Our vet checked out Sundance today and, while he’s doing great, he still has a bit of congestion. He does NOT have Strangles!!!!! Great news… that total quarantine with foot baths, etc. is a pain (but, naturally, we have to do it!)
So surgery will be either Saturday, April 22 or *maybe* sometime earlier that week. Seems like a long time to wait, but better safe than sorry. Gives us more time to grow to love the little guy 
Tonight we finished the first round of antibiotics for Sundance… thank goodness. He’s been on injectable Naxcel, 15cc, and holding a 400 lb baby still for shots is no simple task! He is such a good boy for all of this. If he wasn’t so easy going, this could be a really hard process!
Tomorrow the vet comes back for more blood work and to evaluate where he stands to schedule surgery.
We tried an experiment this evening; Sundance now has a custom fitted Easy Boot on his club foot, with a foam wedge on the bottom and foam inside to help with fit (as you can imagine, his foot doesn’t exactly fit a boot!) Pictures on the main web site at http://www.founder-rehab.com .
So, if we are lucky and get a totally clear vet report we are hoping she’ll clear him for surgery April 1. Otherwise, if she’s conservative, we’ll probably do it April 15. The surgery at Loomis will be about $700, not including castration. We’ve decided to deal with one pain issue at a time
Check back for updates on the boot!
Day 3 of injections for whatever it is he has… the cultures should be back Monday and the vet is taking more blood on Monday too. For the first couple of days we had to twitch him to keep him still enough to give the shots (15cc of semi-thick stuff). But tonight, with a slightly smaller needle, no twitch needed.
Beth has been working on getting him to pick up his feet, and tonight Beth’s daughter Amy was able to pick up one of his fronts. He’s such a good little guy!
No doubt about it… we are hooked on Sundance.
We’re hopeful that we can find that he is well enough that surgery can go forward next weekend; Vet wants us to wait a couple of additional weeks to finish up a full course of antibiotics. (injections plus a couple of weeks on oral). Fingers crossed that the labs come back great…..
Hi all, another update…
This morning (Wednesday) I spoke with Dr Yarborough at Loomis Basin, he is an orthopedic surgeon (equine). I really liked him!
He said the prognosis was very good… and was MUCH more upbeat. He also sounded like he had seen this plenty of times, and had personal experience with this going very well..
The one thing I liked the MOST was that he had a ’stepwise approach’, He would like to do the check ligament desmotomy first, then give him some time and hoofcare to bring the heel down… and if that doesn’t work, then do the tenotomy…. and see if that gives us enough loosening… etc.
I like that… he also was clear, the desmotomy will NOT decrease his athletic ability at all! The tenotomy might, so best to do the least of the surgeries.
Then, the illness…. today the vet came and looked at him… mumbled about how surgeons and internal medicine vets ‘butt heads’ over ‘this stuff’… pronounced him very sick, broncho-pneumonia, nasal congestion, cough of course, fever, swollen lymph nodes, sore throat…. ack. Anyway, starting on IM antibiotics tonight, cough syrup, etc… and redo labs on Monday with another exam… glad I called her…. she is confident that the Naxcel will cover strangles if that is what it is… and he is not abscessing yet if it is, so we are ok.. (she did a culture to identify what we are dealing with) and he has to come into the barn. Fingers crossed that it is NOT strangles, as he won’t be totally isolated there, but with the pneumonia, and the forecasted rain on Friday, whatcha gonna do…. ??
Hobbs went up this morning, visited with the vet student first… He simply refused to stand still for her exam…. oh well.
Then the vet resident came out… he was definitely tired of all of it by then. She had very downbeat news… she had very little hope anything could be done, his deformity is VERY severe… and with his age, he has been tearing up the joint for a long time. not good… Any procedure would only be ’salvage’.
Finally, the faculty vet surgeon came out… she was much more upbeat and hopeful, although she was frank and open that this was a salvage procedure, that the best we could hope for was for him to look ‘better’ and be pasture sound out of pain, but that he would not likely be ridable. She did however think he could possibly, if all went well, be drivable. The surgery must be the most severe, as the desmotomy will only give him 2 cm of extra extension, and he needs several INCHES… so they have to transect the Deep digital flexor tendon, which will eventually heal back together, but longer…. the lameness, if he has it, will be from his existing deformity, not from the surgery.
His coffin bone is not nearly as rotated as it appears from the outside, and it has NOT remodeled. The joint is good, little if any arthritis… so he has at least hope of recovery… that is why we proceeded to ‘try’ today before he was found to be sick…
They were able to get him on schedule Tuesday, unfortunately, his labs came back pretty bad, white blood cell count of 22,000, fibrinogen of 600, and he is anemic…. 18 hbg. He has a temp of 102.2… so we all went home. He looks fine, seems to feel fine, no runny nose, lungs clear, neck and under jaw is clear… so we wait for something to ‘emerge’. Called our normal vet.
Tonight, he gets some bute… and we moved his pen, so he is munching on ‘new’ grass in our back yard… mowing at it’s finest… equine mower!!!
The surgery at UC Davis will be $1200 to 1400, and I ‘think’ today was already $200. Crossed fingers/jingling for a fast recovery from whatever is ‘bugging’ him…. !!!
Beth
What a cutie pie! Hobbs arrived on Saturday evening with no problems after all that transport. He’s a chunk of a yearling, and has an adorable split mane with tight ringlets.
OK, ok, I know that emotional distance is something to be kept until our visit on Tuesday. Here’s a link to the pictures of his feet taken upon arrival.
http://founder-rehab.com/HobbsFeet3-06.html
He doesn’t appear TOO uncomfortable, but walking around is obviously hard for him. The ground in the backyard pen seems to agree with him tho, so he should be fine until the visit to U.C. Davis on Tuesday.
Next post - after the trip to Davis for consultation.
Peg and Beth
If all goes according to plan, we will be picking Hobbs up in American Canyon late this afternoon.
As with any new resident that has been with a group of unknown horses, Hobbs will have to go into quarantine upon arrival. Because we want him to be on flat ground, we’ll be setting up a pipe panel fence this morning in our back yard. The GREAT news for Hobbs is that it is totally filled with very high grass for his munching pleasure.
As soon as he gets here, I’ll post an update and some better pictures of his club foot.
Peg
