Difficult Year

Getting married was definitely a huge hilight this year, but as far as horse life, this has been one of the most difficult years I have ever endured in my almost 9 years of horse ownership.......

Last year at this time, Lady was on stall rest, the vet having diagnosed her with a suspected sprained collateral ligament in her right hind foot.  But after a couple months of stall rest and lots of hand walking with little improvement, I finally took her to another vet for a second opinion.  He didn't believe there was a collateral ligament issue, or if there was it had long healed itself, but rather suspected her hocks.  And x-rays of her hocks confirmed his suspisions, arthritis in both hocks, more so in the right than the left, but arthritis none the less.  At least arthritis is manageable, but it was still a heavy blow, so I have to be careful now how much I do with Lady and what all I do with her.  Normally this wouldn't have been too big an issue, Cody is my main mount, Lady gets lightly ridden anyway, but now with Cody hurt, Lady is the only rideable horse I have left right now.

So a month after Lady's diagnosis of arthritis, Cody pulled up lame.  And after months of back and forth to the vet and finding nothing wrong with her knee yet she was still lame, we ended up at MSU, and bingo, found it on their high def digital x-rays, an arthritic reaction to a kick to the knee.  So I retire her, try a stronger joint injection, or do surgery.  The stronger joint injection didn't work, and surgery had to wait until after the wedding.  So she has been lame all year.  Fingers crossed that she'll be going in for surgery at the end of this month or the first of December, and will hopefully be rideable again once she heals up from that.

And now I'm facing the hardest decision one has to make when it comes to owning horses, and may end up losing my sweet little Wayne.  If it weren't for his bad knee, he would probably heal up from the bowed tendon, but his bad knee makes things more complicated.  While he seemed to be doing well when I first got down there today, a couple hours later, he looked completely miserable.  Even my farrier is concerned, and he's a man that will do anything he can to help a horse.  We were able to get him trimmed the best we could, and my farrier was able to trim him to give that tendon the best chance possible to heal.  But I can't have him miserable either, stuck on stall rest till he hopefully heals and hopefully doesn't reinjure that leg when he goes back outside.  I have a tough decision to make.  I've been crying my eyes out all day.  We'll see how the weekend goes with the trim and see if it helps at all, but I'm trying not to get my hopes up.  I need to do what's right for Wayne.  I have to remember, he's had a good long happy life, longer than he would have had with many other owners.

Yes, this has been a very difficult horse year.