Emmy

What is cuter than pictures of sweet Emmy? Pictures of Emmy and a PUPPY! Molly is our volunteer and neighbor’s new golden retriever puppy and Molly along with her big sister Maggie, came over to say hi this week. These photos are absolutely ADORABLE! Jessica Farren caught some very sweet kisses between them!

This week we brought Emmy home from winter turnout at foster. We had a lameness evaluation done on Tuesday (video posted below) and sadly, she is still slightly off on the right hind. The time off has helped her some, but there is clearly something still bothering her. The two issues we’ve been struggling with have been the sizeable bone chip that was surgically removed from her right stifle last year and the middle patella ligament swelling that we discovered after the surgery. Injuries to the middle patella ligament (PL) are relatively uncommon, so there is not a lot of information to go on. It’s much more common for horses to have issues surrounding the medial PL, which causes the stifle to “lock up”. Since we don’t know how long that ligament had been contributing to her lameness, we decided against PRP or shock wave as treatment. Instead we opted to give her the winter off in a big turnout and allowed nature, movement, and time to do their work and let her heal. After discussing our options with Dr. McCracken, we decided to try injecting her stifle to see if that brings her any relief.

Emmy’s right stifle was injected with a combination of steroids and antibiotics. She then had 24 hours of stall rest before we started hand walking: 5 to 10 minutes of walking over the next two days, gradually building up over the next two weeks. She’ll be able to return to normal turn out on Friday. Dr. McCracken will recheck her in 10 days to see if the injection has helped. Best case scenario will be that the injection allows her to return to light walk/trot riding. If the stifle injection proves to be successful, she should be able to maintain soundness for six months to a year by continuing the injections. However if we see a return to lameness within the next month, we’ll know that the damage to the patella ligament is still causing the majority of her lameness and we may have to consider retirement. For now, we’re going to stay positive and hope that the stifle injection keeps her sound. With consistent work and conditioning, we hope that shecould have a good riding career as a walk/trot horse.

Personality-wise, Emmy is still an absolute doll, and just a lovely looking mare. She is easy to handle, great for the vet, and calm for volunteers and others to be around her. She is settling back into life at Safe Harbor Stables and we hope that this injection will allow us to put her back into work and conditioning soon! We will keep you posted!

Emmy’s lameness exam:

Emmy and Sophie don’t ming sharing

Emmy’s rehab after surgery went according to plan — or so we thought —until around the 6 week mark. We noticed her take a few bad steps in turnout and that raised a few red flags that something might be wrong.

Dr. DeWard examined her and noted swelling in the stifle and sensitivity on palpation of the sesamoid ligament, where she had previously had some issues. He recommended performing a nerve block on the ligament to see if the pain was coming from the ligament or the stifle. Emmy was still lame after the block, so the ligament was not the issue. Dr DeWard thought her movement was indicative of pain in a source further up the leg instead of originating from the stifle.

With this information in hand, we contacted Dr. McCracken, who had performed the surgery. Emmy was hauled up to Rainland Farm Vet Care for an exam and follow-up x‑rays. The stifle joint appeared to be healing with no remaining bone fragments or new fractures. The joint was then injected with anti-inflammatories and Emmy was given discharge instructions for continued stall rest and hand-walking. If she did not return to soundness, our next step would be to schedule an ultrasound.

Unfortunately, Emmy was still lame at her 3‑month post-surgery exam. We scheduled an ultrasound to see what was happening. It showed that she had a significantly enlarged middle patellar ligament. At some point she had clearly injured it. It isn’t clear if it happened during her rehab, during the recovery from anesthesia, or it was there before her original diagnosis of OCD. 

Dr. McCracken researched how best to treat this particular ligament because unlike the medial patella ligament, injuries to the middle ligament are not very common. We had two options. The first option was that we could inject PRP and do shockwave treatments. Given that we don’t know the age of the injury, that approach would have no benefit for an older chronic injury. There was also a debate about whether the cost was worth it if that was the case. Our second option was to turn Emmy out to pasture for the winter and see how she healed on her own. 

In the end, we opted to send Emmy to foster with her pals Sophie and Annabelle where she will live the next few months in beautiful fields of green pasture. We will re-assess her lameness in the spring. For now, she is happy and enjoying Mother Nature’s healing touch. Also there are goats.

Everyone is invited to the hay party!!

