If at first you don't succeed...try try again...

Lucky for me my trainer is familiar with ultrasounds and these types of injuries. I got copies of the scans taken and showed them to her. I was curious to see what she had to say as we knew that his injury wasn't as bad as I was being told. There was just no way; he was healing way to fast and doing so well. Granted we are still taking things slow, but no point wasting time if it doesn't need to be.

      October 20, 2012

She looked at all the scans and compared them to the right leg scan that was taken and said she was thrilled with the way they looked but that it was time to get a second opinion to ensure that we were doing the right thing. So off the scans went to a vet on the track that my trainer was familiar with. Forrest’s leg was looking better and better every day. It was consistently going down and we alternated between furicin, liniment and DMSO when the weather allowed. We have found that DMSO is more effective for Forrest but with warm weather it irritates his leg and we can only really use it a day or two before his skin gets flaky.

                                                                

By this point, Forrest has been turned out for 3 weeks and doing well. He has happily become part of the herd again and on top of which is the high man on the totem pole… who would have thought! I think he secretly enjoys being the boss. The herd dynamics are quite interesting. We only have 6 horses in the herd. Two of them are retirees (Chance and Tazzar), two of them aren't retired buy of age (24, Miles & 25, Indy) and then there is Halo who is our greenie and Forrest to top it off. Ironically enough, one of the retirees, Chance, can easily boss Forrest, but only on certain things, but everyone else can boss Chance. So interesting to watch the herd and how they do things. Of course Indy and Tazzar are on the bottom, Indy being new and Tazzar being the little old gray pony everyone loves.

Indy has been here a week and settling down. Every ride he throws in a buck at the canter which confirms even more that he needs a job and having a good time. The barn has fallen for the guy and everyone wants a ride! J Considering Indy has been on two years of full retirement and one year of semi-retirement it is still up in the air what the old man has in store but he is happy to have the attention and something to do.

                First ride after 2 years off                          Looking good after 2 years off

       

        

Well lucky for us we got word back from our second opinion! And all is good! It was quite funny actually the vets’ reaction but it was a very good one all the same. We gave no back ground information on the horse what so ever. No job description, previous injuries, etc. We wanted the vet to have a clear slate with nothing to sway what is seen and not seen. The first question was if the horse was in work, which we said he wasn't and was a bit surprised. The vet mentioned the old bow but it had no effect on anything going on in the leg.

The vet then moved onto the suspensory and said it looked great, other than being slightly swollen; there was nothing wrong with it. So you may ask; what was the swelling for? Well the next thing the vet said was this: I see severe trauma in the ligaments so either your horse got kicked with another that had shoes or he ran through something like a gate. BINGO! Forrest ran through the gate back in July.

The vet basically said that the swelling and irritation in the ligaments was from the trauma and that the ligaments were strained and stretched but NOT torn. We explained our rehab plan and the vet promptly agreed and even suggested that we should do another scan, maybe two to be extra cautious, in Dec/Jan to be sure we are on track but saw no reason why Forrest wouldn't be back 100% by end of February/March. YAY!!!

So all is good! Right now our plan is as follows: We are waiting for the Thoroughbred Celebration Show before we start Forrest since he will need full attention once we start. But after the show we will start hand walking him under tack for about two weeks or until he walks fine and legs reaction is fine for 30 minutes. Then we will slowly add in the trotting during December and if all goes well he should be up to 10-20 minutes of walking and 30 minutes of trotting. The same will be true for the canter in January and then eventually add small cross rails and fences in Feb and be back 100% in March. Sadly this will probably be the most fit my horse has ever been since we are spending a solid month on each gate! But I am excited, we finally have a plan, it will start in just under two weeks!