Hope's One Month X-Rays

Our vet was out on Friday to take x-rays of Hope's leg to send to New Bolton. I have to say I didn't know that they made portable x-ray machine and how NICE they were. The vet comes with everything - even the iron apron you need to wear. Hope was very patient for the x-rays and the vet got great images. The nice part is that the images can be emailed, copied to CD and viewed right there. We had fun blowing up the photos and looking at them. We also got a CD of the x-rays and the software with the images allows us to blow up the x-rays and view them. Pretty cool, Huh!

I called New Bolton today since I hadn't heard from anyone. I was told someone would call me back later once surgery viewed the x-rays. Dr. Norton, who was one of the vet's on duty during her stay, called to discuss everything. She said there is no sign of active infection in the joint. Great. She said the growth plate was compromised and that she may be small overall or the leg may not grow the same length. The good news is that we could allow her to go out with the rest of the herd, stop the antibiotics and just keep an eye on her leg and weight.

I mentioned her weight. She is not gaining as she should be. This is disturbing to us and the vet. There are several reasons why this could be: stress, antibiotics, infection, or maybe not enough milk from the dam. There is no active infection so that cause is taken out of the equation. We are all thinking stress or ulcer since they were alone for so long and we have been catching her every 3 days and injecting medicine into her. We will watch her weight now that she is off the antibiotics. We will only need to inject her once a week for another 2 weeks with some medicine our vet put her on to help the cartilage. That will be over in a few weeks. I am also giving her probios every few days to help with the stress/ulcer and Vitamin ADE&B12 every 2 weeks. We will see if she starts to gain better.

I let her out tonight. I watched her running and pronking in the field with Silver Streak and Dawn. She was having such a ball! I have never seen her so happy. I was worried she would get hurt as I don't want her to strain the leg since she has been inactive on it since birth. However, I let her run as she wanted. I did notice she started to limp when she was done. I left her out with the herd tonight. Tomorrow I only want to leave her out a few hours and then move her and Bellafina back in. I want to slowly give her time out so she doesn't overwork that leg.