What a relief!. . . Arthur is getting better - finally!

Thankfully, the LSU vet school vets came by every few days over the last week or two dealing with Arthur's limping feet. And when they come, they bring students with them as well, so it's great that there are several people here who can deal with him without us having to hang onto him! 

What they had US do was to keep him inside his paddock and away from all the grass, and give him meds each day.  

Apparently, toward the end of the summer the grass gets a bit different somehow -- I can't remember what they said about it exactly, but apparently was what had caused Arthur's feet to get sore.  And one of his feet was shown as swollen inside when they x-rayed them.  

Originally, they had put something or other on the bottom of his feet, then wrapped them in fabrics.  But he had managed to quickly kick those off.  So they brought us a couple of really good boots for injured feet.  Those were $250 but they have definitely been well worth it!  

He's had them on for more than a week and he not only hasn't been able to kick them off, but he also seems to be happy walking in them!  He's not even TRYING to take them off. 

 Love those things!

Note that inside HIS paddock there is no grass -- just sand.  He's not allowed
to eat grass until winter comes when the grass is completely gone finally.

Actually, all he ever gets to eat these days is his minimal amount of feed WITH his medicine mixed into it, and a small amount of hay.  That's because he's supposed to be losing weight because having him fatter than normal makes his feet even more of a problem apparently.  

Arthur spends a lot of time standing out there on the walk next to the fences around his paddock watching Duke and Shadow in their paddocks and out in the pasture.  (He's SO disappointed that he's not currently allowed to get out and stay right next to Shadow as he's been doing ever since we got her - well over a year ago!  He LOVES that horse!)

Well anyway, we sure are glad he's not limping anymore over the past couple days! 

We're also extremely happy that we're able to have access to the LSU vets. They have been SO wonderful every time we need help.  We do generally take our dogs to normal vets generally unless there's something really extreme necessary. But the mule and horses . . .   hey -- they get the LSU vets ALL the time.  Excellent!

Oh my . . . poor Arthur, our mule -- AGAIN!

When we let the horses out after all those trees came down last weekend, they were all just fine -- and SO excited about finally being allowed to go run around out in the back pasture since they'd been kept inside the paddocks for days while those guys worked on those trees.  So they all really enjoyed being back out in the pasture at last.  But then the next morning, when I went out to feed them, Arthur was limping -- apparently lame AGAIN.  Good grief! 

That happened with him back in April.  But at that time he had a tiny hole in the front of his left front hoof and we would have to soak that foot with meds each day, then put cotton filled with another kind of medicine inside that hole and cover up his foot each day.  But this time, although it was his front left foot AGAIN, there was no hole that I could see. So we called LSU and a vet came out last Monday.  (The regular vet, Ann Chapman, was off that week so the vet who came was new to me.)  Anyway, they found that there were problems on BOTH of his front feet, so they put some materials on the bottom of both feet so they wouldn't touch the ground directly.  Then they wrapped both feet up and they told he needed to be kept inside his paddock all the time.  So he's been in there all this week.  

But then yesterday Ann Chapman, our normal vet, came over and took x-rays of both his feet.  The right one was almost back to normal, but the x-ray showed that the front bone in his left front foot is shaped a bit less normally.  So he's getting medicine in his mouth now, instead of needing to put anything into his foot.  And they're planning to come back a couple times a week to redo those foot wraps. 

But for our great discovery, one of the students who came by with both vets said she loved our horses and she would be glad to come by and bathe both Duke and Shadow for me since I told them I was having problems doing all that stuff these days.  So she came by this morning along with a friend of hers (also from LSU Vet School) and the two of them bathed both the horses.  They did a great job!  And after talking with them for a while, I found out that they both love horses but although they had some previously, neither had one at the moment.  So I told them that they would be welcome to come ride Duke and Shadow anytime they'd like. They were really happy to hear that - very excited.  So I'm really looking forward to seeing the horses get ridden regularly once again at last!  

