The whole RRP Makeover experience was such a huge, years-long, bucket list item for me that getting home from Kentucky and being plunged right back into normal life again was almost a little melancholic. When big memorable life events like that happen, you want to dwell in them. Savor them. We all know that sometimes those moments are few and far between, especially with horses. But the reality of life, for better or worse, is that time keeps ticking. Regardless of what’s happened, regardless of how you feel or what you want. Sometimes that’s a good thing, a comfort. Other times you’re like damn… can’t I just wrap myself up in this moment for a little while longer? Alas, no. Time stops for no one.
And as usual, time brings with it plenty of ups and downs. Checks and balances, if you will. If you have horses, you probably understand that a bit too acutely.
Presto had been on and off looking varying levels of NQR for a couple weeks before I left for Kentucky. A few different factors made me suspicious at first that it was his feet, especially because not too long before the lameness started, we’d just done about 2k worth of annual vet work, checking Presto nose to tail to toe, and the only thing that had changed between that (after which he felt fantastic) and the start of the lameness was a farrier appointment. Which turned out to be the last appointment with that farrier, who I subsequently fired for putting four hot nails into Bingo a couple weeks before RRP.
My suspicions regarding the feet were strong enough to the point where a couple days before I left, I asked my new farrier (who really saved the day with Bingy and deserves a ton of credit for fixing that disaster in the 11th hour) to come out and put hoof testers on Presto and check for a brewing abscess. He couldn’t find anything, so I figured if Presto still looked funky when I got home from Kentucky, I’d have my vet out.
Unfortunately, when I jogged him up the day after I got home, there was no doubt about it: still lame.
My vet (who is the best) was here a couple days later, where we proceeded to look at him on hard ground, soft ground, on a circle both ways, and did lots of flexions. He was for sure lame front right. He chose that day to look lamer than he had the entire time, which I suppose is a good or a bad thing depending on how you look at it.
From that point we moved on to blocking the foot, jogging him again, blocking a little higher, jogging again, etc. The initial block of just the foot made him about 60% better, blocking below the fetlock made him about 80% better, and none of the other blocks made any real difference. We were pretty confident we were looking at something in the foot/pastern, which clocked with how the lameness looked and presented. I thought it had looked like foot all along.
After that we did some imaging. Lots of imaging, from all angles, looking at literally everything we could see, ruling things in or out. Given everything we saw (or didn’t see), the conclusion was 90% certain we were looking at a lateral collateral ligament injury.
Of course, the majority of that ligament is in the hoof. And you can’t see in the hoof without an MRI. Which costs many thousands of dollars (been there, done that, he had an MRI of the other front foot when he was 4).
It’s very tempting for me to just spend the money on the MRI. I pretty much always spend the money when it comes to the horses… I don’t like guessing on things with them, or feeling like I’m compromising on their care in any way. I just can’t sleep at night if I feel that way, I’d rather be poor. But it’s a lot of money, and my first logical question was “what do we gain?”.
If there was a marked benefit to his recovery or comfort by doing the MRI, it would have been no question. But the reality is that all we’d really be getting is a 100% definitive answer and an idea of severity. It wouldn’t change the treatment, which is mostly just rest. Lots of rest.
I will also say, collateral ligament injuries in general aren’t great. And depending on the severity, they can absolutely be career-limiting, if not career-ending. The temptation to stick him in the MRI just so I know how screwed we really are… that’s tempting. But to what end? It doesn’t benefit him in any way, because he’s my little (fallen) angel baby no matter what, and we’ll figure out his future as it comes. For now the only option is rest. The only option is time.
I’m not sure if you’ve ever met Presto, but resting isn’t exactly his strong suit. We’re looking at a decently long stretch of stall rest, very small/limited turnout, and then a long slow road back into work. It’s not going to be great for any of us.
He only lasted a few days into stall rest before Trazodone became necessary. He’s actually pretty happy to stand in a stall and eat, but what he hates is feeling left out. If something happens on the farm, or another horse goes somewhere or does basically anything, Presto thinks he should be part of it. So ya know… it’s not been great. It will probably continue to not be great. He has toys and food and gets attention multiple times a day, but I can’t change his personality.
I’m exploring options for making him an outside stall/tiny pen that he could hopefully handle being in for at least a couple hours a day. He just requires A LOT of supervision because even with the Trazodone he can go from 0 to 100 in two seconds flat, and he’s not the type to calm himself down. Honestly keeping Presto happy on stall rest is feeling a bit like a full time job in and of itself. I think we’ve figured out a schedule that for now is working alright. We’ll see how far we can get.
In the meantime I’m trying not to dwell on the fact that this is most likely the end of his upper level eventing career. Collateral ligaments can have a pretty high rate of reinjury, especially if the horse is jumping and turning a lot, particularly on uneven ground. This is the part where having an MRI would come in handy… a strain would be better news than a tear, and a small tear would be better news than a big tear. We don’t think it’s a SUPER BAD tear, based on the diagnostics we could do, but ya know. That part is a bit of guesswork. Either way, it’s likely to impact his career going forward. What that ultimately looks like, only time will tell. Many many many months of time.
On one hand. I keep waiting to feel gutted by that. It’s kind of surprised me that I haven’t. Obviously I’m very far from happy about it, mostly because I hate having to keep him so confined. But I’m not devastated at the thought that he may never event above the lower levels again. Hell, he may never event again. Who knows at this point. But as long as we can heal him up and get him back to a happy sound boy, we can figure the rest out from there. He doesn’t owe me anything, I don’t have anything to prove to anyone, and there’s plenty of things out there in the world that he can do and be good at.
I keep waiting for it to feel like a loss of some kind, but it doesn’t. Presto is more important to me than any performance-related goals or aspirations, so if we end up having to pivot, then pivot we shall. For now we focus on getting through his rest period.
In that first week of his diagnosis, I had also given Bingo the week off to rest after his long trip and RRP experience, which left me doing fun rides on Henry. Honestly, that was probably the best possible thing for me in that time as I absorbed the reality of what we were looking at with Presto. I jumped Henry bridleless, he pretended he was going to dolphin me off while hacking down the road, and we went to a Halloween show in an exceptionally ridiculous piñata costume. We did things for fun, and I just got to enjoy my horse. At the end of the day, that’s all that matters.
Since then I’ve brought Bingo back into his normal work schedule and he’s been absolutely full of himself. Don’t tell him, but it makes me a little bit happy (aside from those few times I’ve feared for my life, but ya know… details) to see him come back feeling confident and happy and ready to work.
He likes his job, and he came out of RRP as good as I could ask for, both mentally and physically. We had our first lesson back this past weekend (it’s been almost two months, somehow, since the last one) and he clicked right back into the groove.
Our focus for a little while is going to be the XC, since I think at this point that’s his weakest phase. He’s bold but he’s also careful, and he’s just a lot greener with the XC than anything else. Which makes sense, he’s done it the least. So we’ll add some miles there and see about a show or two to close out the year.
Crazy to think that a year ago, Bingo wasn’t actually even in my possession yet… he’d just left Ohio to head south. Time flies!
