Go With Your Gut

Hwin has had a lot of time off lately. A few weeks ago I ended up with the flu. It was rough. I had just enough energy to do the bare minimum of chores. Fortunately one of my boarders was kind enough to help out a bit, and I got through it.

The next week Hwin got her hocks injected. This was something that I thought long and hard about. My gut feeling about such things is to do as little as possible. I am not a big fan of invasive procedures especially when there doesn’t seem to be a medical necessity. I don’t like to try to fix what isn’t broken! However, she wasn’t wanting to do the collected work, and when I had her flex tested she was mildly positive in both legs. I was urged by many people to get it done, and I ultimately decided to do it, because I figured it would make her more comfortable in her work, and people do it for their older (and sometimes not so old) horses all the time. Hwin is 17 this year after all.

Everything seemed to go well, and she got the next week off. I rode a few days in a row when I got the OK, and she felt alright. I didn’t notice any marked difference, but then, I wasn’t doing any collected work at that point. I was just riding lightly to get her back in the swing of things.

It was about ten days after the injections when I went to ride on a Saturday (of course it was a Saturday), and I noticed she felt funny. Not lame really, but didn’t seem right either, and she was tripping constantly. It was when I got off that I noticed she didn’t seem comfortable in her hind legs and her hocks were slightly swollen. I felt terrible that I didn’t notice it before I got on, but I put a call in to the vet immediately. She was diagnosed with bilateral edema. An emergency vet visit, lots of pain killers and antibiotics and almost two weeks later she seems back to normal, and I have been riding lightly again.

The vet didn’t say what he thought caused the edema. He only said it was unusual to have it in both legs at the same time, and she is not prone to swelling or lameness. In the almost twelve years that I have owned her she has been lame once from a kick to the leg. I can only think that it had something to do with the injections. I don’t think it was infection as it was outside the window for that to happen, but I do think she had some sort of allergic reaction to them. Needless to say, I won’t be getting her hocks injected again. I should have gone with my gut and not done them in the first place. I feel awful that I did something that made her hurt more in an effort to make her more comfortable so that I could continue with MY goals.

I am not writing this to discourage anyone from getting this done, but just a reminder that no matter how routine a procedure is it still carries risk. If your horse needs it and tolerates it, that is great. Go for it if you want.

I do now feel like I am faced with possible semi-retirement for Hwin. I am not going to throw her out in a field and say, “Have fun.” But if she can’t be comfortable in her work without this kind of maintenance and I am not willing to subject her to it again, then maybe it is time to take a step back and do something different with her from now on. I will have to see how this summer goes and do some research into other possible therapies. We will see. I will keep you posted!