Emmy likes to eat right next to her buddy Sophie

First meeting of the girls…

Emmy was released from Rainland Equine into the care of her Aunt Kyle, who will be overseeing her rehab at Feature Farm for the next several weeks. To give you a clear picture of what that will involve, here is the discharge information from Rainland outlining the next twelve weeks of her rehab:

Update: Bone fragments successfully removed. Remainder of joint looks good. Surgery uneventful, tolerated anesthesia well. She was “smart” standing up after. She will be assessed for status and comfort tomorrow AM to determine if she can be discharged.

Thanks to an amazing group of people who pitched in their monetary support, Emmy is going to get the surgery she needs to remove the bone chip from her stifle. The surgery is scheduled for April 21st and she’ll be transported to Rainland Equine the night before to get settled in. Dr McCracken will be doing the surgery, and we are very hopeful that it will be a success for Emmy!

Emmy was seen by Dr McCracken at Rainland Equine last week for continuing diagnostics, following the discovery of the OCD lesion in her stifle. The results of these diagnostics were informative but not completely conclusive.

Dr McCracken used Rainland’s “Lameness Locator” system to objectively measure response to localized sedation, or blocking. This is important, as it quickly became clear that this would not be a simple diagnosis.

First, the right stifle —the area with the OCD lesion—was blocked. Initial response at 10 min and 30 min was zero improvement. At 60 minutes, there was 25% improvement and at 70 minutes approaching 50% improvement. This left us in a grey area, as Dr. McCracken couldn’t be sure that the stifle was the only issue.

We opted to continue with diagnostics and block the lower leg. 4 injections were done to cover from the fetlock down. Boom! 100% improvement.

Next step was to determine if it was a joint/bone issue or soft tissue problem. We opted to do radiographs on the lower leg and subsequently the foot. No OCD lesions were found, no arthritis, no fractures, no navicular. All images were negative.

This leaves us with a tentative diagnosis of lower limb soft tissue injury; Dr. McCracken believes it’s most likely in the distal sesamoid ligament. Ultrasound would be needed to confirm, but we opted not to ultrasound at this time.

Because Emmy was sedated and the imaging equipment was set up, we opted to x‑ray the left stifle to rule out another OCD lesion. This information would be critical to determining if surgery on the right stifle lesion would be an option. Additionally, another view of the right stifle was needed to rule out the presence of a cyst. Fortunately, the left stifle was clean and we did not find a cyst on the right. Both good news for prognosis.

So, we still don’t have a definitive diagnosis, but we have a lot more information to work with. We are now considering some options based on what we learned, and we’ll have more to report once we figure out how best to proceed. We’re still considering surgery on the right stifle to remove the OCD lesion, but there is also the question of treating the soft tissue, which is likely to mean limited movement and a very structured hand walking regimen, similar to the rehab program that we recently followed with Phoenix.

More to come!

A few weeks ago, Terry was showing Emmy to some potential adopters. She looked fine at liberty and on the lunge line, but when Terry got on her to ride, Emmy pinned her ears and kicked out at her leg…behaving in a way that was very non-Emmy like! Terry got off and checked the saddle fit, watched her on the lunge again, and got back on. Again Emmy made it very clear that something was not right, so Terry called an end to the showing and put her away.

Emmy’s stifle x‑ray

Before we can arrive at a plan for treating this, we have more diagnostic work that needs to be done. First we have to confirm that the bone chip is really what’s causing Emmy’s lameness, so Emmy will be taken over to Rainland Equine later this week for a more thorough examination. First, Dr McCracken will block the stifle joint by injecting it with a local anesthetic to rule out the possibility that the pain causing the lameness is coming from somewhere else. If blocking indicates that the stifle joint is indeed the source of the lameness, then the next step is check Emmy’s other large joints with x‑ray (starting with her left stifle, and moving on to her hocks) to see if those have also been affected by OCD. If it turns out that Emmy has OCD in more than just the right stifle, then we most likely have to find a non-riding home where she can be a companion horse.

If it turns out the the OCD is isolated to just her right stifle, then surgery to remove the bone chip might be a good option for Emmy. Right now we’re talking to several vets about that possibility. If we chose to go that route, we will likely be asking our supporters to contribute to the cost of the procedure, since elective surgery such as this is outside the parameters of SAFE’s annual veterinary budget.

In the meantime, Terry and the volunteers at Safe Harbor Stables are working hard to keep Emmy quiet to avoid making her lameness worse…and that’s not an easy task with a horse as young and spirited as Emmy! She hates being cooped up in her small paddock all day. She gets hand walked every day, which helps a bit, but she tends to have a lot of pent up energy, so we’re having to lightly sedate her so that she can be safely handled when she’s being walked. It’s not an easy situation for anyone.

