Ima meets Mischa

Last month we took Mischa out to the barn for the first time to meet Ima and spend some time around horses so that she can get accustomed to them. She was curious but very polite and I think she will do very well with horses when she is grown up. Ima was also very interested in Mischa as she is with just about everything new. It was really cute to watch them investigate each other. :)

Jer also spent some time petting a new baby at the boarding facility. He was so cute running and bucking and jumping up on his poor mamma trying to get her to play. :)

Farrier and Misc. happenings

Well I had yet another new farrier out this week to trim Imas hooves and I think.... fingers crossed.... that we have a winner. He did a good job and said he will put me on the same 6 week schedule as some other people in the area, I guess he works in FL, GA, and Al.

We talked a little bit about the lameness going on with Ima and he feels that my initial idea of her back being out could be right. He found alot of sore spots and we havent been riding for 6 months now so that shouldn't be there. He gave me a card for a equine chiropractor and as soon as there is money I think I will look into it. Even if it isnt what is going on with the lameness it seems like she needs some relief!

On another note she is still having trouble with rain rot; she just isnt used to this wet weather! So I have to keep greasing her up with MTG to treat it. The stuff works but it attracts all the dirt and so now she never looks clean! Well its almost gone now and I am giving her a bath this weekend!

News....

Well I titled this "news" but really there isnt anything exciting. Ima is started on her new, and very expensive supplements now so I am hoping to start seeing some increased improvement in the next month or two. Last week I went out to clip her head as I always do every spring and my clippers died 1/2 the way through so now her head is half bald and half fuzzy....poor thing looks pretty silly. I guess I will have to go and buy some cheap clippers so I can at least finish the job. I usually take about three visits to do it anyway as she can be pretty impatient and doesn't like to stand around too long. So I guess she is used to being half bald for a few days. :-0

Vet visit # 2

On Wednesday the vet came out to do some nerve blocks on Ima to try and figure out where the problem is in her R hind leg, but after blocking two joints in an hour and a half Ima would have no more! She actually started striking out when the vet tried to place the needles in the third location and eventually we gave up. The vet said she didnt like being a live pin-cushion.

So I asked the vet, "now what?" She said I could go and pay for x-rays from the hock up, which could get really spendy or if I wanted to know every possible injury site I could have a bone scan done, but that cost 900.00 two years ago, and she said that she doesn't normally recommend that a patient go straight to x-rays at this point unless the symptoms are more severe, so she recommended that I wait and see if she improves more rapidly after one month on the supplements. If not, then we could move on to giving her Hylauronic Acid injections to see if that helps out. She speculated that OCD (a bone disease common in young arabs) could be a factor, but the disease most commonly occurs between the ages of two and four, (Ima is almost 6 now) and it would be strange for the effects to hit so suddenly. However, If for some reason she has developed OCD then there would be no cure, only treatment to slow the progression of the disease. In that case the good news would be that we caught it early and that she could still have many more productive years as a riding and even low level competition horse. This is all ofcourse worse case scenario and we would have no way of nowing for sure without the x-rays. It is still a very good possibility that she has a muscle/tissue/ligament injury that could, in the vets opinion take as much as a year to heal. So basically we dont know much more then we did before..... sigh.....

So based on the above (if you understood any of it, lol) here is our plan:

After one month on supplements of glucosamine, msm, chrondrotin, and vitamin C we see how she is doing. If she is improving then we continue down that path, if she is not improving we start with the Hylauronic Acid injections. If that shows some improvement then we continue with that until she is all healed or until August rolls around. In August is she is sound with the supplements/and or injections I will slowly wean her off of them and see is she stays sound, if she does GREAT, if not then we officially go in for the xrays and see what is going on in there.

Well I guess we are back to "waiting and seeing" with a little more support this time. :-0

Snow in the South

Last week they called for snow but I just sort of laughed it off thinking we are in the South now it never snows here. Well sure enough it did! It was just an inch or two in most places (hardly anything at our house) and it only stuck around for a day but it was kinda fun to see it. My step mom Donna says I brought it (along with the extreme cold) with me when I came down here :)

The owner of Ima's new boarding facility Michelle took this picture of Ima (on the right) and a couple of her pasture mates in the snow.

Finally a visit from the vet

Although Ima's mysterious lameness has been improving a little she is still off now almost 5 months later so I finally had the vet out to try and find out why she is off.

I had Dr. Brown out for the first time and she did a complete physical and extended lameness exam on Ima. Ima checked out nice and healthy aside from the lameness that the vet saw also. It is only a grade 1-2 (out of 5) which means that is is slight, intermittent and sometimes hard to see which might make narrow down the exact problem a little tricky. She doesn't have pain in any of her feet (something I already knew) so that isn't the problem, and although she found a little tension in her back the vet didn't think that was the cause of the lameness...problem just a secondary thing or still some residual pain from my old saddle which didn't fit well. So after palpating her muscles and tendons she noticed a little reaction on a few of her superficial tendons but said that that can be a normal reaction for many horses that do not have problems in that area, but when she palpated her upper right hind-quarters there was obvious discomfort and we made note of that. Then we trotted her out in a straight line on pavement and worked her on the lunge line for a little bit so the vet could watch her move and try and determine for sure whether it was a front or hind end lameness. In the end she determined that it is a hind end lameness in the right leg, most likely it is up high in the hindquarter since we found pain there but we weren't sure so we made another appointment for next Wednesday to do nerve blocks down that leg to determine for sure where the pain is originating from. Then after we can locate a more specific area in that leg I will have to haul her up to Auburn University for some x-rays of that area so we can determine if the problem is in a tendon, ligament, joint or muscle. It most likely is not a joint fracture or anything like that or symptoms along the way would have been worse (heat, swelling etc) also lack of those symptoms probably rules out a lower leg ligament or tendon injury but we wont know anything for sure until we get to that point, so for now we are just taking it one step at a time. The vet want me to go ahead and put her on a glucosamine/chrondrotin supplement so I am going to order that tomorrow and come Wednesday we should know more.

More $'s to spend...

I went to say hello to Ima yesterday and found that she had managed to rip her blanket on something. I decided it was beyond repair and threw it out. Now I will have to search on line and see if I can find a good bargain on a new one...silly horse is always costing me....sigh, its a good thing I love her. :)

After removing the damaged blanket I groomed her and then put her on the lunge line. I don't know if she was just feeling lazy or is she was moving a little stiff again, (I sure hope it isn't the latter) but she didn't really want to work so we didn't do much there. I put out her winter blanket for Michelle to put on at night until I can get a new sheet ordered; and then I walked Ima back to her pasture.

It was a very pretty afternoon, and I was really wishing my new saddle pad had arrived so I could try for a ride. :)