Unlucky People Shouldn't Own Unlucky Horses

Echo insists on continuing to demonstrate his talent...for misfortune.  Combined with my own terrible luck, I feel like we are stuck on a moebius strip of exasperation.

You know his left front leg, the one with the bruised coffin bone at the end of it?  Well, it had been showing some improvement...until yesterday.

I came home from work to find him limping anew.  I initially thought we had somehow aggravated the foot on the short, walking trail ride I ponied him along on Sunday.  Oh no -- now he has done something to the shoulder ON THE SAME LEG!

I found a big, hard lump just behind his scapula that foamed up white as soon as I put SoreNoMore on it (which can be an indication of elevated temperatures which go along with inflammation/spasm in the muscles, which arnica reacts to).  At this point, my hypotheses are either:

1. Solo kicked him.  Which I have absolutely no doubt Echo deserved, so I couldn't even be irritated at Solo.  If you get kicked by Solo, it's only after you have ignored countless warnings, which are not subtle.  Echo is not one to take warnings seriously if he feels entertained.  There wasn't a mark, but Solo is barefoot. 
2. Echo torqued the shoulder playing Wild Rearing Plunging Mustang games.  Equally possible.

He didn't react at all when I poked it.  I've seen him roll & get up just fine & he's weight-bearing.  He had no problem with me lifting the leg, extending it in front of him, rolling the shoulder around in its joint.  Which is a little baffling, but at least tells me he didn't break a rib (or anything else) & he didn't dislocate the shoulder.

At least one piece of my tack is getting some use

I'll give him a few days with bute & rest -- oh wait, he was already resting, gahhhh.  If he doesn't improve much with that, then I'll call my poor, harassed vet again.  I'm cautiously hopeful it looks like nothing too major right now, as the lump had softened when I got home from work today.  I put some ice on it this afternoon, although I'm not sure it can penetrate much in an area with so much body mass.

Hopefully he will decide to quit all this nonsense before I forget how to ride a horse.  The key to preventing this kind of stuff is strengthening soft tissues through fitness -- which is a little hard to do when you can't work them.  That hollow, thumping sound you hear is just my skull hitting the table repeatedly.  I'm thinking it would be smarter to trade him in for a pet turtle -- it takes some serious effort to break a turtle. 

Can someone just pat my head & possibly pour some libations down my throat??

Categories: injury