“Your horse has a sinus problem. And it’s an unusual one.”
There’s something disconcerting about standing in a room with half a dozen people, most of them vets, while they ooh and ahh over your horse’s unusual sinus condition.
Here’s the backstory, since I have not been posting much recently.
After we flushed Ro’s sinus out in May, she got better. Then she got sort of iffy again, and we decided to try a stronger antihistamine. A week after that, I got off Ro after riding and stared at a bloody nose. I was, I’ll be honest, freaked out—and I hadn’t even been on the interwebz looking up possible causes of nosebleeds yet (incidentally, don’t do that. You’ll never sleep again). Ro was unperturbed, although she thought I was insane for leaving her tack on and dragging her all over the property trying to find my phone to call the vet and the keys to my trailer in case we needed to trailer out and… Ro just wanted to eat grass, and if I would remove the saddle, that would be peachy.
Ultimately, we determined that the antihistamine had dried out her sinus and she’d gotten a nosebleed. No different than people getting one. Nothing to worry about. But in the course of making sure this was the case, we rescoped and discovered the snot was coming back. Rather than wait for her to actually start dripping snot, we reflushed her sinus very aggressively, including a long-acting antibiotic that left her nostril coated in foamy white stuff.
After the vet left, Ro and I were standing in the barn aisle in front of a fan while I waited for her to wake up enough from the sedation so I could turn her out. One of the trainers walked in, looked at Ro’s foamy white nostril, looked at us standing in the middle of the barn, all unconcerned, and asked tentatively, “Is she all right?” I think this was code for, “When is the vet coming, and why is your snotty horse standing in the middle of the barn and not isolated somewhere?”
I explained what was going on, and then tried to figure out how I had reached a point where I could talk cheerfully about drilling holes in my horse’s head. The trainer seemed confused about that, too, but decided we probably weren’t incubating the plague and wandered off.
A week or two after this, Ro came in from a ride with her nostril covered in thick, yellowish mucus.
At this point, I think both my vet and I were ready to cry uncle, and he referred us to a specialist. Naturally, the snot disappeared and Ro began to look healthier than she had all summer.
I didn’t believe her sudden symptom-free self and we went to the specialist today anyway. I figured we’d either get a clean bill of health and know this was all behind us, or we’d find something brewing and just waiting to rear its ugly head in a week or two.
Incidentally, I have reached a new high in my ability to get lost while driving. I can get lost on a straight road. With a GPS. I am just that awesome.
At the specialist’s, we started with the obvious: re-Xray her sinus to verify it was not a tooth issue. Xrays looked fine.
Then scope the guttural pouch to make sure we didn’t have anything going on there. Ro had some blisters on her tonsils that the vet said were not unusual in horses her age, although possibly a little enlarged. She had the same blisters in the guttural pouch, which he said is unusual but he didn’t think it was the cause of the recurring snotty nose.
At this point, we stopped to talk about options. Here was Ro, looking perfectly normal. She didn’t even have the decency to have the clear watery discharge she’s had all along—nope: clean, dry nose. Here’s the clean xrays. Here’s a scope result that the vet thinks suggests allergies.
If I wanted, we could drill into her sinus and scope that way (top down instead of bottom up, essentially, and with better access to see everything). The vet didn’t think we’d find anything—we’d be doing it to confirm the sinus cavity was snot free. All signs certainly pointed that way. The next step would probably be treating allergies aggressively via steroids—either now, or waiting to see if she got snotty again.
Honestly, I think if I had been standing in that room with that decision even a month ago, I would have skipped the additional scope. But I was so tired of it all, and so frustrated, that I wanted that confirmation that her sinus was clean. I was afraid that if we skipped it, we’d end up doing it in another two or three weeks anyway.
Fortunately the surgeon was available this afternoon and we were able to do it all in one day. The plan was to drill one hole below her eye and a little towards the cheek; depending on what that showed, we might drill another hole on her forehead, near where we had drilled to flush before. These holes would both be small—just large enough for the scope. If necessary, the next step would be to take a big flap out of her skull and scrape stuff out.
But we started with the first small hole—hand drilled it, put in a metal tube, threaded in the scope… honestly, it’s weird to see metal tubes sticking out of a horse’s skull. Just saying. Everything looked good, up until the surgeon said, “Huh. That’s not normal.”