As for Arthur, though, although those covers they put on his feet are still on there, he's still not able to walk normally.  He still limps a bit despite the fact that he's getting his medicine each day.  Unfortunately, if those two girls come over to ride Shadow and Duke, I'm afraid I wouldn't be able to join them on Arthur anytime soon.  Gees!   

And poor Arthur gets SO upset when he sees Duke and Shadow heading out of their paddocks into the pasture when he can't join them any more!  He absolutely screams bloody murder!  (I'm sure all the neighbors hear him as well!)  Mules definitely scream a whole lot worse than any horse could.  But eventually he does go back inside his room and lays down there for the night.  

Compared to the other horses who are 12 and 15 years old, Arthur is only 8.  And mules live well into their 30's.  So I sure hope they can eventually get him back to normal -- and I hope it happens sometime soon!  For one thing, he really REALLY wants to go out along with the horses - he adores both of them.  But it's also very difficult for Mark and me to handle those feet of his on a regular basis.  Our backs are a real problem!  And although the vet is glad to come handle his feet a couple times a week, I imagine the cost will be getting up there.  So I hope that won't be necessary indefinitely!  Well -- we'll find out eventually, won't we? Sigh.

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.

What a relief!

Just got a call from SmartPak Equine.  I had Lizzie on SmartDigest Ultra for the last year or so.  A horse taking that supplement is insured against colic.  But I wasn't at all sure they would pay for Lizzie's surgery since what happened to her was "strangulating lipoma."  The lipoma is a benign fat tumor that can wrap around the intestine and cause it to stop functioning.  In Lizzie's case, the intestine had actually broken open by the time we realized she had a problem and her blood was completely infected.  (Here's an Equine Vet Blog description of something similar - with pictures.)  I wasn't sure that would be considered "colic" at all.

 

But SmartPak just called and told me that they had completed their review of the report on Lizzie from LSU and they would be covering the entire cost of that surgery and all those tests and treatments Lizzie had -- SEVERAL thousand dollars worth!  Whew!  I am SO grateful! 

 

I'll tell you what, if you have a horse, put them on that SmartDigest Ultra.  It's definitely worth every dime!  Duke was insured already, but I put him on that Ultra, too.  I doubt that he will ever have colic -- he's been eating everything within his reach for his entire 12 years with absolutely no resulting problem to date -- but I'm keeping him on that stuff anyway, "just in case."

Still focused on Lizzie

Got very worried about Lizzie when she stopped eating yesterday and we couldn't get her meds into her.  So I called LSU this morning and asked them to check with Ann Chapman and see if we could use injections instead of the antibiotic powder since Torri said she could come help us with that after tomorrow.

 

But then this morning, Mark forced Lizzie to take her pain meds (a paste), then gave her a bit of her feed with absolutely NOTHING in it.  She acted like she didn't even want to eat that, so he just left her alone in her stall.  But when he checked back, she HAD eaten it, thank goodness.  When he told me that I felt a lot better.   It scared me to think she wouldn't eat.  But I was still wondering what we could do about getting that antibiotic powder into her.

 

I left work early today then, to go home and take Lizzie out into the front yard with it's thick green grass and see if she would move around and graze instead of trying to lay down immediately like she does in her paddock.  Then as soon as I got home, before I even got out to the barn, Ann called to say that after getting my message, she'd be coming over in 20 minutes to check on Lizzie again.  So I took Lizzie out of her stall and walked around the yard with her for the 20 minutes until she got here.   She did very well and seemed more than willing to walk around and eat that grass. 

 

Then when Ann got here she had one of their surgeons and a senior vet student with her, and they went over Lizzie again with a fine tooth comb, so to speak!   There was some question about whether she needs another opening to spread the flush further out, but for now they're not going to do that.  Instead, they removed that rubber tube that she had in there and flushed out all the openings with a good half dozen huge syringes full of saline!  When the surgeon did it, he would put a lot in there and spread it out, then when he would push on her side the stuff would come out that opening where the tubing was like a regular fountain!  Wow!

