with Lucero ad nauseum when he was a baby, and he was the most laid-back calm stallion you've ever met. Kids and rank beginners could get on him, and he didn't care. 

I honestly just hadn't realized that Lily really needed this up until this week. 

I'd like to think she'll remember this experience whenever I get to try it with her sober. 

Another Ultrasound

Today I got to the barn ready to finish up Lily's trim, at least the wall aspect of it. I had ordered new hoof knives (despite frequent sharpening, my FL one is so dull you can't even use it to cut hay string now. I know this because I tried!) and they arrived this afternoon, after I'd gotten home from the barn.

This is how Lily was standing after finishing touching up her walls.

Front legs straight underneath her, hind legs out where they should be.
She used to stand camped under on a regular basis. :(

Photos of her camped under, for you to compare:

February 2013

March 2013

Back to photos of today:

Weight evenly distributed on both hinds. Look at the top of her rump.

Another photo taken 30 minutes later, facing in the opposite direction. She was standing square!


Her crooked right front that tends to toe in...almost straight!
After my trim.


Left front. I lowered the heels on this hoof a bit-it was getting taller than the other hoof, and there was room to trim.


Left hind. Toe looks like it could be shorter, but this is it up to the water line. I'm not trimming beyond that.
This is the hardest one of all 4 feet for me to work on, because I have to get underneath her; my right arm gets cramped. It's just a really weird angle for me.


Right front. Compare to here and here.


Right hind. Always my fave of all 4 of her feet (is that weird that I have a favorite hoof?)

Left front

Left hind. See what I mean? You can't trim off any more toe on this hoof.

Right front. The wonky foot. But check out how much better it looks from here!

Left hind. Her frogs are shedding; this is not thrush.

Her bars need *a little bit* of trimming, which is what the knives will be used for.

And if you think it's easy to do any of this, you've got another thing coming! Haha... I've done a million touch-up trims on her, and some trims that were a little more than just a touch up, but this was my first real trim. (I've been wanting to take over for a long, long time, but have always been afraid of screwing her up, especially because each foot is so different. I'm still afraid, believe me.) Holy crap, my left arm HURT from holding her feet up while I rasped with my right hand. (This is why it's taken me two days just to finish working on her walls...) For whatever reason, this time around doing her left side was a million times harder than her right. Maybe because I wasn't being so timid with the rasp? Also managed to somehow put a slice in my left wrist with the rasp, despite wearing appropriate farrier's gloves. Ugh. You'd never know I'd been doing this for the last year...

Afterwards, we rode again in the big field. On 1.8 mls of ace! YEAH! We did our walk with the two 2-minute trot sets, and then Lily received a bubble bath, and then Dr. R arrived to vaccinate everyone...

...and do Lily's recheck ultrasound. 

I trotted her for Dr. R, and she was immensely pleased with Lily's progress. And then it was ultrasound time...and she has healed about 90%! 

So tomorrow we start doing a single 4 minute trot set within the 30 minute walk, and then next week, we start with two 4-minute trot sets! And I'll tell you guys what comes next as we get there. :)

You know what? It wasn't until after I had put Lily away in her stall for the day that I realized that I had trimmed Lily prior to the vet coming and the vet thought she was moving fantastic. I probably would not have done that if I'd stopped to think about it beforehand, but it was a good confirmation that I did something right...or at least, didn't do anything wrong. 

Hooves

Lily's feet, a week after a trim with the farrier. I touched her up today. Her hooves grow SO FAST, and with her on stall rest she doesn't wear them down at all on her own.

Right front (flatter foot)
Heel angles look weird, but take into account the angle of the ground. :)

Right hind

Left front (clubbier foot)

Left hind, with the V almost grown out on the front of the toe.

Left front

Left hind. You can see the puncture wound-the dark oval in the center of the frog. We've been leaving it completely alone; the farrier hasn't touched the frog sulcus on this hoof since we re-discovered the wound 2 months ago.

Right front. She has a big flare on the lateral side of this hoof. It is 100% due to the position she assumes when grazing/eating from the ground: this hoof is always in front and angled funny.

Right hind. She became a little thrushy on this frog  last month, but it's pretty much cleared up.

Their hooves say so much. Looking at these photos, you can totally see how she toes in slightly in the front, and toes out slightly in the back. 

She has stopped stocking up since permanently moving her back to her regular larger stall. She's been fine being there by herself when the other horses are out. 

She was good today; we rode in the outdoor and she felt great!

Lily says, "Yes! Scratch my withers right there!"

Detective Work

Lily is officially back, but after freezing my butt off during a ride at a walk in sleet (my first experience with sleet!) on Wednesday, last Thursday I just didn't really feel like riding. So we went for a long walk in the woods to negotiate obstacles.  I took a bunch of crappy cell phone pics, but just so you guys can see what the latest trail we've been exploring looks like:

Practicing ditches again on the previous trail. You can kind of see how deep it's gotten after having water run through it with the recent rains and melted snow.

