Yes yes yes yes yes oooooooh YES!
I tell you, Meg Ryan has NOTHING on me for the ecstatic noises as I picked out Campero's feet today. I could tell before I had even opened the stable door that he was different. And true enough, he walked out with very little sign of stiffness at all. If I'm picky he was just favouring the near fore but a lot of people would not even be able to spot it. It got better.
It was immediately obvious that his near fore has done the overnight "toe angle change" that the off fore did a few days ago. And that toe angle change seems to have freed up his foot, just as it did with the off fore at the same time.
There was more! I picked out his off fore, and the piece of toe callous immediately at the front of his foot has broken off. This is absolutely thrilling. Surely it has to mean that his feet are feeling better and his soles are thicker and less senstive? For about a fingertip width at the toe he now has a smooth rollover from the point of the frog to the white line. There is a fault line under the back of one half where it is going to break off too. I felt very happy to rasp the two "corners" off each of his front feet where he has squared off his toes. In theory, that will enable him to square them off again more quickly. In two weeks he has made such an effort to change his feet to what he needs. It's been a thrill to watch it happen day by day.
He still has a bounding pulse in the near fore, but I am not convinced of an abscess. He's not sore on it today and it's possible the pulse is simply due to the increased blood supply into the foot to repair an inflamed and damaged tendon. Whatever, he's a comfortable happy horse today.
Another interesting observation. For the first time in several days he chucked his grooming kit out of the bucket that I keep it in and the stable was picked clean of every edible morsel. Is that just a co-incidence, or is that really the result of eating grass yesterday morning? I know which my money is on. From the changes in his feet, the boy has a severe problem with eating grass, that I'm certain of.
C
posted by cptrayes @ 2:02 PM
13 comments
13 Comments:
For the those slow on the uptake then, he get the 'I'm starving' reaction if he eats grass, because grass upsets his insulin balance?
Green grass and "good" hay contain particular short chain sugars called fructans. Those fructans raise his glucose levels and in response his "insulin resistant" metabolism produces too much insulin. The insulin causes his blood sugar level to crash suddenly, and that in turn causes the ravening hunger.
The food I am feeding him contains more digestible carbohydrates with what are called "long chain" or polysaccharide sugars, which do not cause the glucose spike in his blood because they are digested very differently.
There will be an exam at the end of term.
C :-)
Great stuff, and hope that pulse reveals or relieves soon.
Perhaps with such acute changes in his feet there is a pocket of crud in there somewhere which needs to come out, causing an infection? It doesn't make sense on paper but when we first really got my boy moving after pulling shoes, we saw changes as often as you are and he popped a few abscesses despite there not being an obvious reason to have them. Likewise trimming was conservative as possible :)
Danni it has always puzzled me. Exactly as you say, there seem to bits of "stuff" in the feet that decide to come out. In theory, you need an infection to get in to have an abscess come out, but I've seen what you have seen time and again - abscesses with no apparent reason in a newly unshod working horse. Radar had two. No reason whatsoever.
C
ps he has just had a bucking hooley round and round the arena and he was a) one very happy boy b) completely sound. I just decided to let him off the lead after doing our kilometre of walk. He eventually ran straight through the electric fence wire and had a hooley in the field two. I think he's feeling well!
Jazz has just done a lovely schooling session though as dusk fell he did have a bit of a bucking fit to tell me that he wanted to stop. Silly boy!
C
The only thing I can think of is bruising further up in the foot capsule which sits and waits to grow down and out, and something about a sudden shift in angle or hoof growth causes it to want to pop sooner? A bit like a verruca (sp?) not being addressed by the body until the capsule of skin it grows in being 'burst'. All conjecture in my novice mind of course!
Glad to hear there has been jovial bucking all round today ;)
Just catching back up. Power outage had me off the Internet for two days.
Great to hear how well Campo is coming along. Finally, at risk of life and limb, I managed to get the magnesium oxide for Tucker, so we'll see if it makes a difference.
Hard to tell anything right here unless we have waterwings or a sail kite. HUGE storm blew through with 4 or more inches of rain and destructive winds. It'll be a while before I can see if Tucker is better on his feet.
What a grand hunter Radar is! I hope they got some really good pictures this time.
The appetite reaction to accidental grass exposure is really interesting to me. Did his stomach bloat after getting grass too? Not just looking full, but bloated.
Great foot progress, they know what they need when you give them the right environment eh? His foot pain/pulse sounds like a stone bruise but it could be an abscess of course. When you think of the huge stretch going on at the toe inside there are lots of opportunities for nasties to have a party in there.
My mare always had issues with grass, I controlled that for the last 2 years, but her white line at the quarters still didn't snap up. Last November I put her on Yea Sacc and I'm just noticing her quarters are now the tightest they've ever been in 5 years of being deshod. So with her its all in the stomach, so I'm watching your learnings with a keen interest :)
Tracey B
With one of our long term laminitics he popped what looked like a blood blister. It was completely dry blood but left a circular hole. He was a lot more comfortable after it was gone though.
Up to then he had often had abscess type symptoms on that foot and that was always his pulsey one.
Will be interesting how many days it takes Campo to return to normal eating patterns, how long did it take before about three days?
Tracey S (Cloud_Cirrus)
He's always liked to buck! (He has, I hasten to add, never bucked me off) As a foal he often used to try and buck and eat at the same time. He would always buck when turned out - on the spot like Muffin the Mule, and if anything exciting happened. He's always bucked in the stable a lot, to the detirment of the walls occasionally! The other 2 are the same, though Mum rarely bucked.
Good news on the feet. Will be interesting to see how long his appetite takes to level out again after his illegal excursion.
Sorry about your ater problems Jean!
He didn't bloat noticeably TraceyB but when he bucked there were an awful lot of sound effects so there was plenty of air in that gut!
TraceyC no upturned buckets of grooming kit today, and hay left in the barn, so just 24 hours. I wonder how long he was out for - not long I suspect.
Well buck he did Nikki - VERY impressive!! I did think "if he ever does that when I'm on him I'm in trouble!
He is out for an hour with a muzzle on with the eating hole blocked up. I thought he might like a run with the others, since it's clear that having a good run around isn't damaging him at all and I've been at work today so walking is curtailed. I will go and rescue him soon.
C
ater? where did that wubbbleyou go?
We do the blocked muzzle thing with ours when we are around, it's a good opportunity for them to have a hooley in a bigger space.
Tracey S (Cloud_Cirrus)
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