Indeed not. There was a little yellow mass that clearly did not belong.
They drilled the second hole and went in that way to get a different view on it. Much to no one’s surprise, it was still odd, even from a new angle.
Then they sent one of the techs to go fetch my vet, because he “might like to see this.” Another vet wandered in shortly after. Plus the intern.
And everyone staring at the little yellow mass going, “Huh. That’s not normal.”
I kind of wanted to start charging admission.
Initially, it was the placement of it that intrigued them. It was just not a location where they expected to see anything. Granted, they weren’t expecting to see anything at all, But if they were going to find something, this was clearly not where they expected it to be.
Then the surgeon moved the scope back to the lower hole and stuck a metal pointer thingy (this is a technical term) into the upper hole. Remember, the scope was threaded through a metal tube. It was like a giant pair of chopsticks were sticking out of her skull.
They had already rinsed the mass a little with saline and it hadn’t moved, so when they poked it with the pointer thingy, they were all surprised to see it was unattached to the sinus. This, too, I think intrigued them. Things they hadn’t expected to find in places they didn’t expect to find them behaving in ways they didn’t expect… fun times. Basically, the mass was just a ball of mucus and bacteria positioned where normal flushing wouldn’t get it. So when we flushed earlier this summer, we cleared out the worst of the infection but this pocket stayed behind and regrew.
They grabbed a sample to culture and then broke the ball up and flushed it out. Ro was a rock star through the entire process—we did this standing, with her sedated, and she was very cooperative, even when they were poking around at the mass. She’s staying at the vet’s for a couple days while we wait for the culture to come back, and they’re going to keep flushing the sinus out to make sure it’s clear.
The blisters on the guttural pouch are still a little bit of an unknown. For now, we are going to focus on the sinus cavity—get it flushed out, run a course of targeted antibiotics, make sure it is well and truly cleaned up. Then we’ll reevaluate the blisters. We know they were not present in February, so it’s possible they are secondary to the cycles of infection/inflammation of the sinus cavity. With any luck at all, they will disappear once the sinus infection is wiped out.
And then, knock on holey skulls, this entire thing will be behind us.
This week has been a pain in my ass
It appears that, under all the padding, I may have a muscle or two in my ass after all.
I know, because Ro was startled by something crashing through the bushes today. She was already unsettled, and that unglued her—she took off bucking. This is only the second time she’s ever taken off like this, and it’s the first time I’ve ever thought I might come off her.
I got her pulled up, collected myself, and we went right back to work. However, as soon as she trotted quietly past the bushes one time, I hopped off. She was not entirely settled, but I could tell I had pulled something and I did not want to make what is hopefully a minor tweak something worse if she spooked again.
Is it wrong that my first thought on trying to walk back to the barn was that at least the injury was centered? I mean, that indicates I must have been pretty centered on her, right? It’s like a whole new form of biofeedback.
Now I’m sitting on the couch feeling sorry for myself. It’s not just the injury (although it’s starting to feel like I may have torqued things all the way up my back). It’s that this isn’t even the worst thing we’ve dealt with this week. It’s just the icing on the cake.
Mmmm. Icing. I’m supposed to be on a sugar ban, but I think this calls for breaking it. Speaking of calls, I need to go make one. The pizza places all have those cinnapie things now. I am certain one of those will make me feel better. My sugar ban can start next week.
This is an emergency, this is an actual emergency. If it were a test, you’d be laughing right now.
If I ever find out what I did to piss off the karma gods, I will let you all know so that you can make sure you never, ever do the same thing.
I think I broke my toe today. If I didn’t break it, I bruised it very badly.
As it turns out, riding boots, while offering more protection than, say, tennis shoes, do not offer sufficient protection to save your toe if you drop a utility shed on it.
Allow me to explain.
Like most horse people, I have a tack box. But since I can’t do anything normal, my tack box is not actually a tack box in the traditional sense. You may be thinking of, say, one of those very elegant wooden tack boxes that can only be moved with two people and a prayer to the hernia gods. I don’t own one of those. You may be thinking of those very popular and very versatile rolling Stanely tool boxes. I am not so practical.
No, my tack box is more like a mini garden shed. And by “more like,” I mean, “I bought it at Lowe’s, where they call it a mini outdoor utility shed.” It’s about 4’ tall, 5’ wide, and 2’ deep. It is a spacious thing of organizational beauty.
