The accident prone horse

As I said last time, I've been planning on giving Chev some time off.

She's been working hard lately and I don't want her to lose her work ethic, her good attitude or her soundness.

So I resisted the strong urge I felt to grab the hackamore on my way out the door today.

I drove out to the barn, haltered her and led her out of her large pen, down to the grooming area.  I took off her blanket and immediately noticed her knee.

I know Chev, so I know this isn't normal.  Can you see the swelling?

Here, I'll circle it for you:

Ugh.  I hate dealing with horsey injuries.  Things that seem small can be devastating, things that seem catastrophic can be superficial.  I've never dealt with a knee injury before.

Now, Chev is what you would call an "accident prone horse".

My favorite injury of hers so far was getting a 2" long toothpick thick splinter lodged way up in the side of her neck.

I had her on turnout all summer in these really nice, individual (didn't want her to get kicked by another horse!  Oh, no!  Have to be cautious!)  turnouts, with awesome, new, horse-safe wood panel fencing.

I brought her in one evening, and gave her the usual grooming once-over to make sure she was fine.  I got to her neck, and felt something strange.  It felt like a toothpick was lodged under her skin.  There was no obvious entry wound, no blood.  I thought I must be going nuts.  

Maybe it's an Alien implant?  I thought to myself.  Ha, ha.

Then I found a tiny, completely bloodless entry wound, about 2mm in diameter a few inches down her neck from the object under her skin.  I probed some more at the skinny bump and heard a tiny snap.

Oh no, I thought.

I called the vet right away, he told me not to worry and came out the next day to do local surgery to remove the two huge splinter fragments from way up under her skin.

On the plus side, since she needed to be sedated anyway it didn't cost me too much more to get her teeth done at the same time.

Doesn't it seem like sometimes the most careful owners are the ones with the horses that can get injured on ANYTHING?  I see those horses out in barbed wire with tractors and scrap metal in their pastures and I just KNOW if they belonged to me, they would have killed themselves long ago.

I remember my old barn owner saying, "God takes care of ignorant horse owners."  And while I'm fairly Agnostic, I have to think there's something to this.  People do the stupidest things to their horses, and somehow they not only live but emerge unscathed.  But I, the hyper-vigilant, always worrying horse owner, get to deal with all kinds of stuff that just makes you shake your head and go, "Boy, how did she manage THAT?"

No matter what I do she finds something to get injured on.

So I did what I usually do when something looks off.  I snapped her on the lunge line to see if she was lame, and evaluate from there.

She wasn't.  She moved fine, actually.  I didn't see any lameness.  So that was weird.

I palpated it and she didn't like that much.  It was obviously sore but not hot.  I would have cold hosed it under normal circumstances, but given that it was already 32 degrees out with a windchill down to 17, I figured that would just be cruel.

(Sidebar:  If you look closely at this picture you'll see a horizontal dent under her right knee.  That's from getting kicked full in the cannon bone by a hind-shoe wearing gelding when she was 3.  But that's a story for another day...)

See the swelling on top of her left knee?  It's a little hard to see in the picture because of the strong shadow on her left leg, but all the swelling seemed to be localized to the top lateral aspect of the carpus, and there was no swelling/edema lower in her leg.  I also found no puncture wound, etc. even though I looked closely. (But look at those gams in the back!  Holy cow!  I wish mine looked that good.)

I'm hoping she just banged it hard on something (like the corral she's in) and that the swelling will go down soon.  If not, then I'll have the vet out to make sure something else isn't going on.

I thought about buteing her, but I'm always hesitant to do that in this kind of situation when I don't know exactly what's wrong or if it's causing her much pain--sometimes taking the pain away makes them feel awesome, and they re-injure themselves even worse.  I decided against the Bute for now.

So for the time being she'll be getting some much deserved time off.  She'll have her feet done early next week and just veg out for a while--probably a couple of weeks at least.  In the meantime I'll keep a close eye on that knee.

In the small outdoor arena today

Also, when I was grooming her today I noticed that she was SHEDDING.  In February.  In 30 degree weather.  I sure hope this means we're in for an early spring!