Poor Fleckopotamus! 25 is a tough year is some ways. He's been having multiple abscesses. Like, he was dead lame on the right front for a few days. Freddie came out and pulled his shoe and found a solar abscess and opened it up. Then we went ahead and pulled the pads on the other shoe and put the shoes back on. For two days he recovered and then he was dead lame in the left front. Buddy!!! Ugh. So then when Freddie came back out the next visit, we decided to just pull his shoes and see what happened. Freddie suggested laminasaver so I put him on that. So we'll see. Hopefully he'll stay happy barefoot because it's way cheaper. And he finally grew enough sole that Freddie thought he'd be alright barefoot again. We'll just go to trimming him every 4 weeks now and see.
So then I went to Florida for 3 days for a K taping lab. Mike took care of the ponies. And Fleck seemed like he was hanging out in his stall an awful lot before I left... maybe foot sore.. maybe he just was enjoying the fans. When I came home he looked good, so.. yay! But again, maybe he was spending more time in the stall. The next day when I got up his front left leg was huge! It started at his elbow and went down to his knee. And the front of his knee was huge! There was a huge pop up storm last night, complete with down pours and thunder and lightning, so maybe he tweaked it? He was walking on it, though gingerly but didn't look like he was pointing or toe touching, like he does with an abscess. So I cold hosed him and linimented it and figured I'd see how he was that evening. Well, when I got home it was TWICE AS FAT! Like seriously looked like he was going to slough it was so fat. And on his lateral coronary band he had a huge lump of proud flesh looking stuff. It smelled awful, so I'm not sure if he blew an abscess or if it was just fly strike that got irritated from the swelling. I ended up bemering, cold hosing, icing, then sweating him (only on his cannon bone) with DMSO and furazone. And I started him on bute and SMZ's. The next morning.. no change. I almost took him to Keelin's instead of Dan, but wasn't sure it would be fair to haul him that far. And he was still walking on it and didn't seem perturbed other than having a harder time bending it. I did ask Keelin and showed her the photos. She sent me with a tube of something that was basically Dex, an antibiotic maybe, and lasix. She told me to keep him on the bute and the SMZ's. I did take him off previcox.
Eventually it went down. It took 4 days and it's still swollen, but a million times better.
Photos of the leg and some other photos cause... Flecky!
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