And this afternoon, as I looked at it sitting in my truck bed, I thought, “Hey, it’s made of plastic. It’s not all that heavy. Or fragile. I’ll just pull it off the bed and let it drop straight down. What’s the worst that can happen?”
My foot could be in the way, for one thing.
Unfortunately, dropping a utility shed on my foot was the least of my problems today.
I am going to skip the details for now, but the net effect was that I got a message yesterday and as a result of that message needed to get Ro off the property as soon as possible. Fortunately, I was able to get her back in the barn we were at all winter and she can stay there for a week or months, whatever I need.
But the stress of the past twenty four hours, plus brutal heat (over 100 again), plus a day spent driving around checking out multiple boarding barns, plus, ultimately, my relief to just have Ro out and someplace where I do not have to worry… all combined to set me up for a situation where I stared at my utiliy shed in my truck bed and thought that pulling it out all on my own was a great idea.
Yeah, not so much.
So, now we’ll see what happens next. My computer broke last week (my life, it’s like a bad country song) and I still have a lot to deal with with this whole situation, so I’m probably going to be absent for a couple weeks while I try to get my life back together, but such is life. It happens. Sometimes it’s all roses and butterflies, and sometimes it hits you on the foot like a falling utility shed. You learn, you go on. Hopping on one foot, perhaps, but you go on…
Half a llama, twice a llama…
not a llama, farmer, llama, llama in a car, alarm a llama, llama, duck…*
Have I ever mentioned there are llamas across the street?
I learned this the first time I took Ro out to the big jump field. Silly me—my attention was on the streamers attached to the fence. I rode her aggressively past those, while she passively did. not. care.
Then I relaxed, and then we were halfway across the field and I was trying to figure out how and why we’d gotten there. And where Ro had put her brain in the meantime.
Eventually we found Ro’s brain again and I was able to look to try to figure out what had caused her to lose it.
Not the streamers. She didn’t care about those. Not traffic. She doesn’t care about traffic. I looked across the street. Hmm. Field. With a pony in it? Mmm k. Oh, and a donkey. But I thought she’d seen donkeys before… oh, and look, a llama. Or two. Or…
As I watched, more llamas popped out of nowhere and stood along the fence. Spooky chestnut mares are apparently very interesting. Being stared at by a herd of llamas is not so great for spooky chestnut mare’s nerves.
We went back to work, away from the killer fenceline, and after that I made a point of handwalking her out in the field whenever I remembered so we could walk past the llamas often. Ro is not entirely convinced they are benevolent, but she keeps her brain between her ears when she sees them, so that’s progress.
Today we went out with a couple other riders to ride in the field again.
She was actually pretty good, and where we had problems—getting a little tense and rushy—I think we would have had them anyway, with or without the llamas. She never lost her brain, and once she realized that we were indeed going to ride along that fenceline and I was indeed going to ask her to focus and work, she settled down pretty nicely. I think another ride or two out there and she’ll be very settled, and then I can let her open up and gallop a bit. We can’t really gallop in the arena, but I think she’d love the opportunity.
She seemed pretty pleased with herself afterwards, at any rate. I turned her out and she immediately trotted off to roll (why did I hose her off, again?), but she came back over to the fence when I called her and hung around for a little attention.
Also, if anyone is wondering, the MSM and electrolytes have done wonders for her stocking up. I am no longer wrapping during the day. She is slightly stocked up in the evening, but nothing like she used to be. I throw an ice wrap on her leg while I tack up, and the swelling is out by the time we start riding. I’ve been throwing another ice wrap on after our ride to make sure there is absolutely no residual heat from working in that leg, and this routine seems to be working very well for us. I hope it keeps working for the rest of the summer.
* I know you’ve heard the llama song, right? Surely I’m not the only one who wanders around singing “time for me to retire now and become a duck.” Right? Right? Anyone? Bueller?
In which we jump and do not get eaten by tigers
Friday Ro was a bit… well, another boarder called her “playful,” and that’s a nice way of putting it. I would have said a bit of a fruitcake.
The problem is the barn grain, which was changed recently, and which I absolutely hate. I have decreased her ration twice and she’s still a flipping fruitcake, so she goes off it tomorrow. I’ll figure something else out by the weekend. Given the fact that she needs to lose weight (can’t feel her ribs, getting a crease on her hind end, etc), she can do with a week or two off grain anyway.
