A Happy Update

I want to thank everyone for their comments over the last week or so. Reading each one meant so much to me. Knowing you guys understood just how terrifying that experience was helped make the whole situation a little less surreal.

For the first couple of days after the accident, Guinness' condition was somewhat touch and go. While his attitude was good, I couldn't get a good handle on managing the swelling in his legs. The amount his legs were stocking up was worrying to me. I was pretty confident he didn't have a soft tissue injury, but the amount of swelling made me second guess myself. Plus, my inability to reduce the swelling made me worry about the possibility of developing cellulitis.



Is there a leg in there? I can't tell. Looks more like a red log.

Moving stiffly, Pig wasn't helping matters. Even though he was turned out in the big pasture, he wasn't moving around much. He basically stationed himself at the round bale, and would shuffle from there to the auto-waterer. I hand walked him daily, but it didn't make a dent in the swelling.

Handwalking the elusive mud-yak in it's natural habitat... the rain.

Finally, I resorted to doing compression wraps with Sore-No-More on him for a handful of hours every day. The wraps would bring the swelling down some, but not all the way down to normal.



Swelling down somewhat, legs still feverish and puffed.

The holidays forced me away from the barn. Keeping an eye on a horse from afar might be one of the most stressful things in the world. My BO would only send me texts when his legs were swollen badly, so I assumed that's what they looked like all the time. I did end up driving back one day to wrap Pig, after my BO sent me a photo of his legs looking more like tree trunks than legs. Apparently after that wrapping session, his legs did go down significantly. A friend helped me out by hand walking Pig, which also brought his legs down every day.

Normalish legs! It's a miracle!

After 8 days, Guinness finally seems to be out of the woods. His legs aren't stocking up as much, he's weaning off bute, and he's totally sound. The totally sound part is the best part, because yesterday I hopped up and got to glimpse the world from behind two perky red ears again. From up there, everything finally feels like it will be alright.

Doing rehab rides back the safety-first way, by hacking my hyper horse bareback down the wet road. Yep.