My previous post was full of joy, my wonderful handsome boy got reserve champion! Super proud mum moment! A few weeks later I was cursing the ground he walked on.
Since March this year I have been nursing Finlay back to full fitness after cortisone hock injections. He has arthritic changes in his hock joints. I spent weeks, months schooling him again and had even started jumping. We had also attended some training which I had really enjoyed. he was looking fit and it was great fun to be going over the jumps again.
Monday 8th September, out for a very normal hack. Only there was one thing that wasn’t normal, to Finlay. Fly tipping is what we call it here in Scotland. Where someone dumps rubbish at the roadside, illegally. It had been lying there for around 10 days. As the council hadn’t pick it up yet I was guessing it contained asbestos. Anyhow we walked up the road towards it.
Anyone who knows my horse will not be surprised at what happened next. He flatly refused to go past it! The rubbish was on the verge, not the road, plenty of room to pass it safely. It wasn’t a windy day, nothing was flapping around. But he would not walk on, resulting in a huge fight. Fifteen minutes later he snorted his way past it and immediately calmed down. Thinking that as he had, eventually, walk past it he would not bother too much on the way home.
Wrong!!
He was even worse and constantly spinned away to the left every time. Cue another enormous fight. In between letting cars passed us on this narrow road I spotted a guy walking up behind us. Every time I looked at him stopped, I shout to him to keep coming – I had an idea.
As the man came along side I explained my problem, he must of thought I was nuts! I’d given finlay 10 minutes to calm down a bit then I asked the man to walk in front of us, which he did. Finlay followed the man past the rubbish. I thanked the man for his help and walk home. Nothing else untoward happened, put Finlay in the paddock for an hour and that was the end of that. Or so I thought.
The following day I noticed a slight swelling on is near side (left) stifle. It was only slightly puffy so put him in the paddock and phoned the vet. After I explained what had happened the previous day we agreed that he needed to come out and examine Finlay. My worst fears were confirmed the next day, all that nonsense on the road and spinning away to one side had resulted in some kind of ligament damage on the stifle joint.
A week of box rest, high dose anti inflammatories then a trip to the vets for joint block, x-ray’s and scans. Finlay coped very well with box rest, I was doing my own healing on him and it’s really helped him stay calm. The scans showed inflammation in the middle patellar and collateral ligaments. Another two weeks box rest and weekly injections to assist ligament repair. Then 10’days of walking out in hand starting twice a day increased to three times a day.
We are on day four of walking in hand, at times it’s been tricky but on the whole he has behaved. I’m terribly worried about his hocks after the 3 weeks confinement but only time will tell how bad they are. He looks awful, lost so much muscle and with a changing coat etc never seen him look so bad.
I felt quite devastated at first, months of hard work gone in a few seconds of stupidity. Horses can be tremendously fulfilling yet infuriating at the same time! I only went down the road that day because I couldn’t get in the school due to the fact someone had put the stallion out. But that’s another story.
Finlay will recover from this injury the ongoing problem will be his hocks, praying i can get him back to full fitness again wish me luck x
lifeicandme 