Nearly Losing Lilly

Yesterday I went to feed the drafts at 6 pm, and Lilly did not want to move at all. This made me very sad. I concluded her week-long lameness had probably been a tiny fracture, and her walking on it just made it much much worse and now we were going to have to put her down... I went in and called Dr Sue and her first appt was at 11:30 the next day. So I told Levi, and he got out and cleaned his gun. Together we planned a place to put Lilly down after we got the condemning X-Rays.

This morning it was hell to get her on the trailer. I gave her bute two hours before we left, but we had to get after her to get her out of the pasture. I put her in the front compartment of the trailer with Dixie (the Belgian)mashed in there to hold her up, and we drove very s-l-o-w-l-y to the vet to spare her whatever stress we could. Doc Sue saw her and immediately agreed with my analysis. We got her drugged up right away, and then we got her positioned for x-rays...which was pretty much like trying to maneuver a drunken Tyrannosaurus Rex. There were several close calls, which involved me heaving on drunken dinosaur's head while Doc Sue hollared at her assistant, "Get the X-Ray machine out of there!" and Levi leaned on Lilly's hip or hopped out of danger. Two more ladies appeared with their horse, and alternately cooed at poor doomed Lilly, or tried to calm Dixie the Belgian, who was getting bored.

After a lot of poking and prodding, the tenderness seemed to be in her pastern, and not so much in her cannon bone. So we x-rayed that, and it came up clear. So we X-rayed the cannon bone, and it also came up clear. This took much longer than it sounds, of course, as Lilly still wasn't really moving around, didn't want to put ANY weight on that leg, etc. Finally we got her positioned to do an anterior x-ray of her pastern again, but she didn't want to let her foot down for us. Several minutes of tugging and prodding was just the thing! Doc Sue suddenly stood up and said, "It popped! It's an abscess!" We all cheered, and I put my arms around Lilly's head and kissed her, and the ladies and I got all teary since Lilly wasn't going to have to be put down. It was quite a moment! In reflection, this is the first time I've EVER taken a horse to the vet and had GOOD news! (Shows what kind of horses I always take to the vet, I guess).

The abscess is a quitter-- the first I've ever had. It is leaking out the top four or five inches of her coronet band! Quite large, to say the least. We left Lilly with Doc Sue, as she is hoping she can have the farrier out on Monday to help her open it from the bottom to let the remaining pressure out. While Lilly was still VERY lame, she walked without encouragement to her pen. Doc Sue is hopeful she won't slough the hoof wall, but we'll take it a day at a time. I am VERY relieved. I fully expected to bring her home and put her down, and this was the 1-in-a-million chance I thought she might have (which is why we took her for x-rays and didn't just put her down!). Quite an emotional day. Ted (the other Percheron) is beside himself at missing his partner, but that's probably because I told him to say goodbye to her this morning. I've reassured him she's coming back, but I'm not sure he believes me... he's known her many years longer than he's known me, after all.

Another piece of interesting news... we were told she was near 30, and Doc Sue looked at her teeth and said she's about 17!