Not me, the boys. I brought Radars jab forward 3 weeks so as to get it over and done with along with Ace's today. It was the vet who treated Ace while he was in hospital. She had wanted to xray a kick on his front leg because it was not healing as fast as she thought it should. I refused because he was not unsound on it and never had been and there was no way I was going to authorise an operation on a sound horse even if the bone was chipped.
It is still not quite healed over now, but the bony lump has reduced right down and the lump of flesh a bit lower down his leg is tiny compared to what it was. She knows that I have not treated it in any way, and she seemed to be thinking to herself - "well, look at that, it got better all by itself". Well I have news for her. Most things do!
I do think that there is a strong possibility that there was a bit of bone damage in there, but it dissolved away by itself through the still open wound and caused no problems at all. Vets seem to interfere so much these days, and I wonder if it is really the right way to treat wounds to pressure bandage and keep the horse immobile. I don't believe it is, myself.
Anyway, I had a lovely hack on Radar, whose schooling now seems definitely to be feeding through into his hacking. He is so much easier to keep swinging along in self carriage, and he was smashing on a short hack. I didn't want to do too much after his jab.
I schooled Ace and it was cool and windy and he was very jumpy and a bit unco-operative. I kept myself calm and worked through it with lots of transitions between and within the pace. I got some trot lengthening and some canter changes through trot that I was very pleased with and finished with a great square halt.
All we need now is for this rain to stop and to have some kind of a summer!
C
I've left a lot of injuries alone on my horses and generally, they heal up just fine. I do put on medications, but don't always wrap them. A lot depends on what the injury looks like. If there is a problem with proud flesh, then wrapping becomes important.
ReplyDeleteGood news about Radar. His training seems to be holding. And, your positive approach with Ace seems to be working too.
Wish I could send you some of our sunshine--we have almost too much.
I do use ointment if it's raw Jean. Proud flesh I burn just back below skin level with copper sulphate. I had to do it once to the injury on Ace's front leg. As soon as it's below skin level, the skin starts to close in from the sides again. I did banadage Radar's knee to stop the swelling two years ago when he was kicked, and in spite of gel pads and high tech bandages he just got bandage burns down the back of the leg!
ReplyDeleteC
I love your common-sense approach to veterinary matters! It is a lesson to us all not to assume blindly that the latest diagnostic techniques should be applied to every injury.
ReplyDeleteCaroline
I must confess I was most amused by the vet's reaction Caroline. She is fairly young, and she just seemed to be really intrigued that it had fixed "all by itself". She was so keen to xray it a month or so back, because it was taking so long to heal over. Several times, she stressed that there might be a bone chip in there.
ReplyDeleteMy take on that was that there is a 1% chance of a horse undergoing a general anaesthetic dying and an even greater chance of it damaging itself coming round from the GA. So if a horse is not unsound, why in your right mind would you operate? And if you are not prepared to operate, what possible purpose will an xray serve?
I wanted xrays of the back leg because he was so unsound on it. The front one that he had never been unsound on? - no thanks.