What are you looking at you say?
Her huge heel has been demolished. The farrier thinks it was the body simply shedding the frog in a dramatic fashion, this is the foot we have had issues with the frog not actually being attached and being thrushy. Don't remember what it looked like? Here is pic from Feb-ish to show how much heel we have:
This is a hind foot, but the heel size is about the same. |
Repeated the process again with very similar results so I gave up and asked the grandmother to help pour some of the water over the hoof while I held it. That should be easier, right? No hoof eating buckets, I will be holding a leg, I'll be in control. Except it turns out donkeys hate water being poured on their foot even more than they hate buckets. Needless to say I got soaked. And dirty. And thrown around a little. But I was able to get the hoof *mostly* clean so I removed the evil water from the equation, brushed out the dirt I could, put a big ribbon of neosporin in the frog area and wrapped it with vet wrap and duct tape. On the plus side my vet wrap was black and my duct tape was yellow so she looked like a big caution sign. Donkey - 5 Me - 1. I am calling that victory.
The farrier came out last night and trimmed the frog/heel flaps completely off so they wouldn't catch on anything. She is now over an inch shorter on the right front foot, when the farrier is out in June he said he will start cutting the heels down more to prevent this happening on the other feet. Unfortunately she was a little too ouchy to try trimming the left front to level her out.
She is back on bute and will be for a few more days and thankfully it really has helped. She is now back down to a half gram twice a day and I hope to give it to her only in the AM starting this weekend. I have to try to soak her foot in some solution for 15-30 mins a day (really farrier?!?!?) and apply a combo of neosporin/athletes foot cream daily to keep anything from developing while the tissues heal. I am thinking my best option will be a heavy gallon sized freezer bag duct taped to her leg. There isn't any way I will be able to get her to stand still that long with a bucket or the too large soaker boot the farrier brought. Let's see if I survive the weekend.
I mix salt water in a spray bottle and spray it on Chrome's feet. Is she okay with fly spray? If so that should work. Sorry she's not being cooperative. Donkeys can be so suspicious. Keep us updated on her progress.
ReplyDeleteAh yes, alas no she is not okay with spray bottles either. She is getting better about it, but is still not okay with it. I tried having her foot sit in a soaker boot, okay until I added water. Unfortunately the soaker boot is a medium and she is a small or x-small so it comes off. When I taped a bag to her leg she jumped out of her stall while tied to a post. And tried to jump back in and tried to give me a concussion. Alas, no soaking is being done, we just gave her 5 days of "Pete's Goo". We'll see how things go next week when the farrier is out.
ReplyDeleteI know this is WAY after the fact, but I suppose an abcess could happen again (or a new, in need donkey).
ReplyDeleteIf she let you wrap her foot, could you have put several layers of gauze soaked in epsom salts/whatever on her foot and then wrapped to act as a sort of soak?