Sammy was all better from the abscess. Going just great. Then, about October of 2007, I noticed it again. At first, it was only because my posting felt off, just a slight "swing". But the swing progressed to a faint head nod. I talked to the farrier, I talked to the vet. The concensus was that it was likely a pulled muscle. I gave him a few months of just being in the pasture, no work really. I would just pull him out and longe him to see if the head nod was still there. Yup, still there. So many people would tell me I was seeing things, it was so slight. As he would work longer, though, it would become more evident.
Finally, in February, it became obvious that it wasn't going away. We made an appointment to haul Sammy to Anoka Equine again, but this time, the Barn Owner didn't have a trailer we could borrow anymore. We had to rent a two horse straight load, which was nice, new and roomy. We spent all morning and all afternoon trying to load Sammy into that trailer, and it was a complete no-go. He could stand with 2 feet in the trailer and still reach me at the front, so he didn't need to get in the trailer all the way. He knew as soon as he got in, we were going to slam the door on him and go. Finally, I was convinced it wasn't going to happen. So I called Anoka Equine and cancelled the appointment.
The next course of action would be to find a vet who had a portable XRay and could bring the testing equipment out to Sammy, since I couldn't get Sammy to the equipment. Enter then Dr. Voigt (now Dr. Fredrickson) with Sunrise Equine. She was so patient with Sammy, putting up with all his weird quirks. She nerve blocked him, and he went sound off the heel. Great, it's in the hoof again. She set up the XRays, fearing navicular, founder, or arthritis. The XRays were clear. Stumped, the only thing she could think it might be was a strained impar ligament, possibly from slipping in the October mud on the steep hill in his pasture. The prescription was stall rest and lots of handwalking on the straight, no turning to the left to avoid torquing that left front.
Of course, Sammy, being the ADD poster child, was not going to survive stall rest, so we had to build a paddock behind the barn for him. It was about 24'x24', not quite enough room for him to get running around. It only took a few days for him to settle. We gave him a giant bucket for water and another for hay. It looked like a potentially great weightloss plan as well, let's face it, Sammy was fat from all that pasture grass.
Here is fat Sammy.
So the paddock rest and weightloss program began in about March 2008. Here he is in his paddock behind the horse trailers for a windblock.
And then began the loss of his topline.
And here we are handwalking, once he had been in the paddock a few months and the vet had ok'd the use of ground poles to try and improve the fading topline.
After about 5 months, he trotted sound on the longe. I started him back under saddle in mid August. He was obviously very weak at first. Watching him shuffle along on the longe at first, his bones all looked like they were rattling together. He was so out of condition. My new lesson teacher was amazing though, and gave us lots of good, low key things to work on.
By October, he was sound and his strength was built up enough to turn him back out in the pasture. So we turned him out and went to England for two weeks. We came back to a terrible coughing and groaning horse.
Enter the heaves!
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