Ben is now into week 5 of box rest and is developing various swollen lumps and bumps. I think that this is quite normal but it is worrying all the same. The vet came last week (different one from my ordinary vet) and said she wasn't overly worried and it was just caused by lack of movement. But now I am finding more little pockets of swelling each time I go and it's stressing me out. It's not like his whole body is swelling up, it just swells and reduces in different places each time. Yesterday his hind legs were worse, and today they are down and his armpits are up.
He is on very strict box rest with just two 5 minute walks per day. Sometimes he walks out fine, sometimes he seems a little wobbly, like he doesn't know where to put his feet. He absolutely hammers the stable door so hard I sometimes think he is going to kick right through it, and I think that this has caused some bruising to his front legs. He doesn't seem to be settling into box rest at all and is so stressed. If I don't enter the stable with some kind of food, he tries to barge past me and there have been times where I have had to use all my body weight to act like a human door to stop him coming out.
When I lead him out he is actually very well behaved, but 5 minutes passes so very quickly and it breaks my heart every time I put him back in the box. I wish that I had some guarantee that the surgery had worked so that there will be a happy ending to all this. I hate to see him so miserable. I visit him 3 times per day but it doesn't seem enough and it takes so long doing all the jobs (constant mucking out, soaking haynets, walking him etc.) that I don't have much time left to just chill out with him.
So I am afraid it is doom and gloom from us today. Still another 3 and a half weeks until the vet comes back to reassess. The box rest is much harder than I thought it would be, and there doesn't seem to be any end in sight. Even if we get good news when the vet comes to reassess, I think I will be lucky to see him back in the field before Christmas because he will need a very slow return to movement. I really am glad that I didn't know how horrible the box rest would be for him before I made the decision for surgery. Otherwise I may have made a different decision. But we are where we are, and just need some energy to keep going.
He is on very strict box rest with just two 5 minute walks per day. Sometimes he walks out fine, sometimes he seems a little wobbly, like he doesn't know where to put his feet. He absolutely hammers the stable door so hard I sometimes think he is going to kick right through it, and I think that this has caused some bruising to his front legs. He doesn't seem to be settling into box rest at all and is so stressed. If I don't enter the stable with some kind of food, he tries to barge past me and there have been times where I have had to use all my body weight to act like a human door to stop him coming out.
When I lead him out he is actually very well behaved, but 5 minutes passes so very quickly and it breaks my heart every time I put him back in the box. I wish that I had some guarantee that the surgery had worked so that there will be a happy ending to all this. I hate to see him so miserable. I visit him 3 times per day but it doesn't seem enough and it takes so long doing all the jobs (constant mucking out, soaking haynets, walking him etc.) that I don't have much time left to just chill out with him.
So I am afraid it is doom and gloom from us today. Still another 3 and a half weeks until the vet comes back to reassess. The box rest is much harder than I thought it would be, and there doesn't seem to be any end in sight. Even if we get good news when the vet comes to reassess, I think I will be lucky to see him back in the field before Christmas because he will need a very slow return to movement. I really am glad that I didn't know how horrible the box rest would be for him before I made the decision for surgery. Otherwise I may have made a different decision. But we are where we are, and just need some energy to keep going.