Dude, that's so lame. Part 1

Yep, no lesson for me Saturday. I have a lame horse.

The vet was out to look at his rear legs. Instead, she concentrated on his fronts. Why, I wondered? You know you're here for the rears....

And then she picked up his front, right foot, and I saw it: a black mark on his heel. He had an actively draining abscess.

Who knew?

He had not been lame on that foot (that I saw). The only time I noticed it was in the walk away from the vet during the evaluation. I even said to Peanut, "way to be extra lame for the vet."

He's walking fine on grass, and on the way down when we did walk on the driveway he'd start Spanish Walking whenever I'd look at him. So, I didn't get to see him move normally on pavement until the vet exam.

She further looked at his foot, and got out the hoof knife. I could see Dawn's glower looming before me. I asked if she planned to dig deep, and she said no, she didn't do that sort of thing. She was just going to use it to clean out the laminar separation in his heel, that's all. Sweet.

So she cleaned. And cleaned. And kept going deeper pulling gunk out...

... until it met with the abscess at the coronary.

His heel wall is completely detached from his foot. She got out the hoof testers, and he was definitely a lot more sore on that side than the other.

From the side of the foot, there's even a little bulge on the wall right there. Grand.

Well, I'll need to keep it cleaned out with a hoof pick topped with a cotton ball or vet wrap, plus I'll need to soak it in a bleach solution. I asked if White Lightning would do, and she said that it would be perfect.

She's also glad that he's always turned out, but she cautioned me to not take him for a walk on the trails until it stops draining.

As for his back feet? There wasn't much to see as there was so much going on in the fore. She was able to feel a large amount of fluid on his stifles, which goes with what I was expecting.

What tipped her off that his front was so off, moreso than his gait and his wee head bob, was that he was landing on the inside of his foot. She said he was trimmed flat, so she didn't know why he'd land funny. Well... now we know.

His feet have been a mess this summer.  I asked if the sugary grass combined with his feet outgrowing his trims and getting split and cracked had anything to do with it.  She said it could.  Well, if I didn't have an excuse to keep his feet in shape between trims before, I certainly do now.

Of course I took pics.  They'll be in part 2.