Progress with Hummy's injury.

Hummy had his xrays and MRI scans today there was good news and bad. His R hock injury is healing well and he doesn' t currently need further treatment on it so long as it continues as is. Even though todays xrays showed a small fracture there, the joint and fracture is fusing as expected he has good movement there and we have reversed the bone loss he was showing 6 months ago. He is still getting mild pain on this leg though. However, the MRI scans showed that the tweak he gave the left suspensory ligament ten days ago was serious and the damage far worse than when it was scanned 6 months ago. So prognosis for full recovery still not good. Vet is now recommending that we lock him up with a companion away from the others. ie in the cattle barns with LS for 3 months and give him intensive shock wave theropy for 2 weeks to try and speed up the healing process. The way the vet explained it, the inflamed ligament is boxed in between bone and tendons and the swelling causes pressure as it has nowhere to go, this reduces blood flow and hence reduces/slows the healing process. The shock wave treatment stirs everything up again which increases blood flow to promote healing but he has to be kept quiet and relatively imobile for it to work. This is his best chance of ever being able to do any kind of collection/finess/dressage in the distant future. Got to speak to the vet again tomorrow, he is getting another opinion on the scans/xrays again to make sure his prognosis is the best we can do. He is not in favour of operating on the ligament as over the last 8 years they have had a better % of successes of horses remaining sound and working again without the opp but with a much longer recuperation period.