Updates ( not the best of news)

COURTESY OF NYRA

We thought we could get Tom/Josh and Jacob to round up the moose and get it to run in "WestPoint" colours during the Saratoga meet. Just joking Terry!

Now in all seriousness:

Terry had a chance to talk to Dr. Baker over the weekend while in Kentucky and get a full update.
Dr. Baker xrayed Mr. Fantasy's knees and ankles. His knees while a bit tender, were fine. He did, however, discover small chips in Mr. Fantasy's left front and right hind ankle. They went ahead and put him under anesthesia and removed the chips. While they had him under, they looked at the other two ankles to clean them up of any loose bodies. There were no chips in the other ankles, just bone flakes.
The chip removal went routinely. Dr. Baker did find some grooving on the bottom Mr. Fantasy's cannon bones. In other words, the bone was showing some signs up wearing down. If we had not stopped now, we could have ruined Mr. Fantasy. Fortunately, we took the more cautious approach and were able to discover this early.
Next stepsMr. Fantasy will be on stall rest for two weeks. After stall rest, Baker will inject his ankles with hyaluronic acid to make sure the fluid in the joint runs clean.
Two to three weeks after injection, Dr. Baker will come out and pinfire Mr. Fantasy's shins. He did see the inflammation there, so we will take care of that.
During the down time, Mr. Fantasy will undergo something called IRAP (Interleukin-1 Receptor Antagonist Protein) treatment. IRAP is used to combat osteoarthritis and joint degeneration. IRAP blocks the Interlukin-1 protein from causing the inflammation that creates bone degradation. Attached, please find a great article on IRAP from the University of Florida veterinary school. It is a fairly new, exciting and effective procedure.
The grooving on the cannon bones essentially adds 30-40 more days off for Mr. Fantasy beyond our original timetable. Dr. Baker said the more time we could give him the better, so he will be out of training until about November 1st.
After November 1st we will most likely send Mr. Fantasy directly to Florida. We could start him on the aquacizer at Vinery in Florida to start getting him legged up without putting stress on his joints. We would then likely send him to Kiaran at Palm Meadows just before the new year.

Prognosis:The prognosis for Mr. Fantasy is good. We would ideally have loved for there to have been no associated grooving on the cannon bone, but we caught things early. Kiaran does not throw around phrases like top horse easily, but he said to me yesterday, "This is a top horse. When we get him back he'll be a top horse in 2010." We believe Kiaran is right. We're not going to sugar coat things. This is a disappointment, but we're doing everything we can to make sure Mr. Fantasy is a top horse in the future.



Phosphorescent is scheduled to be looked at again by Dr. Allday this week as more of a matter of due diligence than anything. He wants to see if anything has changed since he evaluated him roughly ten days ago. Dale has purposely held off on breezing him until he got a second look from the vet. If everything checks out, then he will resume breezing.


This Defense Rests had a little filling in his tendon after breezing through the lane earlier this week. Kiaran had the tendon scanned and it came up clean. He simply has a little tendinitis. Kiaran called it akin to growing pains in a human being. There's nothing you need to do except let the horse get through it. As a result, we've sent The Defense Rests to Goodwin Farm in Saratoga. He will be there for 60 days then should resume training.