So when Mindy divulged to me on the way home that the Chiro Vet who saw Breeze said she should look into having her hocks injected, I felt sick for my sister. Ugh, we weren't raise to cheat and we certainly weren't raised to disrespect our animals health.
Luckily for us, I had my lap top with us in the front seat AND we have a Verizon Air Card, so as long as there was cellular reception, we had Internet access!! Yippee! We simply Google searched "hock injections". This is the article that we found. We found a couple more, but this one was far and away the best.
After that we called my vets office. Dr. Peters is a competitive Mounted Shooter (Men's Champion in his division) and his wife was a barrel racer that converted to Mounted Shooting. I feel that his take on things like this is more than an MD, its also as a competitor. After talking with his office, we made an appointment for Breeze, and also crossed our fingers that Tari would be ready to go home as well. She had been dropped off by my wonderful husband the previous Wednesday.
Dr. Peters did a soundness exam and explained in detail what he saw and what the treatment would entail. Mindy decided to pull the trigger. In order to see the hocks thoroughly he did the films and showed us them on his computer, what we saw was amazing. ( He sent the films home with her on a disc, but I didn't get them downloaded before she left...too bad too. Maybe someday I will get a hold of it and add them to this blog.) He flat out told her that these were some of the worst films he had seen on a horse that was still willingly and effectively competing. Each hock was sporting a floating chip and definitely showed some OCD. He also said that she is one tough and gritty mare and must really love her job. He said that if she were his and was going as well as she was like this, he would definitely inject her and see how she felt after the injection. It couldn't hurt to try and she may be blown away by the difference in her runs. He also said that he could keep in the clinic and remove the chips if my sister wanted to take that route, but felt the less invasive procedure was the best place to start.
There was a lot of cussing, some pacing, and more cussing before she said that she was still willing to go ahead with the injection. Dr. Peters did his job and then filled us in on Tari.
His news on Tari was less than good for us as well. He injected her with the "girl drugs" and got NOTHING! Miss Tari didn't even start her heat cycle. So he was re-injecting her that evening to try to get her jump started back into cycling.
We were both bummed. Tari being ready to go home would have been nice to hear. But NOOOOOO! The good news was that Dr. Peters had been having his clinic assistants lung her for 20 minutes twice a day. Thank God! The thought of her being stall bound for all this time gave me anxiety for her! ( :
Dr. Peters said it would probably be Saturday or Sunday before I could bring her home, IF she cooperated. Lovely. I walked over to her stall and informed her that she'd better get her stuff together!
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