Spring Maintenance

 Goose is 18 now - EIGHTEEN. Our ten year Goosiversary is July 7, and in this decade together we've done a lot of things. 

One thing we haven't done is maintenance. 

A drunk Goose. Love his droopy eyelids.

Goose wasn't really started until he was eight. He was broke before I bought him, but you could hop on and pray that he went the direction you asked him to - he was very green, but always a pretty level-headed dude (at least most of the time). In the years following, he's never been in really intense work; he's had long periods of time off whether due to his two 'big' injuries or winter or I left the country for six months, and I always keep his workload reasonable for his fitness level. I totally baby him, and it's paid off. 

As mentioned in previous blog posts, Goose has been feeling good, but I felt like it was time to get him looked at and assessed for general maintenance. My budget wouldn't allow me to inject EVERYTHING but I felt pretty good that he wouldn't need *too* much. I was right. 

I missed my opportunity to have him assessed during spring shots because he just wasn't fit enough to do a lameness eval. He NEEDS a baseline of fitness in order to look normal - long back, big horse, draft shuffle. Gotta love it. He has enough fitness on him now to present in a reasonable and accurate manner, so I tacked on to a pony's appointment at my barn and Dr. F came out on Wednesday. We decided to pull blood to test for Cushing/IR issues (which we don't super suspect, but given his breed, air-fern title, and lifestyle it's worth having a baseline), and we did a lameness workup. 

I didn't video this part, I was too busy watching, but my man flexed lovely in front, like not at all positive and we were super impressed. It's worth noting also how stoic this creature is - when he bowed a tendon, he BARELY flexed lame on the affected leg, so it's good context to have. He flexed slightly positive in both fetlocks, but not of major concern for a horse of his age and size, and his right hock was positive. Stifles were lovely. All in all, Dr. F was super impressed that Goose is 18 and looks this good especially considering he's never had injections or other maintenance. I was so relieved and pleased to hear that!

We talked through a variety of options - anything from just Adequan, Adequan plus Equioxx, Injecting hocks, injecting plus Adequan, the list goes on. What I love about our vet is that he takes the workload of the horse and the budget we're working with into consideration and gives us options - he's also really honest if there's something he absolutely feels strongly we need to do. In this case, he wanted me to do something for Goose, but wasn't concerned about any of it in a big way. 

In the end, I chose to inject his hocks and do Adequan. As mentioned, Goose is extremely stoic. To me, that makes me want to take his positive hocks even more seriously, because the right one was DEFINITELY bugging him and I owe it to his current and future health to maintain him. I feel I would have regretted just trying Equioxx and Adequan, and if in six months we felt he DID need hocks, fall is not the right time for his annual injections - he gets most of the winter off. I'm happy with my decision, it fell within the realm of the budget I had in mind. I think it will make a difference for him which he deserves. I want to keep enjoying this horse as long as he is happy doing a job, and he is still very happy with his workload. 

The plan will be to keep an eye on his fetlocks and reflex everything next spring (or sooner if we feel necessary), but we think they're slightly positive mainly from his hocks, so the injections and Adequan will help that. When we injected, his right hock is nearly fused so that's good to know as well. We'll start the Adequan this weekend - we're doing the seven shot loading dose series, and then doing it again in the fall six months from now. I'm really happy with how this plan came together and am excited to get back on Goose next week and see how he's feeling! Likely he'll feel the same to ride, but I know his body will probably feel better to him and that's what counts. 

Goose wasn't thrilled to be in the stall/runout situation we use for post-injections/injuries, but he was pretty good overnight with his hay nets. Super boring post today without a lot of media, but looking forward to happy hocks and fun adventures to come!