It’s that time of the week again! Love it.
What has been your horse’s most expensive injury to date? Let’s exclude maintenance things, like hock injections and the magical monthly package of MSM. What single episode blew your savings or left you boiling ramen? If you want to get technical about it, time is money, too.
I have to say, Robbye really does not fit this question well. She does have chronic lymphangitis in one of her legs. However, it’s immediately obvious when she has an infection, the treatment (steroids, painkillers, and lots of hand-walking and cold-hosing) isn’t too bad, and her pain and other symptoms only last for a week or two.
(It is weird that the Wikipedia page says that lymphangitis symptoms include “moderate” pain and swelling. For Robbye, the pain is much more than moderate – she is dead lame when she gets an infection. It’s sad to watch. And the swelling is extreme, and includes the entire quarter of her body from her pastern up to her hindquarters and teats.)
So though it’s scary when it happens, and it’s a pain to go out to the barn twice a day to the mind-numbing boredom that is hosing, it’s not that expensive in either time or money.
One of my kitties, Calvyn, sucks up so much more of my time and worry. A year and a half ago, Calvyn began having difficulty peeing. He’d sit in the litter box for long times, then cry and lick himself, then go back to the litter box.
When we took him to the vet, he was diagnosed with urinary crystals, which were blocking his urinary tract. These can be really dangerous – if you can’t pee, your bladder will rupture and kill you. But Calvyn was put on a prescription diet for two weeks and the crystals disappeared, luckily.
Well his crystals came back last fall, and they proved much scarier and more resilient. Our vet decided that the food we’re feeding is causing them, and decided to switch Cal to a prescription diet full time. So our four year old cat will now be on $60 food for the rest of his life. There’s a lot of worry involved with Cal, too. Since cats have very high pain tolerance, I’m always stressing about whether he’s hurting or not. I try not to monitor his box habits, but at the same time it’s always relieving (lol) when I see him pee. I spend a lot of energy being afraid for him, and a lot of time and money getting him special food and making sure he doesn’t get the regular food everyone else eats.
So worth it, though.
An Amish Warmblood 