5/18/2023 0 Comments Week 12: RecoveryDuring the final week of my project I got to start working on rehabbing Marty! Which has already proven to be a hard task, it is very time consuming and also requires a lot of work. Marty has to walk for at least 30 minutes a day, and does his carrot stretches! Carrot stretches are stretches that make horses use muscles in the back and neck while using carrots to encourage them to hold the stretch. Carrots help motivate the horse to hold the stretches because it can be uncomfortable for them when the muscle is being stretched. He also gets to sit with a heating pad on his back for 20 minutes a day. The heating pad helps reduce pain, swelling, and tension in the muscles.
To help reduce Marty's pain levels he is also on multiple types of medication. Currently he is taking three different medications; he is taking bute, methocarbamol, and antibiotics which all have very important roles in Marty’s recovery. Bute is simply super strength horse pain medicine that helps reduce pain, swelling, and fever. Although Marty only got a certain dosage of bute, and it was slowly weaned off of it this week. Methocarbamol is simply a muscle relaxer that is used during therapy and to help prevent muscle spasms that could be caused during therapy or usage. While methocarbamol is very helpful it does have its side effects. It makes horses drowsy and they are not as aware of their surroundings like normal, which can cause them to spook and startle more than normal. Because of this I have to be very aware of what he is doing. The antibiotics are to help prevent infection. Even though Marty's recovery is on the right track we have to be very careful to follow the vet's instructions to make sure he heals properly, and will eventually be able to go back into work. There is no guarantee that he will be able to do everything he was before his surgery but we are hopeful that he will. After he gets his stitches taken out we will start working on building up muscle by using the Equiband lunging system, and then we will be able to start riding!
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