Friday I walked Axel down the road again, he was a little more feisty than normal, started the head tossing right away. I groomed him for quite a while and tried to clean his sheath a bit and put some MTG on his bald spots and his ankles. I did some massage and put him in the arena and he walked around in there for a while. After all that his sheath actually seemed like the swelling had started going down.
Saturday I met up with S and B and we tacked up and went down the road. Cody was evil. Plain and simple. He danced around, wanted to turn around or face the barn, and snorted and huffed and puffed the whole ride. When S wanted to canter he freaked out and danced around and never got into a real canter, it was mostly crow hopping and snorting. He wouldn't walk and even with a completely loose rein he curled his neck and stuck out his tongue. S kept telling me to give him more rein at the canter but I had all but thrown him away at that point, there was no more rein to give, he was just pissed. 1. we need a chiro visit 2. it's spring 3. we have ridden only a handful of times this winter and 4. this was the first time out in 4 months. Sooooo... I hope it goes better next time (understatement).
So he was a ball of sweat when we got back so I put some blankets on him and walked him around the arena while everyone else was cooling their horses out. He rolled a few times but wasn't really drying off. The arena cleared out so I went and got Axel as well. He and Cody rolled a few more times and wandered around the arena. I finally went to bring Cody out and the instant I left Axel started in on the gate. I'm not sure what happened then either someone in the aisle chased him off or Vinnie chased him off but when I got back from putting Cody away (2 minutes max) he was dead lame. He was hopping around putting no weight at all on his back left. Seriously? I assume he kicked himself and chipped another piece of ringbone off. I had 2g of paste bute left which went in his mouth and then on the floor. 2 more grams of powdered bute in his feed which he picked at for a while and maybe got half in his mouth. J came out and mixed up some bute in a syringe for me and gave him 2 more grams. So between our three attempts he at least got 3-4g in his system. It wasn't kicking in very quick though. Stalling him would have just meant more trouble so we limped back out to the pasture where he stood in the hay.
So I ran out there yesterday armed with some bute mixed with water in a syringe and tried to bute him again. Most of that went on the ground. Guess we try karo next time instead of water. He was putting his sore foot flat on the ground at least. Not putting full weight on it but an improvement from Saturday. Looks like last time this happened he was out of commission for about a month in September-October. Sadly I won't make it out there tonight to check on him so hopefully he's feeling a bit better or J&J give him a bit of bute.
I plan to talk to the vet about some sort of IM injection to help the arthritis. I don't think there's anything out there that will help the ringbone but perhaps if I get some Surpass I can use that whenever I ride or work him. Assuming the Xrays don't show anything unusual my thought is that he can still work even when he's a bit sore and the Surpass would maybe take away the "bit sore" part.
So if you're keeping score on Axel's ailments that's: arthritis in right front knee, ringbone back left pastern, swollen belly, and swollen sheath.
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