Splint...ember?

Runkle can't do anything normal.

It took a week and a half for the splint to go sideways. He went from gimpy to abscess lame in record time and his whole leg was swollen. So I had the vet out, again.

I insisted on x-rays this time, and had no less than 5 vets look at 4 views with exactly 0 conclusions.

His cannon bone looked like it was demineralizing and no one could figure out why.

The word surgery (to clean out the 'dead' bone) was bandied about.

In the end he got put on Enroflaxacin, thinking that maybe it was an infection making the bone look less dark than it should, and prescribed a follow up for more x-rays in 10 days to see if more drastic measures needed to be taken.

There were a lot of tears that day. Sorry if you had to deal with me. Thank you if you gave me a hug and let me cry all over you.

Late last week I could tell that the antibiotics were working though. The heat and swelling was reducing drastically in the leg, and he was sound at the walk. I was VERY TENTATIVELY hopeful. But it's horses so...

I couldn't be there for the initial appointment but you can bet your butts I was there for the follow up on Wednesday. My real person job gets in the way of taking care of my child horse.

We zoomed in about 250% on the old x-rays and jacked the contrast way way way up so we could see the teeny

tiny

smaller than the edge of my pinky finger nail

fragment.

A little tiny fragment.

Caused an infection and all this drama.

We took the new x-rays and lo the little tiny sprinkle sized hell raiser has since been resorbed or took the hint and pissed off.

So now we just have, you know, the splint to heal. Which is ENORMOUS.

I think I might name it Godzilla.

But anyway he doesn't need surgery so that's all I care about.

He's definitely feeling better because his walks have become progressively shorter and shorter as he tries to invent new ways to entertain himself. Reserpine don't fail me now...

So that's why all's been quiet on the Runkle front. Because I didn't know what was happening and he was making me sick with anxiety and I couldn't talk about it.

Pretty status quo for horses. Little buggers.