pardon the interruption

Alternate Title 1: Acting As If

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Alternate Title 2: When Trashcans Attack

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Alternate Title 3: Oh Doozy… :(

pictured: a victim of the consequences of her own actions circumstances beyond her control

Sooo… My dear sweet mare… Ms Mondeuse, Best of Biscuits… We had a little accident last week.

The Hill Where It Happened

I had just hopped off after a particularly hot and sticky afternoon dressage school, unbuckled the girth, and slipped off the bridle (reins still around Doozy’s neck, plus neck strap on, obvi), and Doozy was, as she always is, immensely itchy. 

Except, two totally unrelated events occurred in rapid succession. First, Doozy tried to rub her face on a nearby trashcan. BUT THEN, in a totally unrelated circumstance, the trashcan moved and made a noise. And that, as they say, was that. Doozy shied backwards, turned away from me, Lost Her Shit when the ungirthed saddle subsequently slipped off, and got away. 

“the hills, they call to me!” — doozy, on drugs, performing a slightly less dramatic reenactment

For whatever mysterious reasons guiding Doozy’s chaotic impulses, she opted to bolt straight up and over the biggest nearby hill — exploding her bridle into a million pieces (not all of which I was able to find!) along the way. 

She made it all the way to the neighbors before apparently realizing she wasn’t in Kansas anymore, and so naturally turned tail and bolted straight back down the same gigantic hill and back toward the barn yard where we were still just standing there stunned. At which point her inner GPS kicked in and she made the turn she *should* have made in the first place and bee-lined toward her field, where she then waited in sad panicky agitation for me to come rescue her.

pictured: It

Somehow, Doozy kept all four shoes on throughout the ordeal, and had no visible wounds or marks. Plus 3 of her 4 boots were still perfectly in place — one of the hinds had slipped a bit but nothing crazy.

So I checked her over, hosed her off and did my best to help her cool and calm down… Obvi she was extremely agitated and sad after all that… But I hoped that perhaps we escaped any meaningful injury.

anonymous mare has #SomeRegerts
also, shoutout to my farrier who was like, “yea ok but let’s NOT shoe this horse today tho”

Unfortunately, tho, that doesn’t seem to be the case. When I arrived back at the barn about 12hrs later for our regularly scheduled farrier appointment, her left lower forelimb was hot, swollen and sore. I had just shot a text off to my vet when my farrier arrived, and he kinda confirmed my fears that we might be looking at something serious here.

shoutout to anti-inflammatories and antidepressant sedatives too, the real MVPs

He recommended waiting to shoe the horse until after the ultrasound, since her feet look fine and, as he noted, ‘we may want different shoeing based on what we find…’ Oof. 

pictured: as much action as we’re gonna get for the foreseeable future

Fortunately the vet was already scheduled to be at the farm later that afternoon anyway, so I was able to go back out and meet her. She just did a basic exam with palpating the leg, basically just to confirm that it’s possibly a tendon or ligament injury. 

these ice-vibe boots are a nice touch while we hand graze!

Her preference is to wait to ultrasound until the swelling is reduced to improve the quality of imaging. So we’ll do that at the end of this week. And in the meantime, the prescription is to act “As If” we’re dealing with something serious here. 

cold hosing is stronger medicine, imo, but it’s nice to do it all!

So, in other words, complete stall rest — hand grazing only allowed if the horse will behave. A 10 day bute regimen to help with pain relief and inflammation, plus a generous allowance of trazodone, to help with said “behaving.” Cold therapy via cold hosing and ice boots, and standing wraps during the acute phase.

doozy finds this liniment a bit too strong for her large muscle groups especially along her top line, but it’s nice as a diluted brace after cold hosing and under the standing wraps

Based on the initial exam, my vet thinks it’s very unlikely that it’s a worst case scenario rupture — mostly bc the horse is moving around reasonably well, albeit with bute on board.

snoozy doozy <3 <3

In fact she was willing to let me hope that perhaps it’s something like a check ligament injury, vs a less ideal deep digital flexor tendon problem. And, obviously, until we actually scan to find out, it’s entirely possible that there isn’t any significant injury at all and that the characteristic swelling was a fluke, an over reaction of a sensitive red mare! 

seems like no matter what the horsey activity is, there’s always so much stuff involved…

Now I’m a data analyst by profession, I spend a lot of time with statistics… so… ya know… My feeling is like the data in this case, the odds etc, all kinda point in the same direction: that there’s some sort of soft tissue damage. 

4 days post accident, clearly comfortable for weight bearing, swelling much reduced (yes the right leg is totally bent here, i know it’s a weird angle). we’ll ultrasound 5 days from now.

So we’re just gonna continue operating under that assumption. In this type of circumstance, the risks associated with a false negative can be far worse than a false positive. Meaning, the worst that can come from being overly conservative is unnecessary stall rest, vs possibly letting a small injury get suddenly much worse without sufficient precaution. 

The leg is looking good as the swelling reduces, tho, so I’m taking an optimistic view.

in a strange twist of fate, her best friesian friend is also stall bound with a significant soft tissue injury… makes for nice company while hand grazing!

The stall rest is also obviously not ideal, and something I’ve honestly always dreaded for Doozy. But she’s actually coping very nicely with the trazodone! At least so far. I think we helped her by loading her up on a dose before she even knew she was on stall rest — before she even had a chance to get upset. 

and they can see each other from their stalls <3 <3

The trick, I think, will be in keeping her eating it long term. It’s clearly not the tastiest stuff, ya know? So far, so good, tho, and we’ll explore options if/when she goes off her feed.

poor princess, please just keep eating your sedatives <3

I’m obviously pretty upset and sad, tho, even as I try to stay optimistic long term. Naturally I wish I would have done literally anything differently to avoid the accident in the first place. 

meanwhile, us while we wait for the scan.

Things just have a way of escalating beyond all expectation with horses tho —  especially horses like Doozy. Even in the best of times, to think we’re ever really “in control” of a situation is kinda delusional. Ugh. Mare. It really did NOT have the be this way!

So… yea. Cross your fingers for us — that the mare keeps eating her drugs, and that the ultrasound looks better than expected. In the meantime, if you need us, we’ll be in the wash stall cold hosing…