 

And then he suggested that we mix her pain meds into MOLASSES!  I never would have considered that, given her Cushings.  But they both said it wouldn't be a problem for her to have molasses for just the few days while she takes the meds.  So we mixed the meds it in for the first time this evening --- NOT a simple thing!  The stuff is SO thick that it's not easy to get that antibiotic powder mixed in there.  And once it is, getting it back into a syringe (pouring it in from the back) is NOT easy.  But once we got it ready, it wasn't all THAT difficult to get it down her throat.  Once she tasted it, she didn't even struggle to stand back up, she just let Mark inject it into her mouth so she must have liked it. 

 

It's 9 PM now and I just went out to check on her.  She's laying quietly on the floor of her stall, but she is upright, not stretched out with her head on the floor.  So she must be feeling at least a BIT better.  So I guess we have the system set up at this point. 

 

In the morning I'll just need to clean out the stalls and feed everyone.  Then I'll take Lizzie out to graze in the front yard for 20 minutes or half an hour before leaving for work.  She needs to move around, but I am NOT going to let out of her stall so she can roll around in the mud.

 

Mark will probably get back from those classes he has to go to for the rest of the week by 7 each night.  So I'm going to wait to feed the horses and medicate Lizzie at night until he comes home so we can work together - much easier with some help!

 

Okay.  Time consuming, but it's good to have a plan in place.  So now I'm going to head for bed.  I need to go to bed early so I can get up early the rest of the week.  There are going to be some loooong days.

Lizzie, Lizzie, Lizzie . . .

I took Joey and Rocky over to the vet (AVS) this afternoon for a 3 o'clock appointment while Buddy and Lisa were working on straightening up the pasture.  Duke, Arthur and Lizzie were all out in the pasture grazing happily.  Then about 4 or 4:30 Mark called to say that Buddy and Lisa had discovered an "8-inch laceration" in Lizzie's right shoulder!  What!!  Lizzie NEVER had any sort of problem like that.  She has Cushings and leg problems, and sometimes stomach pain, but she has never been physically injured.  When Mark called, I asked him if she was bleeding heavily and he said she wasn't so I figured it was just a scrape, more or less.  So I was thinking it might be okay to just wait until morning for the vet to come out.  But fortunately, Bruce and Bonnie were here and both of them are nurse practitioners.  They went out and looked at her and told Mark that she definitely needed stitches.  So he called me back and I called LSU.  They said they'd have the vet on call get back to us.  When I got home and saw her wound it was VERY obvious that she really did need stitches.  Luckily, Ann Chapman, her regular vet, was the one on call.  She lives out on the other end of town, though, so it took her an hour or so to get down here.  But I was really glad she was the one who would be dealing with it since she's been Lizzie's  doctor for everything so far. 

 

I'll tell you what, that wound looked just awful, but I had no idea when I looked at it then just how deep it actually was. 

 

When Ann got here she shaved all around it to begin with, of course.

 

It had looked bad to me as soon as I saw it  . . .



 



 

Ann spent a good half hour rinsing the wound out with pressurized diluted Betadine.   I had no idea how deep that wound was until Ann lifted the sides to rinse everything out in there.  Whew!  Lizzie is a heavy girl and that cut went clear through the fat in her shoulder all the way down to her muscle.  Luckily, although the muscles were visible, they were not cut.

Once she got it rinsed out as well as possible -- and it was very deep and complicated so it wasn't possible to get it completely sterile --  anyway, once she finished with that, she layed a long piece of sterile rubber tubing in there before closing it up.   In fact, oddly enough, she made two additional small incisions off to the sides of the actual cut for the tubing to go in and out.   I guess that's so the actual cut will be able to heal more freely.

Then there were two layers of stitches - one inside that will dissolve themselves, and another closing the skin on top that will need to be removed in two weeks or so.

