Mystery Lameness

The Saturday before GP Trainer came to town, I pulled Penn out of his stall to ride him after we turned out horses... and found this:

The hind legs had some fill and bow-like looks.
The front of the cannon had a bow on it too, can't seem to find that pic though.
He was also very lame on the left hind.

The left leg was hot hot hot. The right was hot, but not as hot. I had a farrier hoof test him for the world's worst abscess- nothing. Except when he put Penn's hoof down, Penn was positively crippled, just standing in the barn aisle. Penn had tried to jerk the left hind away from the farrier, then lifted it ultra high, which I'm guessing basically acted like a flex test. The horse could barely stand for the first 10 seconds after.

Cold hosing did absolutely nothing to the heat in either leg. I didn't evaluate it as an emergency- everything that should be on the inside was still on the inside, and his eyes and face were fine. If it was a soft tissue injury, stall rest was the answer and he could chill in his stall until the vet came on Tuesday for an already scheduled appointment.

I had to get help to wrap Penn's hind legs- he really wanted nothing touching his legs and kept trying to kick me. I gently wrapped him in his BOT no-bows. I didn't want him naked while he stood in a stall for a few days, but I didn't want to hurt him either.

Panic. I did an OK job keeping the panic to a minimum. I was more panicked about trying to fill my two lesson spots the following weekend, or try to find another horse to ride, than "OMG my horse is going to be sidelined for a while." Probably wrong priorities, but it was the first thought.

I tried the barn's ice compression boots the next day (Sunday), and they did a good job on the swelling.

Penn HATED them. Ugh.

Penn seemed to be a bit better on swelling and touch sensitivity the next day, and he was eating and drinking like a champ. If anything, he was drinking more.

I took him to the indoor to check his soundness and to let him get out of his stall.

The large ball is suspicious when the human is not sitting on the horse.

His barrel is dappled when shaved! (hard to see in this pic)

I ended up spending basically the entire day at the barn on Sunday. The barn has some kind of time warp going on, haha. I was able to monitor the leg swelling all day between the ice compression boots and cold hosing.

Imagine my horror when I went to wrap him up for the night and found ALL of his legs swollen. The hinds were the worst they'd been all weekend. Leg swelling from injury is not contagious from leg to leg- at least not like this. We weren't dealing with a soft tissue injury. Maybe cellulitis? Maybe something tick-borne?

This plus a fever of 101.1 meant we called the emergency vet!

I had seen the vet earlier in the day (she boards with us and came to ride while she was on call), and we chatted about Penn's issues. I sent her a text around 5:00 Sunday afternoon saying "Hey, all of Penn's legs are swelling now and he has a fever. Want to come out to see him now?"

She was out within a half hour. She manipulated and squeezed and poked and prodded, and then we jogged on the lunge line. She asked if I pulled any ticks off of him lately, I told her I've pulled off at least 4 tiny deer ticks in the last few weeks.

She didn't think there was any soft tissue damage, but wanted to run a full course of blood work to check all his organ function and to check for other things.

She pulled blood and left me with a bottle of SMZs and we dosed him with banamine. By this point, he was finally looking lethargic and unhappy. Stupid fevers. She said to turn him out the next day- she wanted to keep him moving. We talked about possible tick-borne illness, and decided against a lyme test for now and we'd see how the other tests came out.

The vet texted Monday morning that everything came back normal, but he had a high inflammatory response. We opted to switch him from SMZs to doxy (without testing for lyme or anything). I went out to the farm Monday morning to bring his new meds, take his temp, and to long line him to wear him down a hair before turnout.

Luckily his fever broke overnight and he was back to his normal 99.7 by the time I got to the farm! He seemed to feel better- he was downright rude to handle. He was a lot sounder too.

His BOT sheet was really gross because he slept in his pee Sunday night, so I washed it and used cables to line dry it, haha!

Poor Penn spent a total of 2.5 days locked in a stall. So of course I videoed his freedom after I long lined him: he rolled, ran a little, mildly terrorized the village, rolled again, and terrorized some more.

Link to YouTube

Long story short: Ticks are the devil. We think it was some kind of tick borne disease, probably anaplasmosis and we caught the fever as it was going up. The vet looked at him again Tuesday and declared him sound and fit for work, and he's been peachy ever since. It was an expensive 4 days for my wallet!