Congratulations! It’s an abscess!

Welcome back to horse ownership Katie, where abscesses come in the spring and your plans don’t matter. 

So the farrier was out on Friday and confirmed my unofficial diagnosis of an abscess that probably originated from the seedy toe. She couldn’t dig it out since it’s in a funny place so she recommended poulticing it until the abscess burst and to try keep the hoof clean and dry… which is not the easiest thing to do in spring conditions in Taranaki, New Zealand. 

 

So once the farrier left and I finally managed to catch her (see video above), the grazing owner and I gathered together the many supplies that a hoof poultice requires. And then tried to put on her. And tried. And tried. And tried. And failed. Birdie has been getting more and more fed up with me messing with her hoof every day for epsom salt soaks and after the farrier used her hoof testers this afternoon, Birdie was determined we were not going to put that poultice on. She started kicking out and it was getting a bit dangerous so we called it, a poultice was not worth her getting any more worked up or one of us getting injured. 

She wasn’t very good with having her hooves picked out when she first arrived so we’ve been working on that and she was getting pretty good and lifting them up and putting them down on command before but now she’s taken a couple of steps back with this abscess malarky so I’ll spend the next couple of days working on that again and not actually doing anything to her sore hoof to get her used to it again. 

I’ve got the vet coming out on Monday to do her teeth which will mean a sedation so if we need something else done to her hoof, that will be the time. 

Speaking of the vet, I’m going to need him to check out Birdie’s face while he’s here. She’s suddenly developed swelling along her upper jaw in the last couple of days, it started on one side and I thought it was because she leaned on her halter (enough to rub a patch in her face bare) to get away from the dreaded epsom salt soaks. But the day after her faced puffed up in exactly the same place on the other side so I’m not exactly sure what is going on. Could be spring grass thing, a tooth thing or something else completely so hopefully the vet can shed some light on that on Monday. I think the swelling has lessened today so hopefully it’s not a big deal. 

Oh horse ownership, my bank account has not missed you.