Star Update......

At the end of December, whilst at Abderry, Star had a little 'incident' in the cross ties and ended up on the floor scraping his offside hind with his nearside hind in the process. It was a pretty superficial wound so we thought nothing of it.

A week later, after Star had returned home, the whole leg from pastern to hock swelled up. I bandaged it and gave him some Bute and within a couple of days it has gone back down again.

Moving forward another week and an area just around the initial injury (although it had healed up now) came back up.

Stars bumpy leg

It was still up two weeks later, although he was not lame on it and he let me prod and poke it no problems. I decided to get the vet to check it just in case he had an infection brewing. Well, the good news was there was no infection in there, it is just tissue fluid which should disperse itself within the next 8 week. PHEW!

To celebrate this good news I went to Kumeu Grain and treated Star to some BOT leg wraps and some Devils Claw. He has the boots on for a couple of hours yesterday and two doses of the Devils Claw in his lunch and dinner.

This morning, when I went to feed him after the awful weather last night, I was greeted with a huge neigh and he trotted up to me! I trotted him on the hard driveway and he was sound(ish) so I decided to give him a run about in the arena to assess how he was feeling at the moment. (I try to do this one every couple of weeks so I can get a feeling for how he is feeling.

He still isn't 100% but there are some improvements. For example, when I asked him to canter he was more willing to do so and actually carried on cantering for about 10 strides on each rein even when the mad women (or man - Chad did some of the legwork too) stopped chasing him around waving the leadrope around. Previously he had been VERY reluctant to canter at all.

He looked happier as well, even though I only asked him to do a couple of laps of the arena on both reins. Not sure if the BOT wraps and Devils Claw could have started working so quickly or if it was just coincidence!

Anyway, he seems happier which is exactly what I want for my boy :D

Oh, and my ex gave me heaps of photos of my old horses yesterday so I'll have to find a scanner somewhere so I can put them on here and BRACOS IS COMING HOME TOMORROW!!!