"Hold my beer" -Ben

Ben detected things were getting a bit too serious after our fun return to Majestic. Friday morning I pulled him out of the stall to go down for a lesson and he was lame on his right hind. It was swollen on the lateral aspect of the leg. He didn't have a fever, so I cold hosed and gave a gram of bute and put him back in the stall to go take a lesson on Goggles. 

When I came back that afternoon, he was looking the most pathetic. Temp was now 102.5. I know he is not stoic, but he would've sworn he was an inch from the grave at that point. Ooookay, guess we're doing antibiotics. We started SMZs and gentamicin. He also got 10cc of banamine. I had gone to work by the time I tracked down the gentamicin, so my wonderful husband left work, drove 1.5 hours round trip to my work to pick up the meds, then went and gave them. 

He's identified Rex as Ben's alter ego and sent me that gif after seeing the poor dude. 

The next morning he felt a million times better and seemed like he might not be quite at the brink of death anymore. He had blown up the entire leg though. We were doing twice daily cold hosing (Ms. GY is amazing) and he was out most of the timeso we were leaving it unwrapped. He did get significantly more lame on Sunday though, barely toe touching on the leg. 

Tuesday the skin split open under his pastern and it almost seemed like an abscess rupturing because he became much more sound. 

The larger gross thing is his very old (yearling) scar, just stretched out, but you can see the skin split above it

So then I had to keep it covered lest bugs make it much, much worse. 

Today's check in photo

SSD on the scar and skin split

Sterile gauze

Roll cotton and then kling

Finish with vet wrap and elastikon

He's actually been going out with this wrap on, and knock on wood the elastikon seems to be doing the job of keeping sand out. 

Cold hosing is now only once a day because it's wrapped, but I did add in cold laser this morning. He trotted almost sound on the lunge this morning, so I think tomorrow we'll walk hack while the wrap is off. 

We did figure out how he started all this. He chose to roll in the sand pit by the gate and stuck that leg under the gate (smooth, round metal) and bent the bottom rung up. He was missing a tiny bit of fur but didn't have any wounds to speak of. It was August two years ago that Yoshi got cellulitis. Seems like August is a bad time for growing bacteria.