Saturday, November 15, 2008

The Abscess saga continues

It has been a hard week but we're finally on the road to complete recovery. This past week has seen me working in the city which meant I couldn't make it up to Jack until about 7.30pm. This in turn meant I wasn't home until 9.00ish and since I am unable to handle late nights I would collapse straight into bed. I would be up at 6.30am the next morning to start it all over again.

His right hoof is by far the worst of the two. On Monday and Tuesday he tolerated putting weight on it but on Wednesday he was obviously in a lot of pain and refused to let his right hoof touch the ground. This meant I couldn't treat the abscess in his left hoof and so I had to leave it alone for a few days. He was walking with a strange clicking motion in his ankle which seemed to be caused because he was trying desperatly to keep the weight off his heel (where the abscess was). I decided to pen Jack for the night and my friend Simone offered one of her horses as a room mate for him so he wouldn't have herd seperation issues. The next day he was much better on that leg.

I’ve been having problems with the bandage staying on his hoof. Since I’ve never done this before so it’s been a bit of a ‘practice makes perfect’ situation. First I used bandages by themselves and they came off very quickly since the sharp edges of his hoof cut through them. Next I tried using tape on top of his bandages, just around the edges of the hoof but since it was electrical tape it didn’t stick for long. My next plan of action was to get a boot to place over his bandage but the type of boot I wanted was unavailable in his size. So we used another type of boot but it was much too big and he hated it. That was a no-go. Next I used the classic fix-it-all commonly known as duct tape. Although his bandage still comes off, I’m pretty sure it lasts a lot longer then the bandage by itself.

Yesterday I noticed that a strange opening appeared on his heel, straight above where the abscess was positioned. I had a quick panic attack, thinking that something else was wrong with his leg. I then realized that the vet must have not dug the complete abscess out which would have caused his extreme lameness on the Wednesday night. So now that the abscess has burst we are almost in the clear. I just need to keep the holes clean and hopefully we’ll be ready to ride next week. I’ll get him shod next week and we’ll be ready to get fit and get started on our eventing career. Please God, let our teething problems be over.

3 comments:

Pony Girl said...

Ack, what a nightmare! My sister used vet-wrap and duct tape with her mare's abscess, but her horseshoe wore it through pretty quickly.

I just went through my first abscess with my horse last month. Luckily the vet was able to drain most of it and the rest drained with daily epsom salt soakings in a soaker boot (which my horse luckily tolerated and wore around in a small corral.) It was very painful for him to have the pressure in his hoof. When my sister first noticed something was off with him, he could barely walk and she thought he'd broken his back!
I hope that Jack is on the mend soon!

Beckz said...

That is unfortunate but I'm sure before long you will be well underway

Katie said...

Pony Girl- I read all your posts about the abscess you had to deal with (reading those actually made me suspect it was an abscess.) Thankfully he's no longer limping so I'm just trying to keep the holes clean.

Beckz- Oh I really hope so :)