So, after a month of careful desensitizing, he's getting really good at not flinching when something strange comes along, at standing near the scary blue plastic wall (from a Fisher-Price child's toy) that is used as a 'wing' for a jump, even at ignoring tarps that he used to panic about. I noticed that he was much more willing to go over jumps and trot poles and around strange objects. I thought he was just about ready to ride in a parade... then he started limping.

Like colic, there are a number of reasons why a horse limps, but in this case it is none of the more obvious and simple causes. He favours his left front foot, but not all the time. He walks just fine, but when he trots, he limps.

I thought it might be a bruise from a rock, but his under-hoof shows nothing.

I gave him a couple of days of rest, then the farrier trimmed him, and checked and found a bit of sensitivity, but, again, nothing really obvious.

The day before the vet came to see him he managed to twist his right front fetlock, and had a case of mud fever that caused sensitive swelling and completely disguised the initial problem. Well, if he's going to have problems, we might as well have them all at once and save time.

So five days of stall rest and washing off his feet and legs and putting on the stuff for mud fever and 'bute in his food and taking care of his legs so the swelling is gone, the lameness in his right front is gone, he walks without a hint of trouble, until he trots, and suddenly, he's favouring that left leg again.

Well this time when the vet comes, there will be no swelling nothing to cover over or provide an alternate reason for his lameness. He hasn't trotted well for three weeks now and I'd like to get him well, no matter what the cause.

One Week Later...

The vet did see him, determined that the lameness was due to inflammation due to mud fever. He had it a while, but since I didn't recognize it (never having seen it before) it was already causing problems. The people who do know what it looks like missed it, too, including the farrier, so I don't feel quite so ignorant.

After reading up on the problem I realized is Mud Fever is essentially the same thing as Trench Foot, which, as I vividly recall, is quite unpleasant, to put it mildly, and that gives me great sympathy towards Oakley, because I know exactly how he feels. It is seriously not fun. His vet tried to shave his legs, which is like ripping off a hundred scabs at once, so he was having none of that and he kicked, danced, pulled away, and jumped around, so after an hour, she had only managed to shave parts of his cannon bones, and a bit around one fetlock. At one point, he was hopping up and down on one leg to avoid the clippers, and I was impressed. Then we gave up. I said I'd try and trim him down with scissors. He didn't fuss, because I was being so gentle, but I had to quit after three hours of clipping and still nowhere near clean.

Treatment now is stall rest -- incarceration, really -- and daily cleaning of the legs until the infection is gone.

An onerous and miserable task. At this point, his lameness is gone, but his attitude is back. Can't really blame him, he's been inside for almost two weeks, with only a couple of hours a day at most out of his stall, and a lot of that time is me fussing around his legs.

As for that, because I am blessed with a number of concerned friends who want to help me out, and who have recommended various therapies besides what the vet recommended and because I am completely ignorant and therefore have no prejudices about which treatment I prefer, I've decided to experiment. Since he has four legs, I'm applying a different one to each leg and see which one works best.

Two Weeks Later...

The best treatment it turns out, is olive oil and stable bandages.

The oil dissolves scabs into a gooey mass that wipes off easily. The bandages keep his legs warm, which helps dissolve the scabs. There will be gobs on whatever you wrapped around the leg, but washing is not a problem. It wipes down easily with paper towel to remove the last of the gooey scab matter left over and makes the few scabs, that are still not dissolved, soft enough to pick off without pulling a bunch of hair with them.

Olive oil apparently has antifungal and antibacterial properties, which may explain how quickly the lesions healed up. As an oil, it also displaces water, which, of course, helps kill the bacteria. It costs about 1/100 the cost of the antifungal from the vet, which doesn't do anything about the scabs.

The oil also keeps water away, which helps kill the bacteria.

And, it makes his legs and my hands smell nice.