Let me start by saying, I lost my editor and spell check and I also lost this post once already. So if you see mistakes, I’m just thankful I have a post to have mistakes.

Okay, I’ve had tough cases before, but so far, this is the toughest.

It’s another one of those, multiple vets, xrays, MRI’s, Chiropractors, and ending up with a ton of different issues. This horse has issues from the tip of his ears to the bottoms of his hooves, and from his nose to his tail. The owner has finally found a vet that didn’t just write him off as a lost cause, but ………… He’s doing the pealing back the onion thing, but keeps finding more layers. He’s healing one thing and finding many others.

My thought was pull his shoes off, turn him out for a year and let his body heal, and then see what we are left with. However, this vet is set and determined to find out what it is now. I get it. The girl does want to show him before she’s not a Junior anymore, but my first reaction was “is he just milking them?” I spoke with him and he seems on the level, but I’m not a trusting person by nature.

How does an 8 yr. old horse have so many things wrong? I have 28 yr. olds that don’t have that many problems. From torn soft tissues to a kissing spine, inflammation in the foot to vertebrates that don’t line up. Lame in the right front, kicks out with the back left. The front right foot seems to be the major problem. The dreaded word “Navicular” was used with inflammation around the coffin bone. The owner read me the MRI report and everything that was mentioned was moderate. Nothing sent out a red flag and said “this is what the problem is.”

If it started in the foot, why are there so many issues in the rest of the body? My initial reaction was “this horse has been in a bad wreck. Warmblood, so not a starting gate accident. The trip from Germany? A trailering accident? Stall accident? Pasture accident? Was it from birth? Training? I asked the owner and she said that she totally trusted the breeders, but the daughter said that the horse did drift to the left when she tried him out. No one has mentioned that he was ever involved in an accident, but are they telling the complete truth? Perhaps they weren’t aware of the horse doing something stupid. Horses really don’t disclose when they do stupid stuff.

Now I haven’t even seen this horse yet. I pick him up in a couple of weeks. The vet was doing a nerve block on him and will let me know the results. That would have been one of my first thoughts, but that stems back from my old vet. “Start at the bottom and work your way up.”

So the bottom line is – did it start in the foot and create problems throughout his body? Or did it start in another part of his body and put too much on that foot?

I just can’t let go of how did so much go wrong in an entire body on such a young horse, in such a short time?

I’ll keep you posted as to what we come up with.

By the way, the chicken came first.