Plans & Horses

Remember that cool calendar I made at the beginning of the month? And the vet appointment I had set for Saturday? We make plans and ponies laugh. This weekend was going to be the perfect weekend to get I all done. The forecast called for warmish weather and some rain, I had a three day weekend, and May had been in fairly steady work for a few weeks now.

Then, I got the call from the barn at 3:30PM on Friday…

May had a small ulcer and significant scratch on her eye. Instead of my lameness evaluation on Saturday, we got a stain and recheck of the eye. As you can see, that damage took up a serious amount of stain (but swelling an general pain seemed to have eased).

(The green is the damaged part of the eye) Saturday, it also snowed…

MMMMMMK! So instead of working, May got the day off. Not a huge deal. Unfortunately, I had already planned on Sunday being a day off because I had things to do related to real-life and not-horsey life. However, I still made multiple trips to the barn to give May her eye medication. (Glad we moved a lot closer because 15 min 3x a day is a lot easier to swallow than 45 min 3x a day… and the barn is mostly on my way to and from work this week)

On Monday, I awoke to a 65 degree day… a day that was going to get up into the 70s. May still has her winter coat. Immediately, I knew that we would be having no heavy workout. Instead, I opted for a long, forward walk with some hills it in. May got warm and a little sweaty, but never to the point where I was concerned for her. She still has a heavy coat and trot & canter sets after the weather spikes are definitely not what the doctor ordered. The long walk encouraged her to drink some water, but she cooled out really quickly.

I even got the opportunity to wash her legs and tail. I know her legs will be covered in mud again almost immediately, but I couldn’t pass on the opportunity to get things cleaned up and to make sure I wasn’t missing any sores/scratches/irritations/etc. All checked out, and as a bonus, May’s farrier showed up clean legs and feet! He was, understandably, pretty thrilled. (He even texted me about her eye, as I hadn’t thought to warn him about it.)

The actual lameness evaluation will take place this Saturday, as long as everything clears up with the eye. Since she got banamine for the swelling in the eye on Friday and Saturday, the vet didn’t feel like it was worth doing a lameness evaluation, as it would be too easy to miss something. Since they’re coming to recheck the eye this Saturday, there is no harm in putting off the exam an extra week. (May’s eye was fully open and she was doing much better as early as my late check on Friday night)

How are your Spring plans going with your horses? It seems to be a totally mixed bag of people getting things moving, and other people just praying for winter/mud season to be over! I guess we are officially in the latter camp on this one.