Phew.... we hope!

 So today was vet day. I hauled her to Dr. Barrows and we had to take off her jammies. She met the Grinch. Hee hee. Brave girl. She was super good. I told Dr. Barrow what I had thought and how it all started and she watched her go. She saw the weird hypermetric hike to her left hind too but agreed it was mostly right front. We tried trotting her in a circle and she would NOT go. She said she looked like a shuffly navicular QH. YES!!! That's how she feels too! 

So we blocked her heels.... a little better but not a ton. Blocked her foot and ankle... and MUCH better, although she looked a bit lame on the left front too. So then we took her to the arena and lunged her and she looked MUCH better... striding forward and more free and reaching. And definitely more forward. She also watched her hind end and didn't really see anything. Other than the tight rope walking but... that may be conformation. She flexed her hind end and didn't really appreciate any change. She was sore on her left SI joint, right SI Joint and right lumbar area but.. didn't really even flex that much to her SI Joints. 

We took foot rads to see where we were at and also to assess the lameness. Her back feet look awesome! She went from -5 degrees to almost positive 5 degrees!! Basically, she wants to keep her in those shoes and pattern. She does think that the weird hypermetric thing is just... her. She didn't flex enough to make it anything else. Her front feet looked okay but... (and yay me for seeing it before she pointed it out) her right front has some compression/narrowing of the coffin joint laterally. The rest of her angles look pretty good although maybe she's a hair negative, but she had enough toe that he could easily fix that. And it would probably open up her coffin joint more too. The left front looked pretty darn good honestly and we really couldn't pick anything apart on it. So... the plan was to have Patrick tweak the right front a bit. I did ask about the 3D pads to prevent caudal failure, as she actually grew some heel from the pour in pad. Dr. Barrow said she liked that plan. So... we'll probably do that.

Then, she finally said "I don't think it's soft tissue"... THANK YOU! You could have said that earlier though! She said that there was no swelling, no heat, no reactivity, and she just... wasn't lame enough. She really thinks it's all from her feet but also worried that fixing the shoes wasn't going to be enough. So we discussed injecting her coffin joints. We decided to do it and then... in my brain.. I'll be researching that podcasts about how the coffin joints are secondary to ... thoracic sling issues I thought. So hopefully once her feet feel better, we can get back to working on her thoracic sling and hopefully we can tweak her feet and I can do some more strengthening of her core and maybe, just maybe, we won't have to keep injecting her coffins. We went with steroids and HA this time because... it helps us determine if that's all the issue was quicker... and if we need to repeat in the future, we can always do biologics then.

So... fingers crossed! I will likely shockwave her hind end again too. But I may wait til Dan's due again and that way I can help determine if the shoeing/injections helped vs clouding the issue with shocking the hind end.