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The next thing I did was to help try to diagnose precisely what was causing a lameness. The horse had a history of laminitis, but that wasn't the suspected cause of this current problem. I held the horse while blocks were done to different parts of his pastern area, (navicular joint, etc.) Blocks are basically numbing the area, so if there's pain there, the horse can't feel it anymore and if that was the area causing lameness, the horse should walk normally after the block. Anyway, it was simply further testing on what was done previously. (And laminitis, for those who don't know, is a separation of the bone of the hoof from the hoof wall. The bone may even twist around, which is very painful, obviously.)
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The last thing today was examining x-rays of a previous case, to see if the corrective surgery was working. This was a case with an alpaca who had a chronic problem of break her rear leg. This had been going on for a couple years, and there had been so many failed repairs attempted on the leg, that the bone looked like swiss cheese, and there really was no bone density at all. To fix this problem, hopefully permanently, the end of the bone were made to fit together like a stair-step pattern, and metal plates and screws were put on either side of the bone to stabalize it. From the current radiographs, the leg looked much better, and hopefully will continue to heal this time. And that's all for today!
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