Nilla Injury Update

Saturday the 5th was 6 weeks from Nilla’s injury. In theory we should have started tack walking at this point, but Nilla was sill lame. Although, it’s difficult to determine soundness when this is the reaction you get when you ask her to trot:

If you’re a practiced eye, you can actually see the lameness even in that fit. Just watch the inside hind leg and how she pulls it up quickly. You can see the problem more easily whenever she trots for a few seconds:

At 7 weeks, she looked like this:

It’s better, but it’s not sound. If you look closely, you’ll see that her left hind leg is covered in poultice. She went through a stage at 7 weeks where 3 out of 4 legs were swollen: her injured leg, the other hind, and the front left. This has since resolved.

Now here’s what she looked like on Wednesday the 16th:

This is significantly better. I’m now at the point where I don’t know if it’s even going to look better. This is the same leg with her problem hock. As such, I’m not sure if she’d look much better if she’d never broken the leg. And she still has an open wound on this leg which would make moving uncomfortable. She’s certainly got the energy and isn’t hesitant to use the leg. I turned her out to roll and she took off across the arena to go say hi to/squeal at Shasta.

On the plus side, the wounds are looking much better:

At this point, I may start walking her around a bit. Saturday will be 8 weeks and bones are fully fused at 8 weeks. Movement would certainly help with all the swelling and may help with any stiffness incurred by her arthritic hock. However, it’s also supposed to rain forever and ever starting Friday (I am totally not being dramatic about this at all). So she’ll probably have until January before I really start any real rehab. Provided it doesn’t rain then too.