Spoiler alert if you don't want to read this whole thing: we still have no idea.
lol yay horses are fun!
Which makes this more of a what has been going on with Opie--a wrap up of the past year-ish of lameness(es?).
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| my tack was getting very dusty so we went for a trail walk in the double to justify deep cleaning it |
Let's do a quick catch up of where we started with all of this last year.
- Right at this time in 2025, he had a massive knot/sore spot in his right back/rib area. He got a deep tissue massage which helped some, but chiro finally released it for good after adjusting the last two ribs and his pelvis area.
- He then went intermittently lame in the LF. We guessed stone bruise and put leather pads on.
- The pads didn't help at all.
- We switched to aluminum wedges up front. That did seem to help.
- He would be completely sound some days, would work into soundness some days, and some days he would stay lame in the LF.
- He got another chiro adjustment that focused heavily on his left shoulder. The chiro felt he had hyperextended it.
- We treated for Lyme in the summer, and upon retest his numbers were negative.
- The LF lameness remained, while the hind end lameness developed.
- Sometimes on lame RH, sometimes only LH, sometimes both, usually with the LF as well but not always.
- Did shockwave mid-summer on the SI. This did help for a few months until it didn't.
- Injected his SI mid-October.
- Started "rehab" with tons of walking--in-hand and under saddle, lots and lots of poles included.
- Progressed to trotting successfully.
- Did a few rides with minimal canter.
- Had stretches where he was sound the whole ride. Some rides he would be sound by the end. Some rides he felt horrible the entire time.
- Blew a giant coronary band abscess in the RH late February. Was sound leading up to this, and sound for a week after. Has not been sound since.
- Farrier came to check on the foot after the abscess. He didn't grow any length to the hinds between his last two shoeing cycles and he usually grows a ton.
- She thinks the white line is separating from dealing with the trauma of supporting his shitty hind end.
- There are a couple of shallow vertical cracks on that foot that she thought were probably pockets of gas that could be other abscesses lurking.
- She does not think it's likely that he will be able to return to being anything more than a companion/light trail riding horse.
- We changed his hind shoeing set-up to a rolled toe, full pads, and magic cushion mixed with copper sulfate to help with any infections in the foot.
- Farrier came back two weeks later to do his regular front reset, and while working on the LF, his RH had a severe three second spasm before it stopped and he caught himself.
- A week later, he got a deep tissue massage.
- While longeing him quickly before he got worked on, after his walk warmup he went into the trot and the RH looked like the stifle was locking.
- While she was working on the right side of his neck, the RF also had a severe muscle spasm.
- Otherwise though, the bodyworker thought he looked amazing. She gave me a posture exercise to use with the balance pads to fill in a bit of a void spot at the base of his neck.
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| this little spot here could get fluffed up |
(That was possibly not such a quick recap.)
The bodyworker agreed with me that benign neglect is probably not going to help this horse. Pulling the shoes, chucking him in a field, not looking at him for a year, yada yada. If we do that, there's very little chance this horse is going to hold up to be able to bring back to the riding horse life. He needs the muscle, he needs the posture work, he needs the help to keep from not looking like garbage. And frustratingly, he looks SO GOOD right now. His weight and muscling are fantastic.
He's just not sound.
Finally we get to yesterday's vet appointment!
He was scheduled for his annual hock injections (this is his fourth year getting those), and I wanted to also talk to her about EPM and PSSM.
I put him in the wash stall to clean his legs before the vet got there, and while scrubbing saw a nice thick dried blood trail down the back of his RH leg. Upon closer examination, I saw that he'd somehow managed to split his chestnut in half. And not like, oh let me just pull it off quick. OF COURSE IT WOULDN'T BE THAT EASY.
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| after i cleaned it, but before the vet saw it. literally split down to the tissue underneath. |
So that got added to her list as well. I love giving her special little surprises when she sees us.
She thought he had probably been kicked, and to just keep it cleaned and sprayed with alushield. Then on to the real stuff.
We started with a thorough neuro exam, including over poles as that was one of my concerns--sometimes when he goes over them it's like he's completely unaware of what his feet are supposed to be doing. Not just like he's an idiot that clobbers through them, it's like he legit cannot process what he's supposed to do. But of course yesterday in front of the vet he was perfect.
He passed all the other neuro stuff as well except circling to the right. He can't do it unless I'm right at his head pulling him around me, and even then his hind end is crab walking around in a very not normal manner.
We did flexions which he was of course lame for the hind end ones, but not positive for anything in the front.
We talked PSSM2 which would be the most likely variant for a TB. The test for that is a muscle biopsy which we opted not to do (yet). She agreed there was no harm in pounding him with Vit E despite his blood work showing he looked good there. She wasn't sold on EPM as he looks--again--SO GOOD with his muscling and conditioning and she would expect him to look more unthrifty.
However, she did say if I wanted to treat for EPM regardless (and to not bother spending money on the testing as pretty much every horse in the area would test positive without ever being symptomatic) she would support that.
I then had to bully her a little bit into going forward with the hock injections. With how lame he looked yesterday, and considering he's been on and off lame for months and months now, she didn't think the hock injections were the magic cure. I don't either, but I DO know that they have historically always really, really helped him and for fuck's sake why would we not do something for him we know will do him a little good.
We ended up xraying the hocks for the first time since 2023. Joint spaces still looked really good, the miniscule amount of arthritis he has had remodeled some, but nothing exciting.
We got three out of the four spots done successfully--the outside of the right (the one we really wanted of course) she kept hitting a blood vessel and didn't want to risk contamination but trying a third time to get a needle in. She said she would come back out in two weeks if I thought he responded at all to them to try that one again.
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| big mad he couldn't dive directly into his hay three minutes after finishing his hocks. bro blows through sedation like it's nothing |
Right now the plan is to wait and see what the hock injections do for him. Add the Vit E. And then decide do we want to spend $1k on a month of EPM treatment, or $1k to go to Cornell for a consult when we don't even know what direction to point them? I'll probably first shell out half that and get in contact with another vet in the area that has a lameness locator to see if she can't narrow things down for us. Both my vet and farrier aren't confident that's going to reveal a lot since he's lame so many vague areas, but we've already wasted this much money, right?
The vet and I did scratch our heads for a minute and toss out the idea: is this one lameness we can't get to the bottom of....or am I just the unluckiest mother fucker alive and for the past year he's been rolling from one problem to the next and sometimes those problems trip over one another and spawn new problems and some are interconnected but some aren't they just never seem to end. The day before she came, he looked pretty sound. Then he wounded his chestnut and was very sensitive to that and looked like shit moving. Because his leg hurt from being kicked and injured? On top of being due for his hocks? Like where does it start and where does it end and start again?
Who knows. Cross your fingers he just really needed his hocks to get done, and maybe he's a six months between injections horse now instead of a year, and he just needs a boost of Vit E. Wouldn't that be a nice reprieve?
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