A Set Back in the Health Department :(

Poor weenie, allergic Buck! So the ghetto barn DID catch up with him :(

Tuesday I had a lesson with Meredith and I was pleased with it. Very pleased, in fact. I noticed though that he was definitely stiffer in the right canter....and he coughed a few times, but nothing serious.

Wednesday he was off.

Thursday he got new shoes. And in the time it took for Brad to get all 4 shoes on (and the hind two tapped), Buck coughed at least 10 times and had very rasp-y breathing sounds. UGH.

So I took him to the clinic Friday morning and unfortunately confirmed what I was thinking on Thursday. He's having another flare up of the inflammatory airway disease from December :( He's obviously allergic to SOMETHING in the environment and I haven't quite pinpointed it. We scoped him, redid the bronchial aveolar lavage (aka "B.A.L") and then drew blood for allergy testing. The BAL is an interesting process where they insert a tube in to his airway, push saline in to the tube (lung) and then withdraw it all. Then they send the samples out for a cytology reading. Last time he had this done it showed a large level of nuetrophils and mast cells. Mast cells are present when there is an inflammatory/allergic reaction. We are *hoping* that THIS time we may be able to see something that he inhaled and deduce from there that it is causing him issues. Dr. Jackie Bartol told me that she once had a case where a horse had inhaled "rust" like flecks that were present in the BAL....and it turned out that the horse had a rusty salt block holder in his stall. Once they removed the salt block holder the horse was fine. Now we're not expecting anything that EASY to happen, but if they find particles then we know that it is likely related to airborne particulates and may not necessarily be ONE particular thing he is allergic to....(Which would be why my controlling of his environment - him living outside, no shavings, soaking all hay, etc - has helped him thus far!)

So anyways, we're in a wait and see pattern from that to see if we can get more information.

In the meantime, Buck had 5 days off. I rode for the first time today and he was definitely feeling alright body / muscle wise. He wasn't stiff at all, and I had some AWESOME walk-canter transitions and trot-canter transitions. I have no doubt that the shoes we put on him helped this :) Yay! Unfortunately he was pretty winded (despite being on the prednisolone for 2.5 doses). No coughing though he had a LOT of mucous being expelled from his nose.

Before the ride I opted to sign up for the Green Acres 3-phase on Saturday. We're doing elementary again. Hopefully he'll be back to himself again - or at least on the way there. I remember seeing a pretty remarkable difference in his breathing after he'd been on the pred for 5 days last time....so hopefully that'll be the case. If not I'll just ask to make my entry a two phase and be done with it!