Happy New Year!!
It's been a while since my last blog, I got rather bogged down with Christmas preparations, computer issues and work! I also didn't have a whole lot to write about as Jack continued to be intermittently lame from mid
Oct. We had a frustrating few weeks and 2 vet visits had failed to identify the problem therefore it was impossible to formulate an effective plan to get him better. After rest and pain relief failed to have any effect I eventually managed to get the senior vet out to him on 7th December. I have not seen Matthew in a few years so I filled him in on what we have been doing, Jack's kissing spine surgery, rehab and recovery etc and went over the latest issues we have been having. He was so down to earth and easy to deal with and having looked at Jack trotting up and inspecting the lame leg he quickly identified a swelling just above the fetlock. When he clipped the leg I was horrified at the size of the swelling at the back of his tendons and felt awful, worried and extremely silly to have missed it although he assured me it probably had not been that bad before as one of his vets had also missed it twice!
I didn't feel so bad after that, we also think that as Jack had been messing about in the field the day before and galloping around he probably made it much worse so it was easy for Matthew to find.
Next Matthew performed a scan on the Palmer Annular ligament which runs down the back of the leg and found damage. It was a huge relief to finally have a diagnosis and be able to effectively treat him rather than guessing and hoping! Matthew assured me that of all the things he could have done this was the least serious, easiest to treat and highest chance of a full recovery. He gave Jack a sedative then a steroid injection into the damaged area of ligament and was hopeful this would provide the pain relief and anti inflammatory response needed to start healing. Jack was to have a couple of weeks off and then Matthew would return to assess how well he was doing and if work could begin. Ideally we would have box rested him for at least the first week but knowing how badly Jack copes with it we agreed that he could have some turn out each day to keep him from going nuts when he went out and doing himself any more damage! We had to be careful as Jack is carrying a few extra pounds due to not being in work for so long and the steroids could cause a laminitis risk so turn out was kept to a minimum, enough to keep him sane but not enough to cause any additional problems! The 2 weeks passed and Jack seemed sound and the swelling reduced so Matthew returned to reassess the injury and I was confident of good news. After seeing him trotted up and performing flexion tests Matthew was happy with his response to the injection and agreed the best thing now was for Jack to get back into work. 
Since this all began he has become quite stiff behind and is not using his back end as well as we would like but we are hoping this is just because of the lack of work recently and that getting him back to fill fitness will see this ease off without needing further intervention. For now Jack is having a bute a day in the mornings to make him comfortable and able to work properly and is then being worked in the afternoon. We started with 10 days of walking beginning at just 15mins and building up by 5 mins a day to an hour then introducing a small amount of trot. We had our first trot on New Years day and he felt brilliant, what a great start to the new year :)
We will continue to build him up slowly and carefully over the coming weeks and hopefully have him back to full fitness and normal work in another 8-10 weeks. Just doing walk work has been pretty tedious and cold so I'm glad we can now start to introduce some trot too to break up the monotony and get some blood moving to warm me up a bit. I also find it quite hard work to get Jack working well in just walk, especially in the ménage. When he is in full work I usually give him a good walk, trot and canter on a long rein to get him moving before asking him to pick up the bridle and work into the contact so not being able to do this has meant having to use a lot of leg! I'm starting to introduce ground poles too now which does help get his back end moving a bit. I cant wait to have the lighter evenings so I can get out the ménage more as he works much better out in the open.
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