Good news!

Finally some good news in my life!

We had a clinic day booked for Friday morning to do a final check on Vallu and a two month check up on Basse. For those of you who don't know the story with both my boys,  Vallu hurt the medial suspensory branch on his right front leg in late December/early January. Basse hurt his straight distal sesamoid ligament (SDSL) on his left front leg in a nasty freak fall in his paddock in February but due to two incompetent vets, it took us until the fourt vet two months later to find out truly what was wrong with him and start the correct rest and rehab plan. Basse has also had a near constant navicular inflammation since February most likely due to the inflammation of the SDSL aggravating the navicular.

After his initial diagnosis in the beginning of January, Vallu had a month of box rest followed by a month of hand walking twice a day and the third month of limited turn out in the mornings with a hand walk in the afternoons. We then had a check up two months ago where the vet said to start riding him in walk, increasing it every week and to do as much hacking as possible. We obviously did this until he moved back to Finland, after which he has either had all day turn out or morning turn out and ridden walk work in the afternoons. So on Friday at the vets I was pleasantly surprised to hear that the leg has healed really well, the suspensory is looking really good apart from some scar tissue forming there. We won't know for sure if he can ever go back to full time advanced work because of this, but we have been given the go ahead for bringing him back into work. This stage of rehabbing for us involves starting at 5 minutes of trot per ride in the first week and increasing the time by five minutes every week. When we are 25 minutes of trot per week, we can then introduce canter work and again increase by 5 minutes per week so that by week 10 we should be at 25 minutes of trot and 25 minutes of canter. I'll probably end up taking Vallu back for another check up at this stage to make sure that everything is still okay and get X-rays done of the front legs to see if there are any changes that could do with some cortisone injections to make him feel better.

Basse's SDSL has healed amazingly in just two months. I would love to have his scans published in a book or article as they're so interesting to look at and to see the improvement. He's had shockwave treatment at every visit and at his one month check up last month he also got PRP treatment. On Friday he got his third shockwave treatment and the vet said that we could start doing ridden walk work! Which is great, because that poor horse was so bored of hand walking. We have another check up at the end of July to see if it has possibly fully healed and then to check the navicular. There is a 50/50 chance that due to the length of time that he had navicular inflammation that is could have led to an early onset of arthritis :( he trotted the other day in his paddock and he still doesn't look 100% sound so my biggest fear of arthritis might just come true with him... But we mustn't give up hope, the original injury to the SDSL was so bad that I didn't think we would see the kind of improvement that we have seen in just two months! Fingers crossed.

So on Saturday I got to ride both my boys on the same day for the first time in approximately two years! It was wonderful to see how happy Vallu was to be trotting and how happy Basse looked to be ridden and 'doing work'. I love both of my boys so much, that to see them both happy makes my heart swell.