 

 

Then once she got the stitches done, Lizzie got two kinds of antibiotic injections and a tetanus shot and Ann showed me how to flush out the cut.  It's not all that straightforward -- you have to inject the Betadine and then push on the skin around the wound to push the stuff back out.   It doesn't just RUN out as you would expect.  In fact, Ann said she might well develop what they call "skin bubble wrap" where air bubbles spread all along her back under her skin.  Anyway, we need to flush the wound multiple times twice a day, and give her antibiotics and pain meds and keep her in her paddock.  I'm also washing her fly sheets tonight to be sure they're completely clean, then I'm going to put those on her to keep bugs out of that wound.  It's going to be some LONG days . . .  but she IS going to be okay.  In fact, by the time Ann left tonight (and it was almost quarter to nine by then!), she was busily scarfing down her dinner.

 

 

(That wood at the bottom of her stall is unpainted because it's going to be covered with that vinyl stall liner - eventually.)

 

So for now, she's closed in her stall -- it's going to storm tonight big time and she's not allowed out in the rain so grunge can run down on her incision.  Oh, and we also have to go get some vaseline that we need to keep on her skin below her wound, otherwise the drainage will make her skin raw.

 

Well, it's really really late at this point and it's already begun to rain.  So I'm going to go check on Lizzie, then go to bed!  It's going to be another looong day tomorrow.

Moving right along . . .

Got home today and David had painted the entire hay shed door the dark teal color.  It looks pretty good, but I THOUGHT he was only going to paint the trim boards, not the whole thing.  Oh well.  It's a storage shed, right?  Guess it doesn't matter.  And it was probably a lot faster to do it that way.

 



 

He also painted the frame around the barn's front door.  That looks really good, I think.  I decided to leave the windows alone.

 

He had two new porch posts laying on the front porch tonight, so he's apparently about ready to replace that post that was rotted.  Not sure what the second one is for, though. 

 

Mark absolutely insisted that the porch posts remain beige, so I guess I'm not going to get to paint them that dark teal, darn it.   Oh, well.  I DO get to have the front door repainted anyway.  Looking at it earlier, I was thinking I COULD get it painted the same medium teal as the shutters then paint those trim lines on there the dark teal.   Would that look too tacky??  Hmm.  Maybe so.

 

 

 

Or maybe it would look better to paint everything the same medium color as the shutters, then paint just that flat board that runs around the very outside edge and down between the door and the sidelights the dark color -- kind of the same sort of trim as the barn front door.  Hmmm.  I think I'll ask David how much trouble it would be to do that.

 

Oh - Buddy called this evening to say that they would definitely be over Saturday to help pick up that sectional sofa for me.  Thank goodness!  (I know HE knows how to hook up that trailer!)

 

When I feed the horses in the morning, I fill everyone's hay containers all the way up to the top.  When I get home and go out to feed them, every last one of those hay containers are completely empty!  What the heck???  Normally when I let them out to graze they don't bother eating their hay at all!  But not anymore . . . 

 

Here's Duke scarfing down his hay a few minutes after I filled it up completely.

And here's how it looks when I get home at night!  Gees! 
Hope we don't end up having to order still MORE of that stuff!

I wonder if it's safe to let them eat so much hay.  I think I'll see what Jan thinks about that.

 

Well, time for the news, then back to bed.  Exactly one week from tomorrow morning Mark will be back home.  Yeaaaa!

Lizzie - again . . .

When I got home this evening I went out to check on everyone's water (it's HOT).  The first thing I saw was that Lizzie's water looked a bit odd.

Both her water buckets were full of foam.  Gees!
(I did empty them and put in fresh water after I fed her since she had stopped drooling.)

She was standing with her butt against the interior stall door so I couldn't see her face, but when I walked out into the stall I was horrified to see her foaming at the mouth!  Scared me to death!  So the first thing I did was go in and try and call LSU to see if Ann Chapman was there in the office.  But it was a little after 5 so I got the answering service instead.  So I sent a couple of these pictures to her by e-mail and told her I would be calling for an appointment in the morning.  It's time to have her teeth checked anyway (I'm supposed to do that every 6 months now.)  So I hope she'll have room for an appointment tomorrow.

