No drainage except for a teeny drop of blood. Huzzah!

Farrier on Monday which means I am coordinating with the vet to pick up a tranq. It will be interesting to see a) if he goes back to his normal self, or something like it and b) how much of the holes are trimmed off.

Soaking seems to be working well, and tonight we accidentally hand walked for nearly 15 minutes and he was just fine – he also decided that trot poles were for trotting when I asked him to walk over them. Oops?

In conclusion, I present to you our soaking routine.

So, bad news first: Tristan’s foot is definitely infected.

Good news: he is sound at the walk and trot, and the vet caught the infection, and we tranq’d him and she cut back a bit to get at clean, bleeding flesh. We sent pictures off to the surgeon and he was concerned but not worried.

Good news also that we are wrapping les, so he fit into his normal sized boot today, and he’s cleared to do more handwalking and try some light turnout.

So I keep up with my flushing/wrapping schedule, and add a powdered antibiotic called metronidazole on top of the wound – it’s the same stuff we were using in his abscess holes in the fall, for anaerobic infection.

The surgeon also suggested soaking the foot a few times, to draw out the infection. Basically treat it like an abscess. I’ll dig out & disinfect his soaking boot in the next few days and start that on Wednesday, with his next rewrapping.

If he goes lame, throws a temp, etc, then we start to worry but until then we assume this is small, mostly surface, and while we are treating it aggressively, it probably won’t be a setback.

Scroll down for pictures, first showing the infection/pus, second showing the cleaned out foot – it’s grown back quite a bit, really, so that’s encouraging.

Every time I toss out Tristan’s leftover dilut Betadine, I can’t help but think it looks like a murder scene.

So much better. Soooooooo much better. Thank God. Back to his normal self, well-behaved and patient. I was dreading tonight, making plans to beg the vet for drugs or the boyfriend for carrot-feeding duty. But Tris stood like a champ, fussed a little bit at the very, very end but only then and only for a few seconds. BEST pony.

In happy news, too, when I called the clinic to talk about the photos I sent them (they are still pleased) they gave me the go-ahead to do a little bit of handwalking as long as he stays comfortable. So tonight we did three! whole! laps! of the indoor! He was soooooo happy, moving right out and looking at everything.

When we left the indoor to head back to our stall he paused for a long moment and looked hopefully at the door to go outside. Poor guy. On Monday we’ll be halfway to the low end of his estimate, though, and I he tolerates handwalking well then maybe the Monday after that he can go on short turnout – especially if we can wrap less and put on the smaller boot.

In my continuing attempts to document everything: here, have some random pictures of our wrapping supplies.

Bucket o’stuff: 5 gallon bucket filled with vet wrap, gauze rolls, and underneath some miscellaneous extras. Mostly what you see on top, though, all the way down.

Typical supplies for a night’s wrapping. Starting with the  knockoff Betadine and going clockwise: betadine, gauze roll, vet wrap, betadine swab, baggie of gloves, two pairs of bandage scissors, and a roll of elastikon.

So we were meant to have a two week checkup yesterday morning…but due to a scheduling mixup with the vet, we’re going ahead next week with a three week checkup instead. I took pictures and sent them to the clinic along with a detailed verbal description of everything, so I expect to hear back from them today.

I rewrapped his foot last night and it was awful. The foot itself looked okay, I think – some discharge, but not copious amounts – but he was just totally unmanageable. He reared, kicked out, tried to fall over on top of me, tried to bite me, yanked the foot away – you name it. I got at most stretches of 10-15 seconds to accomplish things before I had to hang on tight again and not let him put his bare, unwrapped foot back on the aisle. He did not respond to cajoling, growling, smacking on his shoulder, manipulations to try and find a more comfortable way for me to hold the foot – none of it. He just wanted me GONE.

I don’t know why he was so awful. It could be that the flushing mixture was too cold. It could be that he was in some kind of pain – that the discharge is more worrisome than I thought. It could be that he is just DONE with everything. He’s been on stall rest a little over three weeks now. He has 4-6 weeks to go. This is the longest he has EVER been in a stall. While he is still a gentleman to handle (for everything except wrapping) and he is showing no obvious signs of sourness or frustration, I’m sure he’s bored and ready to move on.

I’ve made arrangements with the barn to get him his antibiotics tonight, as we are getting as much as 18″ of snow today (happy spring!) and I might not be able to make it out tonight. Even if I could risk it – maybe – it might be smarter for us to take a little bit of a break from each other.

Below, two close-up pictures of the foot at two weeks out from surgery. Scroll down for them; I’ll put some space in case anyone is squeamish.

Though last night was to be my first night off from wrapping, I rewrapped anyway, because I was worried about him having stood in his dirty stall.

He had a little but of blood and discharge, more than I wanted, but not enough to go through the small square of gauze that was in the hole itself. The hole also smelled a bit funkier than I would have liked. I’ll keep a close eye – he’s still walking fine and in good spirits – but I can’t help but feel it’s a bit of a setback.

I think when they told me 6-8 weeks of recovery I was mostly excited about how short that was, how I’d be back to riding in May, possibly. I didn’t think how long that was if you’re worried practically every second of every day.

I took a picture of the gauze from his foot in the interests of disclosure; if you’re at all squeamish, don’t scroll down.