Trust your gut

There are moments in life when you must just simply trust your gut instincts and go with them. Since the start of December I've had a bit of a niggling feeling that Vallu wasn't feeling a 100% right. There has been intermittent slight swelling on his right front, which with two days of light work/rest and icing boots would always go away. He hasn't been lame, there hasn't been any proper heat in the leg and I even had a vet (not my normal vet) look at him when it was up, who said that unless he becomes lame or worse there is nothing I could really do. Whilst I was home over Christmas Vallu was looked after so well by my friends, but having had two weeks away from him when I got back I really thought I could feel something was wrong with him. On the third day of light riding I decided to call the vet.

Hand walking and grazing for the next two weeks

Of course having given him nearly five days off, the leg was looking totally normal and he was sound as a pound. My vet made us walk and trot up, we did several flexion tests on the leg, there was no pain reaction, and even when lunging for ten minutes Vallu still was totally sound. The vet was perplexed, but she was willing to go along with me and decided that she probably wouldn't be allowed to leave the yard without first having scanned Vallu's leg! It took forever to find anything that would explain the slight random swelling, but eventually she found a small amount of fluid in the medial branch of his suspensory ligament. From the scans you can see that the ligament is only slightly enlarged and there is a tiny disruption of its fibre pattern, so it was very subtle. (Thank god for no massive hole or tear in his suspensory, I think I may have gone crazy if that was the case!)

So now we have two weeks of box rest where Vallu is allowed to only be hand walked two or three times a day for ten-fifteen minutes each time until the leg is re-scanned to see if any changes have occurred. The vet was cautiously optimistic, because of the lack of lameness and how difficult it was to find the source. With rest and bute we are hoping that the last remaining fluid will disappear so that we could see clearly what has happened to the leg, or in the best case scenario there will be nothing there in two weeks and then we can get back into light work!

Proof of my overly noise sensitive nervy horse happy and relaxed whilst being clipped

So not the best start to 2016, but further proof that you know your horse best and if your gut is telling you that something is not right with your horse, you should have it checked out!

Any healing vibes for Vallu would be greatly appreciated ;)