A silent bounce board where I can rant, rave, cry, whatever. And share my experience of stall rest. I've been SO lucky in my life to never have owned a horse that required any sort of significant stall rest or recovery. But surprise surprise, now is my time!
Oh, Maxwell walked me down the aisle at my wedding back in October. I need to make a post full of pictures of that!
I guess we can start off with the backstory and diagnosis.
Three weeks ago, I came to the barn to do my usual turnout and stalls routine. I went to pull Maxwell out of his stall, and he was reluctant to move forward. That's unlike Max. He's not high strung, but he's ALWAYS ready to go out to turnout. I finally got him out of the stall and as we started walking, I noticed he was taking strange, short steps and flinging his head around. Then I saw it. The swollen front left leg. How did that happen?
So, back to his stall he went, and as of yesterday has been on stall rest for 3 weeks. The vet finally came out last Thursday. I had waited a little bit because at first I wasn't sure exactly what it was that we were dealing with. After standing wraps, stall rest and Bute, with the help of my ever so wonderful barn owner and friend Summer, we determined this was probably a tendon injury. Fast forward to last Thursday where it was all confirmed.
He presented lame at the walk and trot, hot, swollen, etc in the lower tendon region of his left front. After 2 weeks of basic care; stall rest, cold hosing, sweating, poulticing, standing wraps, hand walking, etc, the swelling and heat have minimized a TON.
The vet took a look at Max, did a basic lameness exam, and examined his leg. He did not palpate with any pain when the foot was on the ground weight bearing, but when the vet lifted his leg and palpated the tendons again, he was quite painful. Interesting note, I never realized it could present one way and not the other. I had no clue this entire time he would palpate painful because I had been palpating with his foot on the ground. Ya live and learn, that's why we call the vet out, right? So because he palpated painful and we still had some swelling, it was time for the ultrasound.
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| Sedated for the ultrasound |
Thankfully there were no super obvious lesions or holes in any of the tendons. He has a few fibers torn in both his Check Ligament and Deep Digital Flexor Tendon. He did a number on himself, but thankfully it could have been SO much worse. I'm still waiting on a copy of the ultrasound once the surgeon takes a look at it, so I will have a bit more information about the tears at that point. Hopefully nothing else obvious comes of it when they're reviewed!
The prescription is stall rest for 6-8 months. We will stick with stall rest for now, and as things recover and he's cleared, he'll graduate into other small turnout situations before finally rejoining the herd. We made him a "play pen" out of pipe panels, so there's no chewing, and his movement is still minimal, but he can regain some sanity.
SO here we are, 3 weeks into 6-8 months of stall rest. And me as a worried horse mama...I'm freaking a little bit. Mostly because I don't want Max to be unhappy, or lose his sanity. I've spent most of my time researching things to help facilitate that, and I'm sure there will be many things that I come across as time goes on. See below for some changes I've already implemented to save some money...
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| Max being silly in his modified turnout before vet diagnosis |
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| Max in his attached paddock that he tried to eat |
Horses on stall rest can be expensive. You think it ends with the vet bills, but it doesn't. Not if you're doing it right. Follow up vet bills, added supplements, enrichment toys, and hay. Especially hay. I used to do a segment here where I would outline budget conscious items for horses. I've already found a few cost-saving measures to help offset some expenses I'm incurring above my normal budgeted monthly horse amount.
Shoes.
There's a big controversy when it comes to shoes and an injured horse. I honestly was a bit apprehensive to remove Maxwell's shoes once he was diagnosed, because....change is scary. But after talking with a trusted friend (thanks Summer) and doing a bit more research, we decided to turn this into a positive thing. The year of new feet. Max went something like 1.5 years post track life barefoot and he did totally fine. It was my choice to slap a pair of front shoes on him, and when I did, it was like trading in a Camry for a Ferrari. He moved much better. The thing is, though, that I had shoes put on him after I swapped farriers. The barefoot trimmer I had prior to my farrier now had kind of caused some issues in Max's feet that made shoes a viable option to keep his feet together, in addition to the added athleticism they seemed to bring. I never really got to see what my new farrier could do to make Max's barefoot feet their best. Until now! Maxwell's shoes were pulled today. I hear reports that he walked out of his shoes totally sound. That makes me very excited! Now we can focus on keeping his toe short, bringing his heels down, growing out the nail holes, and seeing if we can't get us a beautiful solid foot by the end of this stall rest. If things go well enough, we'll try to go back to barefoot! Why not?
Cost savings: $65 a month ($100 shoe cost - $35 trim cost)
Supplements.