Jumping across the little ditch. Same ditch as above, but see how  marked  it is now-it used to just be a slope down and up. She refused to walk through it-check out that goofy face as she jumps across! *lol*

The Big Ditch, which still has a little stream running through it. There was a lot of hesitation here, but she eventually crossed and stopped caring about getting her feet wet. She is so silly about mud-she'd rather jump off a steep (and potentially slippery!) bank than walk through some squelching mud! We worked on that this day.

The new trail. This is the part where Lily was super-hesitant to go forward last time I rode her here by myself.  That little track straight ahead was even muddier this time!

Question mark ears. "But it's MUDDY!!!" 

More question mark ears. She was super-looky during this part. At least she wasn't slipping and sliding so much without my weight on her back.

MUD! It appeared nowhere near as squishy as it really was.

The once-crooked bridge. It has been fixed!

This was funny, actually: I stood on the far side of the bridge, messing with the phone to get these shots, and she  just kept crossing back and forth, back and forth, all by herself, without any cue from me. She just assumed that since we weren't continuing on our way, I must want her to practice a lot...*lol*

She tried to trot across this time, but one of her hooves slipped (she was fine), and she didn't try that  again.

"I'm getting bored with this, Mom..." Why yes, you are. Maybe I won't have to dismount next time we come through here?

The trail through the woods. We trotted through this part last time, and we jogged through it this time. The ground was dry and hard.

Rock Creek in the late afternoon light.

The very small creek crossing. She went in, and for the first time ever, stood in the water and checked it out.

She even drank from the creek!

Deer tracks in the mud on the way back.

We jogged up the road-I wanted to check her soundness on pavement, and she passed. She was staring longingly back at the trailhead (the part that leads back to the barn...) when we paused at the top to rest.

We walked and jogged. It was supposedly in the high 40's-low 50's, but I was sweating under my fleece shirt, which is unheard of for me at this temperature range. I think my body has re-set itself temperature-wise, which means that summer is sure to be hell...

It was, thankfully, a busy weekend at work. We had hit a dry spell in the ER, which causes all of us adrenaline junkies to tear our hair out trying to find ways to stay busy, and I personally was starting to worry, as in FL slow season = cut hours. Thankfully, it has been picking up the last 2 weekends.

We've been getting some rather weird and very interesting cases, including a dog that had somehow impaled himself with a stick during a romp in the woods, and a blue cat (his mucous membranes were navy blue). This cat was beyond cyanotic when he arrived, and yes, he was alive, but yes, he was in dire respiratory distress! I have never seen gums that color ever before on an animal, dead or alive. Yes, they turn a faint purple, sometimes even a gray color, when oxygen isn't getting to their tissues. But this was out of this world. And his blood was chocolate brown, an event that most commonly happens with Tylenol (acetaminophen) ingestion in cats. It's called methemoglobinemia (try saying that one out loud several times in a row...I sure can't!). I can give you the medical explanation, but basically what happens is that the blood loses its ability to transport oxygen, so basically, the cat dies from hypoxia (lack of oxygen). There was no Tylenol in this kitty's house, and he had not been exposed to any of the other toxins that can cause this, so with the cat more stable in an oxygen cage set at something insane, like 90% oxygen (any lower, and he would turn navy blue again and start panting and vocalizing), the doctors called Poison Control and explained the symptoms so they could find a cause. As it turns out, the cat had been exposed to benzocaine, which also causes methemoglobinemia. You can find benzocaine in some topical anesthetics and throat lozenges, like Cepacol. So people, keep these things away from your pets, especially your cats!

I'm happy to report that after 24 hours with supportive care, kitty was alive and doing fantastic-his blood was back to a bright red color, his gums and tongue were pink again, and he was tired of having all of us that had admitted him stopping by his cage to lift his lip to look at his now very normal mouth in fascination. His was probably one of the coolest cases I've seen so far in my 5 years of ER/critical care experience. The best part is that he lived!

If you work emergency and critical care, you will already know that emergencies come in sets. On some days, it seems we're running a special on broken toenails, vomiting and diarrhea. On others, we'll be having a run of hemoabdomens and bloats, and on still others, it seems like everything that comes in the door never gets to go back out-they either die, are euthanized because the pet is so sick, or are brought in to be euthanized to begin with. Those are the worst days-the days where everything dies.

Luckily, we had none of that this weekend. Our theme this time was CSI Vets: we got to do a lot detective work!

If you're squeamish or have a weak stomach, carry on and don't read the following caption.

And for those of you who are not so squeamish: we were playing jigsaw puzzle with a  rag.  That a dog had shredded and eaten part of. Which we proceeded to make her vomit back up (thanks to apomorphine the Wonder Vomit-Inducing Drug) and then had to attempt to piece together, to make sure we had all of the pieces. As it turns out, all of the pieces were there. Otherwise, this dog might have been whisked off to surgery-cloth is one of the 8 billion things that can cause a dangerous obstruction in your dog's digestive tract.

