Spoke Too Soon

You guessed it. Gus is worse again.

I was out to the barn yesterday after work to put a light ride on Gus. All we did was about 20 minutes of mainly walking, with about 5-8 minutes of trot work thrown in (only doing about 1-2 minutes at a time though). He was okay with all of that, but upon leaving the arena he stumbled heavily with his right fore. He didn't really walk out of it either, but seemed okay once back in the cross-ties in the aisle. As I went to turn him around to go back to his turnout, he really struggled to move his body around.

B, the BO, was there and watched him move. She couldn't believe how bad he looked again. We ended up talking for a while about Gus and she was wondering if he could benefit from shoeing as-if-he-were-a-Navicular-horse. That is the treatment that the other lame horse at the barn was prescribed by a top notch lameness vet (whom Gus has also seen previously).

I ended up talking to the vet today about Gus and she's at loss as to what to do too. She's wondering if he has arthritis in his neck or in his right fetlock. I had x-rays, once upon a time, that proved there "supposedly" was arthritis in the right front fetlock... also had x-rays that said he was Navicular. Both of those theories went out the window when Gus was finally diagnosed with a bad stifle. Since we have fixed that, the other issues have gone away, least until now.

The reason why we suspect something with that right front is because it was bearing a lot of the weight load for a good month when Gus was first having issues with that abscess in the left front. So, who knows what is really going on but I think we will try a shoe/trim approach first and then go to x-rays next... if needed.

It's quite frustrating not knowing exactly what is going on. Poor Gus.