taming the t-rex

No big surprise, but Charlie remains pretty mad about his wound-induced confinement... 

large charles in a sma paddock

So we're trying to walk a fine line between indulging him without setting back his recovery. Bc.... the heel bulb wound is healing really well so far. 

took about 0.0001sec to wallow in the mud before instantly trying to flirt with barbie dream horse Pride over the fence line

My longtime vet is eminently practical -- it's one of my favorite things about her. And she wasted basically zero time in managing my expectations around this particular injury. It's in a bad spot, and is kinda perfectly terrible in that the flap was jusssst thick enough to try to save, esp since it involved coronet tissue. 

Thus, the gamble with staples and the caution that we might be in for a slow recovery.

pictured: charlie flirting

Somehow, tho, the staples are holding. And while it's been pretty wet and muddy out.... we've still managed to find opportunities for Charlie to get an hour or two outside --- usually timed right before a bandage change so that he's not festering in sodden muddy wraps.

he got some pointers from the neighboring shetland stallions too lol

And luckily Charlie's been decent enough to (mostly) behave himself unsupervised in the small barn yard paddocks so I can go off and do other things. Mostly lol.

anyway. back to the point --- daily wrap changes, bleh

We're still doing daily bandage wraps mostly bc it's freakin impossible to wrap a shod hoof with anything that can withstand the steel shoe. Ymmv. 

my work station

The wrap isn't super different from how I wrapped his abscess hoof last winter, either. First, his heel bulbs get protected with pillows of square gauze. Then, I wrap the whole hoof from the sole up to the top of his pastern in vet wrap, usually using a full roll.

lol and this is supposed to be my 'normal' one lol

Next, I snip down the front of the vet wrap from pastern to coronet band to release any pressure, then do a couple passes with elastikon around the shoe and up over the pastern (careful to not pull tight) to seal everything up.

finished bootie.... so much material, but c'est la vie

From there, I slap on the pre-assembled basket-weave duck tape patch, and then a series of smaller duck tape pieces to build the wrap up high enough so that it won't get pulled off, and will help keep out any debris.

the toe doesn't stand a chance against charlie's shoe, but so far the heels have stayed protected!

The vet's original prescribed process skipped the vet wrap, and instead suggested using a full roll of elastikon as the base layer. But I found that assembly to be damn near impossible to remove off his foot without a ton of struggle. The vet wrap seems to work well enough, esp since we're doing daily changes anyway.

meaty lol

Getting the wrap off the first few days was a little iffy, since sometimes the gauze would stick to the wound and staples... But rinsing with diluted chlorhexidine or iodine worked nicely to loosen the crust and get the gauze off without Charlie being too too upset about it. 

charlie's foot was pretty wet this day so i gently scrubbed a bit with chlorhexidine

So far the wound is exceeding expectations... But y'all know how that goes. There's usually an 'ugly phase' in there somewhere. But I'm optimistic about his coronet band so far, and kinda surprised (in a good way!) to see that it looks like only the surface of the flap died off, but some of the underside is still holding on!! 

He might end up with a nasty defect growing down his hoof wall, and those can sometimes lead to nasty cracks etc.... So we'll probably be keeping an eye on it for months to come. 

For now, tho, we'll leave the staples alone and tentatively aim for a follow up appointment around Christmas. Oh joy, lol.