Ace and Radar were out last night and Ace looked fine this morning. The wound has cleared right up and the swelling is gradually going down. Tonight the effect of the bute had completely worn off and I could see he was a bit stiffer on it when I turned them out at 7pm. He has been in and standing still most of the day, so that's hardly a surprise. Tomorrow will be a crunch point. If he is worse tomorrow morning then he will need to go back on the bute for a few days while that bruised hock bone sorts itself out. Looking at it now I am reasonably sure that it must have been a kick. I know that there appeared to be a pinhole wide, but deep, puncture wound, but there is nowhere that he can possibly have got an injury like that from in the field. The only barbed wire is four feet up, on the top of a stone wall and protected by electric fence wire/tape. Either the hole must have been split by the kick, or by the infection eating its way out or a bit of both.
Either way, it's pretty clear that with Radar's knee two years ago and now Ace's hock, I would probably have lost two horses if they'd had hind shoes on :-o
Radar and I had a nice hack in the sunshine yesterday and we will have a bit of a school on the arena tomorrow unless it's raining all day when I might give it a miss.
C
A kick sounds pretty logical. Hard to say what caused the appearance of puncture, but stranger things have happened.
ReplyDeleteI'm not surprised about the stiffness. But as long as it works out with a bit of exercise, it may be just fine without the bute.
Looking forward to the Radar/radaR report tomorrow...if it's dry enough. We are just coming out of a week of rain here.
Too wet to ride yet jean, waiting until later
ReplyDeleteC