the healing process

Lucy took her 5 day sentence of stall rest relatively well; at least I had thought she did until another boarder told me today that she caught Lucy body-slamming herself against her stall door. I am not sure if that's an exaggeration or not but I am disappointed that I wasn't told before today, because I could have given her some slow-release sedatives to make the confinement easier on her. I didn't want to drug her and she seemed to be doing so well but obviously body-slamming is not conducive to "taking it easy" and I am just glad she didn't do herself more harm.

Her wounds continue to heal well. I changed her bandages on Thursday night, and again this morning. Her fetlock surprises me each time I see it; the tissue is filling in nicely and everything looks clean and healthy. The wound on her stifle looks ok and is staying clean, but it looks ugly compared to everything else because there is no way to cover that area so it is already developing a pretty good scab. I have been gently cleaning it with betadine scrub and then treating it with Derma Gel to assure proper healing.

I took some photos of her progress each time I redressed her legs.

Thursday night, before scrubbing with Betadine:

Right front, looking much less swollen than on Monday!

left hind fetlock

left hind stifle

After disinfecting/scrubbing:

wrapped up and ready for bed!

Today after cleaning:

bandaged up again, and sporting her new cooler that I won at Equine Affaire!

Today she started turnout again. I held her on a leadrope for the first ten minutes or so in a grass paddock. When she settled down and started grazing, I unclipped the leadrope but still stayed next to her. After another ten minutes, I took a few steps away and gradually as time passed, I made my way to the fence line. This way it wasn't like, SURPRISE! YOU'RE FREE!, which probably would have resulted in a  bit of craziness. She was a really good girl and stayed quiet for the most part. Two horses returned from a trail ride and walked past her, and at that point she took a few trot steps and got a little excited, but she settled back down quickly. She looked very sound, too!!

I also picked up my saddle today, something I was procrastinating on big time. I was honestly scared to pick it up because I didn't have the courage to see what it was going to look like. To my great surprise, it actually looks wonderful. The man who worked on it, Steve Briggs from Allie's Tack and Feed, is an incredibly talented and gifted tack repair specialist. He must have worked some magic on that saddle!! Though it will always have blemishes from this accident, it looks much better than I could have hoped for.

The Equine Affaire report is coming...I have lots of video to go through still so it may take me a couple days :)