Update on Ludo

September 22, 2009

Just wanted to post an update on Ludo (for those who are interested). Ludo has Tendonitis of the left front inferior check ligament into the deep digital flexor tendon (a horse has several ligaments, the tendon, and the suspensory in their front legs). In other words, he has swelling/fluid in/on one of the ligaments in his left front leg, which is causing him to be lame. Not good.

So what this means is that Ludo must have maximum rest for the next month. He has to stay in his stall for 15 days, then have 1-2 hours turnout and back in the stall for the next 15 days, and then we start about 6 weeks of rehabilitation. At least in the rehabilitation, I get to ride him. We walk for 2 weeks, then add trot for the next 2 weeks, and then do walk/trot/canter for the next 2 weeks. And then we will slowly put him back to work.

So now we've had problems with 3 out of 4 legs. My vet, Dr. Ed Murray, is terrific. I've never seen anyone better at diagnosing what is wrong with a horse. And he has a sense of humor. When I said to him -- we just have one leg to go, he said "well, if he has a problem in the 4th leg, at least he'll be even on all of them."

Ludo was just 1 of 3 horses in the trailer that went to see Dr. Murray. And we drove to Alabama on the worst driving day of the century in Atlanta. I'm sure everyone has seen the pictures of the flooding (and if you were part of the flooding -- I am very sorry). We had rain on the 3 hour drive in the morning, but "normal" rain. When we got to the clinic, they had no power. A tree had fallen on power lines the night before, the clinic's axillary power had run out, and there was no power to run the computers, phones, and diagnostic equipment (x-rays, ultra-sound, etc.). It took a while, but the power company got it fixed.

Then it proceeded to just pour rain for hours (and we were there most of the day). Two of the horses stayed at the clinic for the night, and Ludo came back in the trailer. We got past the worst flooding about 2 hours before it closed I-20 (the major freeway running east/west through Atlanta). But the last 45 minutes of driving was the worst I have ever been through. It POURED rain for more than 40 miles -- so bad you could only see about 10 feet in front of you. We were extremely lucky in that we didn't run into any flooding going east on I-20 (miles of cars and trucks were stopped on the freeway going the other way because only 1 lane was open -- too much water on the road). I was truly scared that we might just roll off the road -- there were sheets of water just pouring across the freeway.

But we did make it back to the barn, which was not flooded, and Ludo had a dry stall waiting for him. And now we'll see if we can get him well again.