Scottie Update – Not what we were hoping for.

Earlier this week Scottie went back to hospital for another MRI scan. Once again, he was very minorly lame, looking fine on a straight line and on the left rein. The vet even made the comment that he was very nearly ok. However, despite how ok he looked, the results were not quite what we were hoping for.

The first finding was what I was expecting, that the tendon tear had reopened and gotten worse. It was longer and wider than it was in the initial MRI. However, this isn’t what the vet thinks is causing the lameness.

The tear is over the navicular bursa and it looks like it has caused some irritation to the bursa. Since we have already tried steroid injections to the bursa and haven’t seen results, healing the irritation to the bursa could be complicated and might not go away completely.

However, we do have a plan. We have tried a new treatment what involved injecting the bursa with the good healing bits and pieces in Scottie’s own blood. We have also combined this with a 6 month plan before we properly assess him again.

This plan involves a month box rest with a strict hand walking schedule, followed by pen rest with hand walking twice a day for 20 minutes. After this we have 4 months of normal turnout but continuing the hand walking. If after the 6 months Scottie isn’t sound, then our only remaining option is to turn him away for a year to see if he can get better by himself.

This wasn’t the news I was hoping for and our positive outlook is now far less positive. But I am just hoping that because of how minorly lame Scottie is, that he can get better from this. So fingers crossed for him!

In the meantime, we are already doing lots right. We are going to keep him in the egg bars but maybe see if we can get his toes a smidge shorter. While it is hard to say what difference magnetic boots and the salt water spa will make, the vet said they are both things worth doing. So we are going to keep using his boots and sending him to the spa when we can and fingers crossed all of this together will make a difference.

Last Updated on 14/01/2022