well.......

Today I took Fleck with me to Dr. Browns to work. We were going to re-ultrasound his hock ligament from 2 months ago and see how he was, but then when he went super lame, we changed it to just evaluating that. Of course I panicked and had another vet appointment first. But I still wanted to see what Dr. Brown thought. 

I didn't have a chance to trot Fleck to see how much sounder he was with the stifle injections but he did look a bit better at the walk. He's still twisting and pivoting instead of moving his hind feet when you turn him though. 

Anyways, Dr. Brown looked at him and said that he wasn't finding much in the stifle, which could be because the injections were helping. He did find trochanteric bursitis on the right side. We ultrasounded it and then he let me inject it. It was pretty cool. Fleck was so good for me. We didn't sedate him because we didn't need to. I had to put a 3 inch needle to the hub into his hip muscles and my first attempt I sort of chickened out and only got the needle bouncing into his skin. My second attempt went much better and I got the needle in. I felt it hit the femur and backed it up a hair and injected. We looked with the ultrasound and I was right on it. Neat!! Of course Dr. Brown showed me exactly where to go. But I was kinda proud. :)

Anyways... he said that trochanteric bursitis typically occurs when in work, but can randomly pop up. He said it could make you super crippled lame. So... maybe that's it. I was also wondering about his stifle. I really think that he needed it, but I wonder if it wasn't the main problem. Only because there was no effusion, there was some evidence of scarring, and we didn't check the other side. Fleck is tough enough that it wouldn't entirely surprise me if we looked at the other one it would have been as bad. So I did have Dr. Brown look and we found the meniscus on the right and it looked pretty good on his ultrasound. He said it looked normal to him. ???

So I have no idea. I'm guessing that either one ultrasound was a bit less sensitive and missed the lesions and/or the other ultrasound had some artifact and made it appear worse than it was... I think Fleck really needed the stifle injections and I think it's going to help. Whether that was why he's been sooooo lame, I don't know. Maybe it's the bursitis. Maybe it's a combination of both. Maybe the bursitis isn't bothering him and it was all stifles. 

The tough part is that it gave me a little bit of hope back. I had decided that with his trashed stifle, his bad knees, his bad fetlocks.. there was really no reason to compete him, even at training level. It just wouldn't be fair. But... now that there's a possibility that his stifle isn't trashed... there's a little bit of hope that maybe, just maybe, if he feels good... But... there's no reason. Danny is ready to start showing. Fleck owes me nothing...quite honestly I'm not sure I'd be happy running him training, especially when my friends are running prelim. And I'm thinking that the stress of worrying about him is making it not even fun anymore. So... I really don't know that I'd be as tempted to show him again as I think I might be. But it is nice to be a bit more optimistic about him feeling better and getting back to work, even if it's just for fun. And he seems to be feeling a bit better. 

Fingers crossed. I'm praying for him to make a recovery and not be painful and to take his semi-retirement well. And I'm desperately praying that God will guide me in the right direction with Fleck and help me not make decisions I'll regret. And enthusiastically thanking God for giving me all this time and all those great memories with Fleckopotomas to begin with.