Pain indicators

Jessey

Well-Known Member
Dec 20, 2004
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Suffolk, UK
As we were talking about pain symptoms a little while ago (eyelashes), Some of you may remember me saying forever ago that Jess is quite stoic but there is sometimes something in her face that lets me know she's not 100%. I have since found this https://www.researchgate.net/figure...or-each-of-the-6-facial-action_fig2_260950013 and it helped me begin to label what I see with her more and be more accurate in picking up on things.

On Monday when I put the boys in with her I let them all on a section of the track which has, by comparison, a lot of grass. Its about 2.5m wide and 30m long, at least half of it is nettles. They had 2 hours on there in the morning, then I shut it off, very stupidly I only shut 1 end off though, I went off for about 3 hours in the afternoon and by the time I got back there she had figured it out and gone around and in the other end. I cringed and kicked myself but what's done is done.

Tuesday she was sound, no heat, no pulses etc. Last night I noticed her jaw was showing tension, she was still sound (no nodding, normal stride length and flight pattern etc.), I could find her digital pulse (normally she is quite hard to find digital pulses on) in her left fore though it wasn't bounding and was just at the higher end of normal. I popped hoof testers on, a subtle but positive reaction at the toe on that foot :( TBH if it wasn't for the jaw tension, I wouldn't have given it a 2nd thought.

I didn't think to take any pictures last night, but went back through millions of pics from the last 3 years and have found a few where I can see the tension.
This one shows it up more because of the shadowing, normally the big jaw muscle is soft and smooth
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This pic was taken a couple of years ago when I had her penned up because her lameness got worse
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The green lines are 1st stage, when its really bad I can also see it where the blue lines are
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The same pic without my scribbles, you can see how subtle it is
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Hopefully caught so early and the fact that the grass was removed 2 days before any symptoms showed means she won't spiral into a full episode, and that the sensitivity found reduces very quickly.
 
That’s quite an amazing level of observation. I can tell if Flash is sad or not but I’m not sure how or why. I picked up he was sad a couple of days before he went lame with mud fever.
 
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Pulses back to being very difficult to find last night and this morning, but her jaw is still tight so I will keep watching, crossing everything we got ahead of it.
 
What this tells me is that I am not observant. I can see the indicators in the pictures, and if I look at pictures of Ziggy when he was in horsepital after his colic op you can see them there too. But before he came down with lame this time I was feeling happy and confident and I did not pay attention, so didn't notice until he was actually lame.

Having said that, the day he presented lame he was bright and perky. I think he is very, very stoic, as horses often are. But that's no excuse for my not noticing!
 
What this tells me is that I am not observant.
I didn't intend this as any critisim of anyone else, I know that a few years ago I didn't see these things, or did but didn't pay them an heed, because I had not needed to at that point. It's only after dealing with Jess' long term on/off lameness that I have become more aware of the tiny tells, because she's so stoic that by the time she is actually lame things are already pretty dire.
 
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