What Goes Up…

After some great weeks of fun and progress myself and Coco have hit an unexpected roadblock.

Warning: this post has some gross pics.

Hover your mouse over each picture to see captions

A week or so ago Coco wasn’t really feeling herself both on the flat and jumping. She was distracted and fresh on the flat which isn’t something new but she wasn’t giving her best when it came to jumping which was definitely not like Coco. This was the day before the Friday Night jumping league at my yard so I just put it down to Coco having an off day but unfortunately she was pretty much the same in the warm up before the course. When we got into the course Coco was spooky, distracted and again not feeling herself! A few of the other mares on the yard had gone into season so I put her odd behaviour down to this.

The next day however, I arrived to the yard to find that Coco had escaped from her paddock. One of the instructors at my yard found her down at the back of the fields and put her into an empty paddock until I got there. When I got to her the first thing I saw was that she had a pretty nasty cut on the inside of her front left leg. I brought her in to give it a clean but noticed that she wasn’t walking right. I decided to trot her up and it turned out she was lame.

Day 1

The cut was quite clean so I gave it a hose and put some black powder on it. When I came up the next day it wasn’t as fresh looking but wasn’t showing signs of infection so I did the same again. Knowing Coco though, I decided it might be a good idea to keep her in for a day to give the wound a chance to close up. Lame or not, if Coco’s feeling the mood nothing will stop her from tearing around the field. Roll on Monday morning and I received a call during work from my yard manager – Coco’s leg had blown up and become very puffy below the cut so we decided it was best to call the vet in. Thankfully my yard is only 10 minutes down the road from work so I was able to leave work to meet the vet when he got there.

The first thing I saw when I arrived was a very sedated Coco with her head practically between her legs as the vet was giving the wound a good clean. Good news though, the vet wasn’t worried as the cut was in a good position and hadn’t nicked any ligaments or tendons thankfully. She did manage to cut herself down to the bone though so there is a possibility that she may have a chipped bone. The vet had a good poke around though and felt that the bone was quite smooth so hopefully there’s nothing there. Unfortunately however, we won’t know for definite for another few weeks. Apparently the wound won’t heal if there’s a chipped bone, in which case her leg would need to be x-rayed to confirm the chip and then it would need to be removed. Fingers crossed this isn’t the case!!

After a good clean from the vet

And some trusty blue spray

With that, the vet left me with antibiotics and instructions for cleaning the wound, so now we play the waiting game. I’ve never had to deal with an injury this bad before so the last week or so has been a bit of a learning experience and I’ll admit I had a few ‘oh Sh**’ moments! But thankfully, she’s healing up quite well and feeling very good in herself. I’ve been taking pictures of the cut every day so it’s interesting to see the different stages of healing. You can see each day below. One things for sure..bringing her back into work will be interesting!