 |
| Laurel Run Trail |
Shortly after returning home from Blackwater Swamp Stomp, Sunny had a recheck osteopathic visit. I also had Dr. Ann Marie Hancock evaluate a small growth I had noticed about 2-3 months ago in Sunny's right armpit. Osteopathically he is doing well, nothing major but he was a little 'out' in a typical pattern seen in distance horses; all fixed for now with a recheck planned sometime around OD in June. Dr. Hancock thought it would be best to go ahead and remove the growth so off it came. I sent it out for histopathology. The histopathology results showed a Sarcoid (a locally aggressive common skin growth), with 1 of the 3 sections showing incomplete margins. Sarcoids tend to return after removal, especially if the margins are incomplete, meaning that on the cellular level the pathologist could see sarcoid cells to the edge of the sample. Ughhh-- that meant that the area needed to be re-cut more aggressively and Sunny also needs enough time to heal before No Frills on April 21st. I have to admit seeing Dr. Hancock perform surgery on Sunny did make me a little nauseous and light headed despite the fact that I am a small animal veterinarian and perform surgery daily -- just not on my own loved animals!! But after considering the time crunch to allow complete healing before No Frills and my personal budget and time constraints I decided to go ahead and do the second surgery myself. FYI - I do not keep supplies at home to perform surgery! But after careful preparation including purchasing the needed supplies from my supportive vet clinics, I autoclaved my surgical pack in the pressure cooker (and yes, that is acceptable and often done in medical humanitarian situations where electricity is not readily available) and set up my equipment on rubbermaid bin in the barn. My trusty vet assistant/software programmer/husband was on-board to help. Everything went like clockwork (probably due to the obsessive planning and worrying for the last week!) and Sunny now is missing a large piece of skin/tissue in his right underarm, with about a 4" row of stitches holding everything together. He gets several days of pain medicine (Equioxx) and 10-14 days of rest before the sutures come out. I expect it to heal well, with my main concern being discomfort when the limb is fully extended, pulling on the armpit skin and stitches. Skin is very elastic, so in 2 week or so he should be all set.
Of course, prior to the evening's surgery I needed to completely wear myself out and get 1 more conditioning ride under our belt before the rest and healing period. We actually rode about 23 miles on Saturday checking out the upper loop of No Frills ,with Dale and Cheyenne, which was mostly clear with about 3 big downed trees. So today we tackled another 10 mile loop. I ended up riding by myself which is nice to do once in a while. We played with all our dressage exercises while warming up. Haunches-in to the left and counter shoulder-in to the right (left bend) were the hardest today, but Sunny is continuing to improve every time we practice! While rain was forecast it ended up being a lovely partly sunny ride in the mid-60's, WOW! During the ride I played with a little interval training for the first time. I remembered reading about bringing the heart rate up to 200 and then timing recovery -- now I will need double check this.... But after galloping up the mountain (we actually only made it up to 14.6 mph, LOL) we finally reached 200 bpm and immediately stopped and stood. It took 8 min and 10 sec to reach 60 bpm while mounted with no cooling measures, etc. I will have to practice this occasionally (after double checking about interval training...) to monitor his improvement in conditioning. We only did 1 interval because I could not raise his heart rate to 200 again -- we might have reached this but my Garmin stopped reading consistently. It is hard to reach 200 bpm (Sunny thinks so too!). What a nice ride-- a little dressage, a good gallop, more and more gaiting, and plenty of replenishment in the cool mountain streams! However, back at the trailer Sunny is consistently not eating well. And this is after 3 weeks of complete pasture rest after the 50 miles at Blackwater. I have practically tried every food purchasable in our area and today he turned his nose up at grass and beautiful alfalfa after only 10 miles. Fresh grass is his favorite and he couldn't have been too tired after only 10 miles in 2 hours... He urinated, took few bites of grass and then slightly parked out and just stood. Not interested in eating anything, but I could hear his gut sounds, even without a stethescope. Everything else was normal but I thought he looked uncomfortable. I loaded up and headed home and when we reached home he was more than happy to chow down on spring grass and there was fresh manure in the trailer. I am worried about ulcers. He ate well at Blackwater Swamp Stomp but I did have him on ulcergard. He also looks more tucked up than I would like and doesn't clean up his grain. He may not clean up his feed because he doesn't like the supplement powders - salt and vitamin E. Or maybe he has ulcers. I also am going to try a textured feed, Omelene 500, versus pelleted Ultium to see if he prefers that; he doesn't like Blue Seal Sentinel. He has free choice hay and is turned out 24-7. I am going to evaluate having him scoped for ulcers. With my personality I need to know if he actually has a problem before treating or if I need to be looking for something else. For now he gets rest, love, and loads of hay :)
 |
| Sunny showing his preference for Purina Ultium versus Blue Seal Sentinel |
No comments:
Post a Comment