Alita's Story

Week Six

July 7th-13th

A Major Setback and the Brace!

    This week did not start out well. I went out to feed Alita and the other horses this morning and Alita is dragging her leg as if she has broken it. She will not move it at all. She is back to throwing herself forward to move around. I don’t understand what happened. Yesterday she was GREAT and today she looks terrible.

  I asked a few friends for advise on our local message board. It was there that a found a lady named Melissa with a TB horse named Gator that broke his knee and is still around today to whinny about it. She told me about putting a full brace on Alita to support her leg and force her to use her knee. We sent several e-mails and she agreed to come out, bring her supplies and show me how to brace her knee. Her horse had been in the brace for 12 weeks! She told me what I needed and the search was on for a 6 inch PVC pipe to cut and put on Alita’s leg.

  I also called the Dr. and told him I was VERY concerned about Alita because she turned so fast! He told me to bring her in for x-rays so we could see what was going on. He feared that either her bone was dying off or severe arthritis and possibly a bone chip had set in her joint. He decided to see her right away.

  I loaded her all by myself and she did well. I think she knew we were going to the vet and he would try to make her feel better. When we arrived his initial thought was that she had debilitating arthritis due to the way she was walking or shall is say hopping.

  We put her in the stocks and they took the wraps off her legs. They took 2 x-rays and due to one not turning out they took one more. They gently bent her knee to get a good shot and she stood as still as possible for what they were asking.

  My vet took me inside to show me the x-rays. "According to these there is no reason she is walking like that." he said. "There is very little arthritis in her joint. Not as much as I would expect to see for a horse with Alita’s injury." Then he explained how cartilage once damaged comes back like bone. It doesn’t come back as soft cartilage. That’s why arthritic patients have problems. Some of the cartilage or bone that replaced it can chip off and cause the chip to go into the joint and cause severe pain. "She doesn’t have any of that! These look pretty good considering." he concluded.

  He told me to take her home and hydro her leg for 30 minutes every other day when her bandages got changed. We also could go with a lighter wrap as the outside of her knee was healing nicely. It was the inside we were worried about. I told him about the brace and he had been the vet that treated Gator and he said it would be a good idea to do the same for Alita. "It won’t hurt that’s for sure." he told me.

  The next day Melissa came out to show me how to put on the brace. The PVC pipe was cut in half and then cut the length from her hoof to below her elbow. The corners were filed and it was ready to go. I wrapped Alita’s leg with a light wrap like the vet said and she was ready for Melissa. Melissa first wrapped the PVC with 3 polos to soften the edges even more. She then wrapped two racing quilts, one on her upper leg and one on the lower leg. On top of the quilts went two polos for added padding. The brace was then placed on the outside of her leg and 3 more polos were wrapped on top of it to hold it in place.

  Alita fought when it came to straightening out the lower half of her leg. The brace forced her to hold it straight and put weight on it. It may seem cruel however if she doesn’t bear weight on her leg she could founder in the opposite foot or her opposite leg could give out all together.

  Once her bad leg was wrapped Melissa put racing quilts on the other three legs and then a polos on top of each one of them for support. Alita had never had anything on her back legs and she did quite a jig when she discovered they were there and not coming off.

  She walked on her leg and did a dance back to her stall still trying to get the "Bad" wraps off her back legs. Melissa then told me; "Unless she is VERY creative she won’t be able to lay down with that on. Gator didn’t lay down for days!"

  I thanked Melissa and she headed home, I fed the horses and then headed in myself. Alita seemed to calm down from the wraps and was putting weight on her leg, liking it or not. At least it was relieving the pressure off of her other legs. Later that night around 10:00pm I went out and checked on Alita and she was resting comfortably laying in the clean sawdust. I guess she is VERY creative!

  Then as if all this wasn’t enough the rains came to Texas and everything was wet. This was the first time the stalls had gotten wet. It was a struggle for days trying to keep it dry for Alita. Bag after bag of fresh sawdust went down to keep her comfortable. Just please let the rain stop I begged yet it just kept coming!