Time for another update, most likely the last one for the year.
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Mercy is back in paddock/stall rest with regular hand walking when I'm able to. Again. I took her out to ride the day after my last blog post and found her seriously lame on her left front leg after I tacked her up. No heat, no swelling, no hoof tester sensitivity. I gave her 2 weeks off just in case there was an abscess brewing, but nothing changed. So, I had Dr. Bob out to do a full lameness work up. After blocking her leg, starting with her sole, then her whole foot, then her fetlock, and finally blocking her up to the knee, she was still lame when making tight circles. There was no lameness detected on the straight aways unless her joint was flexed (stressed).
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Since the symptoms of this lameness were very similar to her previous right front leg lameness, we decided to shave the leg down any way and check her tendons and ligaments via ultrasound.
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And we found nothing. Well, we saw the previous injury in her RF that has healed nicely! But nothing more...
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Since we were no closer to a diagnosis after the very thorough exam, I decided to take Mercy back to the track to see Dr. Schneider. Once at the track, it became very clear that the lameness I was seeing and the lameness Dr. Schneider was finding could be two different ailments. This is because after only one low hoof block, he declared Mercy sound, which means the pain was in the hoof.
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We took a few radiographs to check her lower leg and Dr. Schneider found some bony changes on the front of her short pastern bone at the coffin joint. He also found a small bone spur at the pastern joint. Although these are unlikely to cause her pain, that was the best he could find that day without doing an MRI. So- back to stall and paddock rest for 60 days (til early January) and recheck with Dr.Bob.
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I'm personally not convinced that the bony changes and spur are the issues here, but I don't have anything else to go on. When I compare the new images to the old images (Aug 2010), there really isn't that much change. I guess time will tell... again...
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Until then, Mercy certainly keeps herself busy by destroying my lovely Christmas decorations... lol! ;)
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