Bonus 1 - Vet Check

The first Vet Check

Your nervousness didn't settle as much as I wished to, but this vet appointment was so incredibly important to start your recovery.

The vet checked you from head to toe, but you were clearly quite uncomfortable and in a lot of pain. You wouldn't stop dodging during the exam and considering your physical plus mental state- a sedation was absolutely necessary to finish the treatment. It's what I expected, but sedating a horse in that shape and with no balance seemed like such a dangerous thing to do. Fact was though, to fix your neglected teeth and x-ray that suspicious hind leg, it must be done. 

Our vet has been doing this job for probably over 30 years and i feel like its not a good sign if someone like him looks pitiful at your horse. He did that typical "arhg I don't know about this" headshake that old men do and then directed his view at me. "Its up to you." he said shrugging. 

Gosh I was so scared- I was set on helping you and giving you the life you deserved, but the fear of being egoistic and putting you through all of this for nothing, layed heavy on my chest. Right at that moment you turned your head a little and looked at me. Maybe its just what I wanted to see, but to me that felt like the first time you searched for comfort in my presence. Tears started to well up in my eyes- "We keep going, we have to try." I said.

After two shots of sedation, you finally got drowsy- but the moment your legs gave up was quite scary. With no strength left, you sank to the ground and from then on everything happened so fast- he took that x-ray and without wasting any time he immediately began with the teeth. He kneeled there on the ground while Fabio helped holding your head. It didn't look good in there- but it could have been certainly much worse. In the meantime I tried to clean you and your horrible looking back as good as possible. Everything went relatively well so far and final touches were made with an immune boost shot and antibiotics for all those infections. Your hoofes obviously didn't look good, but there couldn't be much done since the people from the animal control already shortened and treated them as much as possible. A few weeks later our farrier will come and check out if we can proceed with reshaping your feet. 

The doc prescribed pain medication and a special spray that helped with the rainrot issue. He was quite sure that it was in fact rainrot, but if the spray wouldn't help we could have tested via microscope. Thank goodness he was right and I was able to help you with the right treatment immediately. 

Two days later he called me and gave the results from the blood test plus that x-ray. The blood looked good overall but as suspected, your ankle joint was twisted and unstable. As terrible as those news were, I was so relieved to know that nothing is broken. So I immediately drove off to get the brace you needed and stopped at the shop for a thin fly blanket and Supplements as well.

A day later the physiotherapist came to our stable to check on you as well.

After examining you throughly, misses scheafer called you a "crooked catastrophe" and explained that you have such weak, malformed legs that its no suprised to have literally all parts of your body affected by it. The terrible posture and your attempt to compensate the miserable hoof position, trained you to walk in such an odd way that it'll take a lot of time to fix it. She especially worried a lot about your one hind leg that our vet already diagnosed. Having one very weak link in the chain means that fixing everything around it will be even more difficult. 

I still have her words ringing in my ears- "Hope is another form of love, it's so important indeed! But there's times where it's better to prepare ourselves for the worst case scenario." A wave of cold realization rushed through my body and the worries I've had after meeting you and that vet visit, came boiling back up. This time I refused to cry tho- I knew I had to be strong for the both of us.

The beginning of your therapy started with misses scheafer gently adjusting everything as good as possible, putting kinesiology tape on the parts with no open wounds and testing how you respond to certain exercises. Your walking wasn't particularly different after, but you looked a bit more relaxed, I must say! We planned a schedule of physiotherapy appointments with her and she gave me a lot of instructions on how to loosen some of your tension and strengthen joints/muscles in between sessions.