Rolling Dog Farm Blog

It was time for some geriatric equine medicine today — our old sighted Appaloosa, Crazy Horse, was due to see our equine vet, Dr. Erin Taylor, for his regular joint injections.  He has bad arthritis, but for an ancient boy of 32 years, the joint injections every several months does wonders for him. 

We loaded him up in the trailer first thing this morning, but just as I was starting down the drive, Jodie called me from Widget’s House to say blind Penny wasn’t doing well.  She hadn’t eaten her breakfast (Penny always eats), and she was trembling and had labored breathing.  I asked Jodie to walk Penny out to the drive and I would take her into Missoula with me.  Sure enough, I could see Penny was pulling in her sides, breathing hard. 

While I was en route with Crazy and Penny, Alayne called ahead to our internal medicine specialist in Missoula, Dr. Dave Bostwick, to let him know we were bringing Penny over.  I stopped at Dave’s clinic first, where X-rays showed Penny had developed pneumonia.  Dave started her on IV fluids and antibiotics, and she will stay there for the next couple of days.  (No photos, sorry!)

Then I headed to our printer for a press check on our spring newsletter.  (Spring?  I drove through a snowstorm this morning to Missoula, most of the way in four-wheel drive!)  After making some color adjustments on the press, I signed off on the print run and then drove out to Erin’s clinic, Blue Mountain Veterinary Hospital. 

Crazy was breathing pretty hard himself when we arrived, so Erin tested him for heaves.  Part of the process involves putting a plastic bag over the nose, which helps assess respiratory function.  That’s what you see in the photo at the top of the post.  Erin concluded he didn’t have heaves, and his breathing was most likely just from the trailer ride on inflamed joints.

So then we moved on to the main event, which was treating those old joints.  Because we’re injecting steroids directly into the joints, the injection sites need to be thoroughly scrubbed and clipped and disinfected to make sure the needles don’t transport any bacteria from the skin into the joint itself.  In this photo Erin is injecting his right hock:

Here’s another view where she’s injecting his left hock from the inside:

And finally, she repeated the process on his front legs to relieve the arthritis around his coffin bone (that’s an old scar you see above the hoof wall there):

Through all this, Erin noticed I was hobbling myself, wincing and looking — as she described it — "pretty pathetic."  I explained that I had thrown my back out on Sunday, was taking some anti-inflammatory medication, but could still barely get dressed this morning.  And yes, I will admit that if you watched Crazy Horse and me today, you would conclude he was the spry one.  I asked Erin if she could inject my lower back with the same pick-me-up she was giving Crazy’s joints, but she … well, she declined.  Instead, she insisted on dispatching me to a chiropractor she recommended, who worked me in on short notice this afternoon.  The chiropractic adjustment definitely helped, and both Crazy Horse and I returned to the ranch in better shape than when we left.