If your dog eats things that it shouldn't, please call the vet's office before attempting to induce vomiting at home. Some things are caustic or have sharp edges, and can burn or lacerate the esophagus on the way back up if vomiting is induced (esophagus with any kind of hole in it = death). Contrary to what many general practitioners say, peroxide is NOT safe to use! It can actually make your pet much sicker if he doesn't vomit, especially considering vomiting will happen less than 50% of the time when peroxide is used.  Call your local veterinary ER, and if your pet ate a toxic substance, call the ASPCA Poison Control helpline at (888) 426-4435 on your way to the hospital. What will they do at the ER? If your pet has ingested an object or substance where it is safe to induce vomiting, an injection of a drug called apomorphine will be given. It is a quick, painless shot (the dose is tiny!) that is given IV, and it works within less than a minute! Your dog will vomit 2 or 3 times in quick succession, and this is *usually* enough to empty their stomach. The effect of the drug passes quickly-within 15 minutes they are usually feeling fine. If any signs of nausea linger, some vets will follow up with a dose of another medication to settle their stomach, such as Cerenia or Anzemet. If your pet ate a very toxic substance and/or it happened several hours before you discovered it (ex: vomiting was induced, and the substance was already digested), hospitalization on IV fluids with oral doses of activated charcoal to neutralize the toxins will be recommended. If your pet ate a large or sharp object, your pet will have to go to surgery to remove the object. We actually had 2 different dogs from 2 different households that, on the same day, came in for having eaten tennis balls! Both had to go to surgery. See what I mean about themes?

No, we were not being lazy-we were doing research! A kitten was brought in because he had been vomiting occasionally  and his mom discovered that he'd gotten into the garbage and eaten part of a dried-up flower bouquet. She brought in a baggie with samples of the flower he had eaten. None of us were experts on plants, but we had an idea what this flower looked like when it was fresh-we just didn't know its name! So an intense internet search for photos of  "popular flower bouquet" ensued! Within 10 minutes, we had found photos of the flower we suspected (Yes, we're that good!), showed the client, the client confirmed the flower, and we were able to look up whether it is toxic in cats. As it turns out, it is not toxic-it just causes mild stomach upset. So kitty was sent home on meds to help settle his GI system.
Which flower was it? This one.

And this brings me to the text message I got while at work:

From Alex: "Did you change farriers?"

"No, I'm still using P."
Thinking that this was a particularly odd question for a Sunday morning, I asked, "Why?" as an afterthought.

As it turns out, another farrier had arrived at the barn yesterday morning, taken Lily out of her stall, and started working on her feet! He confused her with another horse! My knee-jerk reaction was, "Oh my God! Did he put SHOES on her??!!!"

Thankfully, Alex had caught all this at the moment it was happening, and when it took me awhile to answer back, he'd asked the farrier why was he working on Lily, and this is when it was discovered that he thought she was a different mare. Thankfully also, the guy only does barefoot trims, so no attempts at hoof nailing occurred. My concern, then, was, "What if this guy is trained in the Strasser method?!!" (I've heard of a lot more trimmers using this method incorrectly, than of those using it appropriately.) So of course, I had visions of a crippled mare haunting me for the rest of the day. I called BQ to ask if there was any way this could be avoided in the future. She was absolutely steaming over the situation, as she knows how hard and long I've worked to get Lily's feet up to par again, and she was dumbfounded over the fact that this farrier had confused Lily with the TWH pony that he normally trims! She had already sent the farrier an e-mail requesting that he describe exactly what he'd done with Lily's hooves and had CC'd me on it.

I got to the barn that evening after work, after picking up Charles at home, and did some more detective work, thoroughly checking Lily's hooves. I confirmed that all the farrier had done was round off her right front (which needed it, anyway). She was moving fine, and her soles were untouched (my other concern.) In checking her dry feet (last week was super muddy, and every day I went to check on her, I was fetching her from the field, so her hooves were wet and filthy), I discovered that she has actually developed a toe callus (See PG2 #4)!! This is a good thing! :D

I lunged her a bit in the indoor and then set her free and let her trot and canter around, and she seemed fine. The head bob is completely gone. I still think there is something not quite right that everyone has missed-she is alternately resting both hinds more frequently, her right hind more than the left, on some days more than others. I can't find anything wrong, however. I had Charles trot her in a straight line away from me so I could watch her hips going up and down, but I saw no abnormality, no hitch in her gait. My trimmer had hoof tested her hinds at my request the day we were waiting for the vet to confirm the abscess, and Lily was fine. Maybe I'm just being paranoid? I hope so. I've resorted to continue applying Durasole to her hinds, and packing her feet with Magic Cushion. I'm also a little worried that she seems to still be losing weight, despite the increased hay and increased hay stretcher. I'm about to start adding rice bran to her grain, which will up my grain bill and I was trying to avoid, but if her weight doesn't start to change by next week, I'm going to have to. I can bring her girth a full hole higher on each side, after a year and a half of always being on the same hole, and I can see a faint hint of her ribs when she is naked on the lunge.

Hopefully it's just some weight loss from the cold. We shall see.