Hopalong

Woody appears to be sound on the hind leg but is now lame on the right fore. He is very clearly lame, with a strong head nod, and the longer you keep him going the worse it gets. Though interestingly, he is only lame to the right and not to the left. This doesn't look like a soft tissue injury to me, and I can find no evidence of a problem anywhere in his body. Though I have not tried a shoulder stretch and I will go and do that when I get them in in a moment.

If the shoulder stretch does nothing, then I will give him one week and if nothing has changed then I will get an xray of his foot.  I am concerned about a possible pedal bone crack, which I think would give this kind of result. And the way he reared and then smashed his feet back onto the road, with the slow development of lameness over a week, would support that possibility.

This is a setback and no mistake. But hardly surprising after what he did last week. The other boys are well, and Radar was so patient trying to give a pony-ride to our very novice rider visitor this morning, bless him. I took him out on the lead rein to give her a little hack. He was confused by all her odd signals, but he tried his best to do what he thought she wanted.

C.


Later .........

I have borrowed SH's laser thermometer in an attempt to find anything significant going on in Woody's legs. I think I have already said that he has some very obvious scarring on the leg that he is lame on, with what feels like extra bone formation down both sides of his cannon bone. This morning I thought I could just about feel a shade more heat in the lame one than the other. With the optical pyrometer I am getting readings of 11,12, 13 degrees on one leg, and 15, 16, 17, 18 on the other.  I feel this is extremely significant clinically, and that the most likely thing that has happened is that he has bruised the bone in that leg. Either by smashing his foot down on the road, or while going ballistic in the lorry. He will probably just need a month in the field and then be fine. He is not lame enough for the injury to be serious enough to warrant xrays at this stage, though I will have some done if he gets any lamer.