Arthur, Arthur, Arthur . . .

Last Friday evening Mark saw that Arthur was walking a bit strangely -- he didn't seem to want to stand on his left front foot.  When he would stop and graze he would hold that food up off the ground.  I I went out and cleared out his hoof and found that one of his previously cut off hoof edges had gotten stuck in the center of that hoof.  I thought that was his problem so we decided to keep him inside his stall until Monday when the vet could come and check him out and tell us if anything more needed to be done.  But as it turned out that piece of hoof stuck in his foot wasn't the problem at all. Instead, a little hole in the front of his hoof had gone all the way up into his foot and it had gotten abscessed.  THAT's why he didn't want to stand on that hoof.  Poor guy.  

He grazed right there in the same spot the whole time I watched him --
he didn't want to walk apparently.  And he kept that left front leg held up.

So when Ann Chapman, the vet at LSU, came by yesterday she checked out all of his feet, but that left front one was the only foot with a serious problem.  So she and one of the students spent a couple hours cleaning it out and putting meds on it and covering it up well.  Now we're supposed to remove all that stuff every other day and do it all over again for at least another week. And doing that is sure going to require BOTH of us to handle that, that's for sure!  Arthur not only tries to pull away his foot, but he also hollers big time!   Gees!

Oh - and just before the vet arrived we went out to clean out his stall where he'd been locked in for almost three days but we saw him all the way out in the back pasture! What the heck??  His two paddock doors had been completely locked up.  So how on earth did he get out there???  

Well, as it turned out, because he's smaller than the two horses, he managed to go through that little center hall -- it's only about 2 X 4 feet -- maybe less wide than 2 feet wide at one end of it!  There's no way the horses could go into that space.  So what did Arthur do?  Well, obviously he just stood in that hall for quite a while because we had to clear a LOT of his poop out of there!  But then he broke open the interior gate into Duke's stall and he was able to just go on through there and out Duke's door into the pasture!  

But on the plus side, he was a little more able to move around, although he was still having problems with that foot. But he was perfectly willing to follow Mark who had his feed bucket and get back into his stall before the vet arrived -- thankfully!  Anyway, once she got there, he was a soaking wet filthy boy.  It had rained and he had obviously rolled around on the wet muddy ground back there.  Yuk!  

Anyway, Mark put in much larger and stronger hooks for closing those interior gates.  So I HOPE Arthur can be kept inside his stall for at least another day.  Once we replace that covering on his foot, the vet said if it's not pouring down rain we should then let him out into his smaller dry paddock for HALF of each day, then put him back in so he can't eat grass for the ENTIRE day.  That's because she wants us to get him to lose 70 pounds over the next 2 months.  We're also going to change out his feed to help with that as well.  So I'm hoping that Arthur will be back to the perfect little guy before too long.  Now -- if only there there someone who would come by and ride him regularly . . .

Well, we'll have to check that out later.  One thing at a time.