Good news for the boy and me!

The vet saw Champagne again yesterday, to give him a booster for his immunization and to follow up on some issues. Good news all around!

She was very happy with the area we are treating for a sarcoid. I now will restrict the cream to just one small area every other day, and when the cream packet is finished, no more applications until we see what happens next. Wouldn’t it be great if that fixed it? Champagne was so funny. He strongly disapproves of having the cream applied, and we have had to use a twitch to make him hold his head still. Yesterday he was tossing his head and making it hard for the vet to look at the area, so Kathy, the barn manager, got the twitch and showed it to him. Suddenly he was willing to stand quietly to be examined; no need to apply the twitch at all. Smart guy.

Also, the vet has taken a look at his “insulin panel”, which showed a high, but not astronomically high, level of insulin. As well, she looked at the supplements we’ve been feeding him. (He gets no grain, poor thing, but an odd mixture of supplements, sunflower seeds, rice bran pellets, and flax bran.) The vet said we’ll wean him off everything but the joint and vitamin supplements, and introduce a special low-carb grain made just for easy keepers. For the first time in years he’ll be eating like a real horse, not like some kind of feathered thing at a bird feeder. That will make us both happy! And since there is another horse in the barn with the same issue, Kathy will get this type of grain for the two of them, and my feed bills will go down.

Tonight I ride! A three-day weekend is coming right up! (Patriot’s Day all Boston will be watching the Marathon, but I’ll be out on the trails.) Cath says Sunday I can begin using spurs! (I want to eliminate the use of the crop anyway . . .) so things are looking quite rosy right now.