Tico is a Veterinary Marvel

Tico has crooked legs.

There's no getting around it: he's been known to stand with his feet pointing in opposite directions.

Granted, this is a bit exaggerated: there was grass to his right, and hay to his left, and he didn't know which was the most likely direction to result in him EATING, but this gives you an idea.

He also has a bone spur in his right front, that I've known about since 2007, when I had his front feet xrayed. He'd been lame a lot, and the blacksmith wasn't trimming him the way the vet was telling him needed to be done in order to keep the crooked legs happy. He kept trying to "fix" the crookedness with a straight trim, and it wasn't working.  I was getting really frustrated with the way things were, and just wanted to get a look at what we were dealing with.

See the bump in front of the ball joint? That shouldn't be there.  I thought I'd have a 9 year old pasture pet, looking at this.

But I changed farriers and got one who listened to my vet. The new farrier trimmed and shod Tico so that there was no undue stress on his joints, basically allowing the crookedness to remain since that's just the way his legs went. He started to go sound. He had limited flexibility in that joint, but it didn't seem to bother him.

But of course the underlying problem of a crooked leg was still there, and the bone spur wasn't going away. When his toes grew long, he'd get a bit gimpy. So I started having him trimmed more often, which helps.

Fast forward to 2014. It had been a long time since I'd had any images of his fetlock done. It was winter, and the blacksmith was trying to space out the trims a bit more, since conventional wisdom says horses don't grow as much foot when they're not out on green grass... but I guess Tico is an exception to that rule. He was growing his toes as fast as ever - the blacksmith would schedule him for 6 weeks, but at 4 weeks he'd be looking long, and I'd be calling for a reschedule. 

Meanwhile, there's a new performance horse trainer resident at the barn, who likes to use a vet from Kentucky who's a leg and joint expert. He travels with a portable fluoroscope, xray machine, and other arcane veterinary diagnostic equipment. The trainer was  going to be getting him up to look at and possibly do injections on some of the reining horses. I added Tico to the list of horses for him to look at - I was thinking that Tico might need another injection in his fetlock (I've had it done before, as well as his hocks, stifles, and hip joint, though not recently).

The vet took a look at a bunch of the reining horses first, and then we brought out Tico. The trainer and I mentioned his need for a reduced trimming schedule and then the vet picked Tico's foot up. 

"Well, dang - I'm going to scope this for free - I gotta see what this looks like!"

We brought Tico into the area where he had all the equipment set up, and he ran the fluoroscope over Tico's fetlock.  And swore.

The image was pretty amazing: that bone spur was now quite a bit larger - which certainly explains the lack of flexibility (around 20%, according to this vet - which was why he wanted to look at it).  I'd thought the joint was fusing - and I think that was a possibility before he scoped it  - but the various joint capsules looked pretty good - the cartilage was still there, and there was pretty good spacing (though it was less even looking back to front, due to the crookedness of the foot from fetlock to hoof).

The vet said "That's got to be the bone spur of the year for me!" which given that he specializes in joint issues is a little disturbing. The trainer pointed out that the year just started, but the vet said he didn't expect to see something like that again, and certainly hoped not.  Poor Tico.

On the plus side: he saw no reason to inject Tico, since the joint walls and capsules really didn't need it and you can only do those injections so many times before they don't really help. He suggested using Previcox and gave me a bottle of it to put him on - and since it's a COX-2 inhibitor it should help with any other arthritic aches and pains a 16 year old horse is likely to experience. I'd been giving Tico a bit of bute on weekends when I used him, but we can likely take him off that if the Previcox helps, and it won't do stomach damage. 

Bone spur of the year! I wonder if they give awards for that...