Abscess Report: The Vet Is Called In

The agony of de feet as Tom Ivers used to characterize it, continues for our two year old Amart. We have followed up two weeks of relative inactivity due to weather with another two weeks+ resulting from abscesses to both front feet. And, yes, it's a bummer. RR is hardly what you'd call happy about this revolving course of events that probably causes us to lose a couple months of training by the time we get back to where we were.

Of course, we're in good company. The Cliff's Edge was scratched from the Preakness due to an abscess, Real Quiet visits the Vet Hospital with abscesses in both hind legs, and the worst of all, my thought that it is a stupid abscess in the right hind leg that might really have done in Barbaro.

Any owner of a horse recognizes immediately the severe lameness resulting from the relatively benign hoof infection that we call an abscess. In the case of Barbaro, things were going so well in mid December 06. They then decide to bring in the outside expert to wrap one of the hoofs and things immediately start to go South.

I initially was very wary on Barbaro about the efforts of Scott Morrision DVM in wrapping the foundered leg in late December. But, in retrospect, what really may have been happening, unknown to everybody, is that the lameness developing after Morrison's wrapping in fact was a developing abscess in the right hind. How many times in a normal horse do we have trouble determining which leg is lame? If you look at the videos of Barbaro and the twisted condition of that right hind along with founder in the left hind, a developing lameness in the hinds from an abscess migh have been extraordinarily difficult to pinpoint. Knowing the dynamics of a developing abscess, it makes you even sicker to realize that given the condition of the horse, they simply could not have known what really was happening, and may have made all sorts of incorrect judgments due to the developing but hidden abscess.

Obviously, once they diagnosed abscess in Barbaro, they were unable to locate it. That's the thing about an abscess--if you find it, no problem. If you're unable, then in a sound horse it's a major headache--see Amart--but, in Barbaro, a nightmare and probably near worst case scenario.

I am taking them at their word and that they put the horse down because laminitis began in the fronts. This would be so much better really than that they threw in the towel with the abscess as the final straw. We'll never really know, but, it'll be a puzzler for me for a while.

Well--I got sidetracked. More about our abscess tomorrow, and then I'll conclude on conventional training and injuries, and get to what I really look forward to, which is relating injuries to training.

Today's Training:
Recovering from yesterday's vet visit on abscess. We should be back in business soon. More on this next post.