But after Friday’s ride—which wasn’t much more than letting her burn off energy in a controlled way, and finding out that she does indeed love flying changes, even if she’s only doing them when she wants to and we don’t have a cue for them yet—I went out on Saturday expecting… I don’t know what.
I’d arranged to meet another boarder so we could go for a trail ride. The other boarder goes out on trails a lot, and has introduced inexperienced horses/riders to trails, and was happy to chaperone us arena flowers. Unfortunately we had a bit of a schedule mix up, and I ended up being there about an hour before she arrived.
I decided I might as well work Ro some, in case she was still a fruitcake. And if she wasn’t a fruitcake, a little actual work (vs burn energy fluff) would be good for both of us. Right?
She was a lot more settled than Friday, so I didn’t push for very much. But since she was being forward and obedient, I decided to trot her over a cross rail a couple times.
She never jumps them; she goes over them like they are cavalleti. Given how low they are, I can’t blame her for not jumping. As long as she goes forward and picks up her feet instead of demolishing the crossrail, I’m good with it. Right now, I just want her to figure out that poles are no big deal and to learn where to put her feet. I go in two point, stay out of her face, and let her figure it out.
We trotted in, nice and connected, I got out of her way and… she jumped. Color me surprised! Color the trainer who was in the arena surprised, too. I don’t think he’s ever seen us even go over a pole, much less a cross rail, so he sounded a little shocked when he said, “She has a cute jump!”
I’m shocked she has a jump at all!
She also cantered off and didn’t fall apart on the other side of the cross rail; it was a nice canter—not rushing off, not shutting down. I was very pleased.
We trotted it again a second time a bit later, with the same result. I was very happy that she trotted forward to it the second time—no sucking back like she was uncertain, but also no rushing forward like she was worried about getting over it. And a decent canter afterwards again.
She got a break then—I untacked her and let her graze for a bit, then she got to chill out in her stall while the other boarder had her lesson. I was back on Ro by the end of the lesson, figuring we’d practice standing in the arena while other horses did stuff (patience… neither of us has it).
Ro took being tacked up a second time stoically, after an “are you kidding me?” look, and was quite happy to just stand around. They were jumping a gymnastic and she was fairly fascinated by it—kept watching the horses go through it with her ears way forward. I think she may have figured out that jumping is fun…
And then we hit the trails.
Ro has been out on trails once—when we went last fall and she was fabulous. I told the other boarder I thought Ro would be better than me (I am the world’s biggest arena flower), and that proved to be the case. I startled more at things in the bushes than Ro did.
It took Ro a bit to figure out that she needed to pay attention to her feet, because this was not a groomed arena or clear field, but by the end of the ride she was getting better. And she went everywhere I asked with no hesitation—stepping over little logs across the trail, walking on the trail or in grass, and even through some pretty steep ditches. She walked last in the line and didn’t try to charge ahead, but she has a forward walk, so every once in a while I’d ask her to stop and let the others go ahead. She did, every time, and waited until I asked her to walk on.
I was really impressed with her. I love that she takes new things in stride, and I think she actually really likes being out on the trail.
For bonus points, there is a long, straight, wide part of the trail that has some really pretty decent footing. It would be fabulous for doing work—transitions, going forward and coming over the back, or even having a bit of a gallop. I want to take advantage of that—it would get us both out of the arena without sacrificing progress towards my general goals. Unfortunately, I don’t remember how to get there, and frankly I think we broke some laws of physics because passed something we’d passed before, but going in the completely wrong direction according to my internal (mis)compass. But what do I know? I get lost in paper bags.
So my new mission—keep tagging along with people until I know at least some of the trails pretty well, and definitely find out how to get back to that open path. We stayed at a walk just because Ro and I were green, but next time I go out with this boarder, I think we’ll step up the pace. Ro’s clearly calm and happy out on the trails, and as long as she stays responsive, there’s no reason to stay at the walk all the time. Plus, some of those little logs we walked over were very jumpable (good footing before/after). If Ro really has clicked on to the idea that jumping is fun, I bet she’ll have a blast popping over those.
You can guess where this is all going… I don’t think Green as Grass eventing is any higher than cross rails and little logs. If she’ll trot over all this stuff confidently, we may turn into baby eventers yet.