The Biggest Drama Queen to Ever Drama Queen

 I do have a fair bit of catching up to do on the blog, including both Trainer M and I falling off of Cinder 8 days apart from each other, but let's jump to the new and fun traumatizing way Cinder decided to spend a Saturday. 

I have a 10am lesson on Saturdays. Cinder is usually finishing up eating breakfast when I get to the barn, so I tend to groom her in her stall. I had taken her blanket off and noticed she was a bit warm, but it had been warmer overnight than was expected and she was in a medium so I figured she was just a bit hot from being over-blanketed. As I was grooming I noticed her right front was a bit swollen, on the outside of fetlock. I took her out to the crossties for better lighting and yep, a nice swollen leg and she was 1/5 lame at the walk. Her hoof was a bit warm, and she had some lovely protruding veins popping on that leg. I took her temp just because and she was at 102.3.

Hard to see, but the back of the fetlock and a little bit up the cannon bone towards the back of the leg

Assistant Trainer I and Trainer M arrived right after and we started discussing. AT had ridden her the day before and said she was fantastic. Horses hadn't been turned out that day due to sideways rain and wind, and when M left around 7:30 Friday night, Cinder had been fine. We were all pretty much in agreement that we were dealing with an abscess so we soaked and put a poultice pad on and wrapped the hoof. Cinder went back into her stall and I hung out watching lessons for a few hours. 

a few hours later

When I was getting ready to leave, I went back to check on Cin and put her blanket back on. She was standing in the middle of her stall, shaking and her leg had absolutely blown up. I took her temp again and it had gone up to 103.9. AT was standing a few feet away and I called her over and we both agreed this had turned into call the vet territory. Vet advised to cold hose her hind legs to try and get her temp down, and that she would be on her way to us. Cinder was now 4/5 lame, but was happy to weight the leg, just not lift it up. In fact while we were cold hosing her, she would lift a hind leg to show her displeasure with us. 

Her leg looked so weird

AT noticed that Cinder had swelling on the inside of her upper leg while we were waiting for Doc to get to the barn. It was so weird. We had started thinking cellulitis, but her swelling was patchy, not the typical stovepipe leg that's common with cellulitis.

Doc finally arrived and after a quick vitals check, temp now 104.2, gave banamine and watched Cin walk from the wash rack to the crossties. She had been at the barn and watched Cinder go on Friday and kept commenting that Cin looked great not even 24hr previous. Blood was pulled for a stall side analysis, and she had us start shaving the whole leg to see if we could see any cut/scrape/puncture and in prep for ultrasound. We found nothing in terms of a wound, so Doc started ultrasounding the upper leg. All we found was swelling outside the muscle, but no tears or abscess there. We moved onto x-rays, both of her upper leg and cannon bone. Nothing remarkable. Doc even said those joints looked great. We finally put hoof testers on and got a big reaction to those. 

Probably overkill but I don't care at this point

The bloodwork showed that Cin's inflammation markers were extremely elevated, normal is below 50 and she was 671. I don't remember what other values were off, but basically it said she was also extremely stressed. Me too Cinder, me too. Doc theorized that Cinder was probably laying down overnight, started hurting from the abscess, and then was having difficulty standing up and kicked herself in the upper leg. Then the pain from the abscess and kick sent her into something similar to a panic attack and caused her temp to spike. Since an abscess is an infection, that could cause a small fever but not to the extent that Cinder had. There's still a small possibility that she has a stress fracture that won't show on x-ray for a week, but Doc doesn't think that's very likely. Basically my drama queen of a mare had a panic attack and made it everyone's problem. 

By the time we were done and the sedation had worn off, Cin's temp was back down to 100, she was back to 1/5 lame at the walk, and was very hungry for dinner. Doc put the above bandage on and gave her a shot of Excede to try and prevent cellulitis. Cin will get another Excede shot Wednesday and Doc will take off the bandage and recheck the leg. She did say this was the most she's ever done for an abscess but this wasn't presenting as a normal abscess; this was presenting as nothing she's ever seen before. Leave it to Cinder to be that special.