Dusty man: laid up.

Dusty has been off work of any kind for about three months now. I haven't been on his back or the back of many other horses for three months. It is frustrating.


Left, back. See where it bulbs out above the fetlock (ankle)?

He has a suspensory injury. This page tells it best. This is probably the reason he started kicking out and trying to bite my foot off back in April of this year. He was "stuck" then he went lame. He was seen by a vet in town and even though he was sour with the left hock flex test and X-rayed hock clear, she never even said anything about maybe a high suspensory. I would like to think that a vet fresh out of school would be familiar with this injury, or that maybe if she thought, for a few minutes about my horse and his symptoms that I could have gone home with "maybe high suspensory" and not "bute twice a day, time off." I'm getting really sick of the "BUTE. TIME OFF." If my horse is hurting then there is a REASON. That reason may be surfacing because my very willing and forward horse WON'T MOVE. I wish I had read the article I linked to back in April. He had most of the symptoms.

If you called your doctor and told him that all the sudden you couldn't walk and he told you to take an asprin and don't walk what would you say? It's just frustrating. Medical professionals could have diagnosed this before he got to this point. He was, as I thought, hurting in there somewhere.

I tried this DMSO stuff that did nothing. So then I got some poultice and it worked to take the swelling down. I am NOT giving him bute everyday. He has not had any reactions to it, but I've read about the studies. He was ultrasounded by a different vet that comes to my new barn and he said six months off. I've been keeping him in standing wrap mostly all the time. I've been using heat instead of cold (because no one ever told me to use heat through this whole thing). The swelling is finally going down. It's looking really good.


Dusty in his (now) ever present standing wrap