A Blog About My Journey Riding and Training Sora, My Soulmate

Thursday, September 30, 2010

Confusing =/

First I would like to introduce you to my newest family member. This makes my little family me, Sora and the dog AKA Riley. Riley is a ten month old female rescue that's a mixed breed. As far as I can tell she's either Lab/Pit, Greyhound/Pit or some combination of the three. She's incredible and nearly perfect partly because she lived with a foster family for about seven months before I got her. After this experience I would happily rescue again (although not in the near future =).
The confusing part is about Jackson. As I mentioned in a previous post I thought he had foundered. He showed allllllll the classic symptoms, had always been overweight, had recently been more out of shape, had that incident where he got into the corn etc. Because of this we had the vet out again and after carefully examining him this time he wanted X-rays.
I've never had a horse x-rayed before and didn't know what to expect but the wonderfully positive vet and her assistant made it easy. Going into the x-rays I thought, according to the vet and my own knowledge of Jackson and founder in general, there was about a 95% chance he would need to be put down. I was surprised when the vet took the first x-ray and said, hmmm, that's interesting. After taking all four she called me over and I saw that there was absolutely NO rotation, none, zip.

"He didn't founder" the vet concluded.

"Hmmm, so then what's going on?" I asked

What we found is that he has two big abscesses in each front foot. We feel that a combination of more constant trims that are stressing his soles a little (which will eventually be a good thing) and possibly some laminitis explain the abscesses.
Mainly the most incredible news is that he's already feeling better. He's walking around in Duct Tape and Diaper creations (note to self, purchase hoof boots at some point) and getting daily Epsom salt soaks along with Antibiotics and Bute.

(Obviously the above pictures were from before he foundered as I would carry him now to keep him from being uncomfortable if I could)

5 comments:

  1. How big are his feet? I have a pair of unused size 00 easyboots I bought for Naigen and never got the chance to use before she passed away. I'll give ya a really good deal.

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  2. Great news! It is so wonderful having a diagnosis..now you can get on the path to healing and getting him sound. Yeah!

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  3. Yay for good news!! Good luck with his continued recovery :)

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  4. Hey Sydney, I'll put it this way, the vet said his feet were too big for the x-ray to get them all so she had to cut out his heel lol. However, let me measure Sora's feet, I might really like them for her although I suspect she might be a little big for them as well. Thank you so much for the offer either way =D

    Photogchic and Karla, thank you so much! It means a lot to have the support.

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  5. Wonderful! I'm sure that is a big load off your mind (I know I would have been sweating bullets too). Hopefully, he'll be right as rain in no time :o)

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