Thursday, September 04, 2008

Now That I Can Speak of It Without Weeping Inconsolably...

Zydeco is completely back to his old self again, living happily at my coach's farm for the month of September.

I am still lost as to what caused his injury. My mother and coach admitted to me that the day they moved him back home, they thought his time with us was through. I still have to cry a little bit when I type that.

He cut himself when one of his shoes came lose and a nail nicked his ankle. That injury in and of itself was not dangerous, and we treated it and moved on. Several days later, his ankle had swollen up considerably. We walked him gently to keep the circulation, and examinted the injury to find that it had grown to over two inches in diametre. A few days later he was fine, showing no signs of soreness, and was well enough to be taken over fences a week before what should have been my first show.

Two days later he was so lame he could not walk. His ankle had swollen up and he had something called Proud Flesh. The looks of it were horrific. I left him that Saturday in tears, because he was holding his foot up in the air, refusing to put weight on it and moaning.

My coach attempted to bandage the injury, but Zydo is bad with bandages, chewing them and rolling them up on his leg. This caused the amount of swelling to skyrocket, and his foot and ankle blew up to three times their normal size. She called me and said he needed to come home, and here he arrived.

He hobbled off the trailer and when I took the bandage off of him, I almost collapsed completely. MY nephew summed it up quite nicely when he said "Look, Auntie! Zydo's whole leg looks like MEAT!" My father then attempted to bandage him again, which he rolled up and, of course, made it worse again.

The risk with swelling so close to the foot is that the bones in his leg could swell and push right through the bottom of his foot.

This could have caused him to die.

We had to go to secondary measures because removal of the Proud Flesh and pressure bandages was not an option, unless I had been willing to supervise him at all times so that he didn't roll up and chew on his bandages. We used Lime dust to eat away the Proud Flesh, and it worked wonders. Now that it is completely under control, we have been applying Tincture of Benzoine to the injury.

It is now down to being the size of a quarter.

And Zydeco is back to his wonderful old self.

Praise be.

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