Poor Bruno
My trainer, Rhonda, was over on Sunday for a look-see at Bruno. Quite often, he feels like I'm steering a big boat, and he does some weird twists with his neck. So we put him on the lunge line, and took a careful look at how he tracked up. It was quite apparent that he was favoring his left hind, not that he was lame at all, just a bit off, putting it down in a position so as not to aggravate it. When we finished, and brought him to his shed, Rhonda checked his back muscles. When a horse is sore in a leg, he compromises his back muscles, behind the saddle area. Sure enough, he had some very sore spots to testing. Why he didn't dump me on my head when I rode, I don't know; he must have had a nagging pain.
To help him till the vet comes, I've been giving him phenylbutazone [anti-inflammatory/analgesic] I've also been giving a deep back massage at night. So now he's really sore. When I tried lunging today, I tried to get him to move out onto a larger circle [he has always tended to fall in]. I am pretty sure he went at me with his teeth; hard to be sure - it was so fast and unexpected. But he jumped back, and had that look horses get when they've done something bad, and they're expecting punishment. He must be so sore, and I feel so guilty. Anyway, I backed off a bit, did a tiny bit more on the other rein, and left it that. It looks like we'll be doing a lot of hand-walking to keep him moving and using that joint. Our diagnosis is arthritis, probably in the hock ["knee"]
Adding to that, he has hives on his left side. It is always difficult to determine the cause of this sort of thing. It could be that his hay recently has a bit of alfalfa [too rich for some horses]. It could be the lotion I've been using with his massage. It could be something on the ground where he's been sleeping. My guess is that it's probably the hay. Thankfully, my hay man now has some good 2nd cut local hay available with NO alfalfa.
And so it goes ... |