Some people believe more in supplementation than others. I'm an in-betweener. I'm not die-hard, but if I use something and it seems to work, I will continue to use it. At about the 2 week mark, Maxwell began to get rather stir crazy on stall rest. He's still a pretty good boy in the grand scheme of things, but it made me sad to think he was in some sort of distress because he couldn't go hang out with his friends during turnout, or get enough fresh air day to day. So while I enjoy SAVING money, and CUTTING things where I can, I found something I needed to add while on stall rest. Something to calm and soothe.
I spent several days weighing my options with calming supplements. My vet had given me a bottle of Ace for the particularly "sassy" days, but I felt that something more gentle for day to day use was still necessary, possibly to take some of the edge off. The biggest useful piece of information I gathered from researching calming supplements were that they generally fall into 1 of 2 categories. Category 1 is for nutritionally deficient horses that are reactive and "naturally" appear high strung. Category 2 is more of an herbal focus with little or no nutrients added, and is directed towards horses who are not typically "high strung" but are experiencing some sort of disturbance that is causing them to lose their cool. Moody mares and their hormones, and horses on stall rest tend to fall into this category. I went back and forth between the two supplements below, before finally deciding that my horse would benefit more from herbal calming rather than nutritional calming, because he has a very balanced diet. He receives a large quantity of Magnesium, the primary "calming" agent in nutritional calming supplements, from other avenues, so I didn't think adding even more would do any good, but maybe the herbals would.
I went with SmartTranquility because it had ample amounts of herbal ingredients thought to support a better "well being" in both horses AND humans. Max hasn't received it yet, so I'll be sure to do a review on that product once he's had it for a few months. Smartpak also offers a money back guarantee on their "guaranteed to work" supplements. So after 2 months, if I've not noticed favorable results in my horse, I can discontinue the supplement and received my 2 months' money back.
Another supplement that Maxwell is on is Ugard. Looking through this blog, you've seen my trials and tribulations with Maxwell's stomach health, so it's safe to assume stomach protection is important now that we're on stressful stall rest. After trying supplements with different active ingredients geared towards the stomach, I've always come back to Ugard. I've tried taking him completely off and have also tried swapping supplements with different active ingredients. Nothing seems to work as well, or be as cost effective as Ugard. So naturally, now that he's taking a double dose of Ugard, I've begun to panic. $17 a month is easy to stomach at the normal dose, but when you double it, it kinda makes a difference to MY very slim pocketbook. On a search I went. I didn't expect to find anything to help facilitate a cost savings for this supplement. I refused to cut it. What would I do? Well, THANK GOODNESS, for once, I found something that is both superior AND cheaper than Ugard. Are you ready? This is my biggest cost savings right underneath removing his shoes. Introducing, LegUp Stomach Pellets. More about "LegUp" in the next post I do. They have some cost-effective options for a variety of things. Take a look:
Beyond those two things, I haven't really changed much else. I've decided to keep him on his Tri-Amino supplement for as long as I can stomach paying what I do each month for supplements, because I really believe it is keeping his muscles in better condition than they have ever been in before. (well, since retiring from racing). That will be one I could remove if I needed to save a bit more, but at $11 a month, I'd rather my stall bound baby look handsome with less of a build up time when he starts to rehab.
Cost Savings: $20.51 a month swapping from UGard double dose to LegUp Stomach Pellets
Hay.
If anyone can help me find a way to save on hay, that would be great. Because there is no way to save on hay if you're feeding it the right way, as needed, as much as they want, 24/7. Sigh. I did purchase a bag of Timothy/Alfalfa pellets. I've been giving those as needed to entertain him in toys, and also a few scoops here and there as a supplement to his hay. I love seeing that he does seem to take a while to eat them, longer than hay, so he has something available to munch on for longer periods of time, at a cost savings overall.
Enrichment.
Maxwell loves wood. He will chew wood when he's feeling good (though not nearly as much) and has hay. But on stall rest? Beaver. He had a nice run-out stall until he went and ruined that by chewing on the fence. We're very lucky he can be stalled in a concrete block stall with a metal stall guard, to prevent any further defacing of property while he recovers. He even gets his "cheater turnout" in a metal pipe "corral" of sorts, so chewing is no longer an issue. But enrichment still is. The day he was diagnosed, I panicked and started ordering stuff. I ordered Max this:
All in all, things could be much worse. I'm hoping the light at the end of the tunnel comes a lot sooner than the vet thinks. He's recovering quite quickly. I don't think I've noticed any sort of fluid or swelling at all this week in the affected leg. He's completely sound again. Things are moving in the right direction. We won't go fast, but we'll continue on at a controlled pace. I also don't want to over-baby the tendons. It's about time to start laying down new, strong tendon fibers, and nothing but controlled exercise and a controlled environment will help that. Things should start moving up from here. I hope!