She looked really awful!  Her eyes running and foaming at the mouth!

Then I went back out and walked her around and brushed her and she acted perfectly normal -- except she kept slobbering.  So I went ahead and fed everyone.  She sure didn't act sick when her food came.  She scarfed down her dinner as actively as she ever does.

And THEN -- when she got done -- her mouth looked perfectly normal again.  What the heck???

Gees!  That was around 6 or so.  I've been out there checking on her a number of times since then.  When I went out last at 10 or so, she was sound asleep in her stall.

She got a little surprised when the flash went off
(that's why her nose is dilated),
but there has been NO FOAM around her mouth.

So  . . .  I'm leaving her in peace the rest of the night. 

I DO hope the vet can come tomorrow anyway, given that the weekend is coming up.  I'd just like to know why the heck that happened! 

Instructions for Duke

Okay - this is the chiropractor giving me instructions about what we need to be doing with Duke over the next month.  I was a bit surprised at that part about him not "collecting" -- that's what we always spent the most time trying to get him to do, not to "NOT" do!  In order for him to gait, he has to collect.  But hey -- we'll try and get him to stretch out and see what happens.  Once he feels flexible again maybe he'll gait even better.  We'll have to see. 

Unfortunately, when I came home today it was POURING down rain -- again.  I got them fed, then came inside to wait for the rain to stop.  By the time it did unfortunately I was NOT standing back up.  So . . . no one got exercised at all tonight.  Can you believe? . . . the very FIRST day after they get examined and I'm doing nothing at all.  Sigh.  Well, they're both closed in their paddocks so if it isn't raining in the morning we'll do their workouts then before they eat. 

Right now?  Time for bed.  Early.  VERY early.  Enough.

Wow!

That visit from the equine chiropractor yesterday was amazing!  He worked with Lizzie first and for much longer.  I have been concerned ever since I got her that she holds her neck strangely.  I was afraid she had a real problem of some sort with the disks in her neck.  As it turns out, though, she does NOT . . .  what she DOES have is a problem with her right hip.  So what she has been doing - apparently for years and years and years - is holding her neck forward in order to take some of the weight off that hip!  And as a result, the muscles in her entire body have either overdeveloped or atrophied and that's why she carries herself peculiarly.  AND IT CAN BE FIXED!  The chiropractor gave me exercises to do with her every day for the next month, then he will be back to work with her again and we will update the exercises she does daily accordingly. 

He also worked with Duke.  This is the only video I've managed to upload so far.  It's sort of a middle one of him working with Duke - not all that informative but you can see more or less how he dealt with him.  I was hoping to find out why Duke has taken to kicking himself in the tummy and forcing his feet back down whenever someone picks up a back foot.  The doctor was not able to say what's causing the kicks at this point, but he did say that Duke also has a hip problem of sorts - but it's very recent in his case and has not affected his muscles, so it won't take nearly the effort it's going to take to help Lizzie recover.  Basically, all Duke will need after a few weeks of exercises is to be RIDDEN -- a LOT!  (Hey Mark?  Helloooo??)

I took videos of them being examined and treated, but the videos are so large that it's taking forever to get them uploaded to YouTube.  But I'll get to it this weekend.  It really was fascinating!  And surprisingly, both of them absolutely LOVED it!  Lizzie particularly.  She seemed very happy to have him there working with her from the start.  And eventually she just about went to sleep while he "adjusted" her!  Amazing.

That doctor, Lance Cleveland, lives in Colorado, but he comes over here to Louisiana once a month, so he will be back to treat them both a second time in July.  He is definitely not cheap, but if Lizzie becomes rideable once again it'll be worth every dime!  (She is sooooo comfy to ride.  Even more than Arthur, I hate to admit.)  And once she's back to "normal" she will probably be even better! 

So check back -- I'll be posting those videos as the "before" demos.  And hopefully down the road you will get to see both of them being ridden - once more in excellent shape.  Lovely.