Lesson learned

So there is a little backstory about what happened last night with Kaswyn. Let me get caught up.

I've been working with the massotherapy/biomechanical lady with Kaswyn and he's been doing very well. He hasn't been lame or uneven, but we aren't doing a whole lot of work at the trot. She's trying to help me get him to move his left shoulder using his full range of motion, which he is not prone to do. She is also getting him to use his back more effectively, because she noticed that when I ask him to walk from a halt, or trot from a walk, that he contracts his back instead of coming up with his back. It's really hard for me to feel when he uses his shoulder effectively, but I'm working on it. But I think his back is looking much better and more muscled.

Thursday we had a session and he didn't have any spots on him that were sore at all. Then Friday Macey came out and just walked on Kaswyn. I didn't go out on Saturday, but Kaswyn was turned out. When I got to the barn on Sunday I was supposed to have another session with the lady, but when I took Kaswyn out of his stall he was walking funny.

He was holding his neck stiffly, and tilting his head so that his ears were pointed to the right. I walked him to the crossties and took his sheet off, but I got the feeling that he wasn't right. He just was acting odd. So the lady took a look at him and found heat in his left front (of course, the problem leg!) and lots of pain in his neck.

She worked on him and got some of the pain in the neck to go away and restored some flexibility, but said that whatever he did he really did a number on himself. She wasn't certain if the neck pain was because of him compensating for pain in the leg or if they were two separate issues. The barn manager/trainer had seen him on Saturday during turnout with his head through the fence, eating grass on the other side. Maybe he did something dumb and jerked his neck around somehow and maybe possibly did something to that leg too. So the lady had me liniment the neck, give him Banamine, put Surpass on the leg, and wrap him.

Now I had read on a blog that this gal used Surpass on her horse's leg, then wrapped it, and ended up with a blistered leg. But I thought I had read that she was using it as a sweat wrap (so she wrapped the leg in plastic wrap before she put the standing wrap on) so I thought I'd be okay with just the wraps and no plastic.

Well at 7:00 pm I got the call that he was acting like he was distressed. I called the barn manager/trainer and she suggested that maybe his wraps were bothering him. So I called the gal from the barn back and asked her to pull his wraps and see if he was better. I waited a few minutes, thinking she might call or text me back, but when I didn't hear from her I headed out to the barn.

I got a text from her when I was half-way there, saying that he was fine now that the wraps were off. By the time I got to the barn Kaswyn was standing quietly in his stall, in his napping position. He had finished his dinner and was looking normal, and happy to see me. Since I was there he figured he should be doing something, so I hand-grazed him for a few minutes, then put him in his stall. He seemed perfectly fine, and even took a big drink of water.

So it would appear that the Surpass plus the wrap had irritated him enough that he was distressed. The leg might have been on it's way to blistering, but the skin looked fine. Next time I'll know - don't use Surpass and wrap the leg! At least on my horse. Your mileage may vary.