Poor Axel

Well I got a call on Wednesday this past week that Axel was sore on his hind left foot again. The vet figured that after a round of antibiotics it wasn't an infection that was making him lame. He has a lot of calcification from the lower ringbone and the vet though he probably just fragmented some of that calcification. So the new diagnosis is just that and the treatment is bute for the pain and rest for a month. Sounds like rest just means keeping him at a walk if we ride and keeping him in a smaller paddock. I probably won't ride for a while just to give him a fighting chance to feel better. The herd will be in the upper paddock for a while yet so keeping him in a smaller area isn't a problem. He should be feeling better by the time we open another pasture. If the month of rest doesn't do the trick we have some options with steroid injections and whatnot and I'll be getting him some of the 4-in-1 HA supplement for his joints.


The goofy horse was eating the powdered antibiotics with applesauce and licking the bowl clean. So I figured for the ease of the caretakers I'd get the powdered bute which they could mix with the applesauce. Well apparently bute tastes much worse than antibiotics. I picked up the x-rays and the bute on my way over and put together his dinner for that night. He ate about half of his grain/bute/applesauce mixture and then went on a hunger strike. He just stood there nickering at me and lifted his sore foot. Poor Cody will not be terribly happy that Axel gets vacation and he is going to get ridden more often in the next month.