Diagnosis Odin

Just kidding, like anything is ever clear in horse world.

Last Friday Odin got the good drugs injected, a quick racing stripe clipped onto his leg, and we took a look inside his leg via ultrasound.

It is a special kind of torture watching grey on grey blobs float around the screen while waiting for your vet to examine each tendon and give you their opinion.

On the plus side, all of the tendons look clean and healthy.  On the negative side, there is obvious inflammation in the stifle joint. Best guess is he tweaked the tendon somehow, it got inflamed, and now it is catching because of the swelling. Probably related but somewhat peripheral to his overall stifle bugging him.

After much agonizing on my part - and snoring on Odin's part - we decided to throw a steroid injection in the joint.  I hate injecting young horses but both vets from my practice were there and were aligned on this as a treatment with the rationale that continued inflammation leads to degeneration and we do not want that.

So a million hours of scrubbing later, he got his steroids, antibiotics, and HA injected with a mandatory 3 day vacation.

It has been 70 degrees here, by the way.  I don't generally recommend having your horse be hurt and laid up when you are getting spring in winter.

On Monday, he had one hell of a snotty nose, but the injection site was cool and clean.  I assume the vets brought him a little bit of a bonus cold on Friday (sigh).

Tuesday his nose was better and he was allowed to go into turnout and have a light ride.  Trainer R reported he seemed to be feeling good.

Today is the day we find out for sure how his stifle is as he goes back into full work.  Vet said he should be feeling great.  I am withholding optimism.  I can't get to the barn until tomorrow but I am hoping for a trainer report.