Williams Road to Recovery

19/02/09
I worked my horse, William, yesterday morning and he was turned out in the field around 9:30am. He had worked quite well with no problems. I left work at lunchtime to pop down to the yard around 2pm to bring him in and he was standing by the gate. In a bit of a rush, I dragged him up the driveway muttering to myself about what a lazy goat he was being and he had mud covered legs so decided to give them a good hose off. Strangely enough he kept holding up his left hind as I was hosing but he is a bit of a sensitive beast so thought he was just moaning it was cold. It was only when I went to move him off did I realise he really did not want to move and when he did, he was crippled on that left hind!
I washed the area again and I searched and searched but I couldn't find a single mark. I was very stumped as to what he had done so decided to call the vet out to be on the safe side.

Vet arrived and started prodding and poking from the hoof up and when she got to the pastern area it was plain to see he was very sore so she gave him a sedative and clipped the area to see if she could see anything. Finally she found a very small mark and had a pick and pulled out a 1cm length of thorn. She investigated further and she wasn't happy about things and felt the thorn had gone into his joint.
The vet gave William a local and injected into the joint but what came out was not pretty. The joint had gone septic and I had to get him down to Rossdales in Newmarket NOW! After a bit of a panic about how I was going to get him there with no transport ( thankyou Susan who rushed away from her job to take us in her lovely lorry ) and phoning work to say I wouldnt be coming back from my lunch hour that day, we got to Rossdales and he went straight into X-Ray.
Basically, he had got a 1cm length of Blackthorn into his joint and in those short hours of being in the field it had turned his joint septic. I really did not realise how highly toxic the coating on a blackthorn was.
Everything was happening so fast and I wasn't really taking in how urgent and dangerous this situation was until the surgeon came to talk to me and said if they didn't do something for him now then he would die and I would lose my gorgeous flying grey.
There was no other option for me apart from to get them to do all they could to get my boy better. He went into the theatre for a general anesthetic so they could investigate the joint and flush it out and I had to walk away to have a very sleepless night.