To help keep her entertained while she’s on rest, we hung a donated “Uncle Jimmy’s Hangin’ Ball” in her stall. Here’s a (slightly blurry) look at what happened the first time she encountered the ball, it’s pretty funny! Judging from the amount of sticky stuff on her face today, she seems to have mastered whatever technique is necessary to at least make a mess…

We’ll have an update on Emmy’s situation very soon. In the meantime, we’re going to place her on Medical Hold for her adoption status.

Here is the lovely miss Emmy working under saddle with SAFE volunteer rider Steph W. Does she look to you like a fun horse to ride? She must be because everyone who rides her says they never want to climb off her! What a beauty!

We sent Emmy into training with Larry Plagerman two weeks ago, and got a great update. She’s been going WTC under saddle for a week now. The only issue she’s had is picking up the left lead. She is very right canter dominant and just needs to learn to function on the left lead. She is getting better and Larry doesn’t think it’s a physical issue, just a preference. She is softer now in the bridle, using her back more, and powering off her hind end. Larry set up some very low jumps and sent her over them on the lunge. She stopped and looked at them at first, then took the jump no problem. Emmy is a thinker, Larry says, and he likes that about her. She is very easy going and will make a very nice arena horse for someone. He strongly agrees she is probably an appendix quarter horse.

They can’t always tell you what they know…so sometimes you just have to climb aboard and see what happens! Emmy came with no history, no background, but in the time she’s been with us, she’s proven to be kind, smart, and brave. Yesterday Terry climbed carefully into the saddle, and Emmy willingly took her for a ride. She doesn’t seem to understand leg or seat aids, but that’s okay because Terry is happy to teach her. So proud of our girl!

Emmy is 7!!! Dr. McCracken came out to do her dental float last week, and after examining her teeth, said that Emmy is actually closer to 7 than 8 or 9 as we were told. Now that’s she’s recovered from her cough, Terry has started working with her again and she is doing well. She gets a little worried when she’s asked to stand next to the mounting block but she’s getting more relaxed about it. Terry is looking into options for getting her started under saddle and says that she’s hopeful that Emmy will be a quick study, since she’s been so great for all the in-hand work so far.

Miss Emmy also had 2 very interested adopters who came to the Open House last month to meet her! We don’t expect that it will take too long to find a great home for this lovely mare.

Emmy has been a rock star for everything I have introduced to her. She’s been doing well with ground work, lunging over trot poles, bathing, spray bottles, wearing a saddle with a girth, and bridling and taking the bit. She is also very well behaved in turnout with other mares and loves Dottie. The only time she has shown me fear or worry has been working alongside the mounting block in preparation for mounting. I’ve been steadily working on desensitizing her to leg and sounds around the saddle and since I’ve started introducing it, she’s gotten better and less afraid.

Emmy is recovering from a cough and snotty nose this week and I hope to have her back to work soon and ready to go out for riding. She had to skip her dental appointment due to the cough so as soon as she is healthy again, we’ll reschedule her float, and then she will be ready to head out to be started with a rider.

Here’s video from Emmy’s trot pole session from last week:

Emmy’s been at SHS for two weeks now, and she’s become everyone’s favorite girl! She’s tall and beautiful, but she’s also a sweetheart who is kind and willing and just plain nice to be around. Here are two updates that Terry shared with us last week:

Big day for Emmy- 1st time lunging with a girth on. She did great and didn’t bat an eye. We have no history on her so we are taking things slow and assume she has either never had it done or it may have been a bad experience. She is so quite and sweet. Really loving getting to work with her easy manners. After this lunging session I wanted to wash her mane since she is itching it. She was so good we went ahead and gave her a whole bath!

And here is Emmy being introduced to a bit, possibly for the first time?

Welcome a new horse to SAFE! Emmy was seized by Pierce County Animal Control after she was discovered abandoned on a property with a huge herd of starving pigs and cattle. While the owner of the animals was identified and charged with cruelty, he apparently fled the country, so we have no background information on this horse. However, she appears to be sound and sensible, so she has been signed over to SAFE for rehabilitation and training, in hopes that we can find her a new home. Emmy is a very pretty mare, and we suspect she may be half or one-quarter Quarter Horse. We’re looking forward to getting to know her better!

Photos taken on July 3, 2014 after Emmy was signed over to SAFE: