Brief positive update: I had my first proper canter on him today! :yahoo:

M has managed about 5 strides in the school but today a friend of ours at the yard accompanied us on a hack up the bridlepath we’re familiar with and then round some of the quiet roads on the end of it, up to the big main road with the buses on it (that you have to go along to get to any proper hacking!). We did about 5 metres along the road (as there’s a sort of triangle bit you can go up and along and then straight back down the other side of) and then we came back along the path. The other pony likes to have a canter back along the bridlepath and so Dino was happy to follow along! He did 5 strides, broke to trot to with a *phew! That was hard work* sort of stop and then realised Bug was still going to I asked him to go forward to canter again, and he did, and we did a proper stretch of maybe slightly less than a minute until we got to the hill at the end towards our yard where we was all like *Um, Mum, there’s a hill. I’m very tired. That was hard work* :wub:

Very pleased with my little boy! Nice to finally get to feel the canter properly after over a year!!! :party:

We’re planning to go out with Bug again on Saturday and maybe do a slightly longer stretch along the scary road as he wasn’t really bothered by the traffic. And then maybe another bit of canter on the path. 🙂

Evolution of a ‘characterful’ face… This is mostly for my benefit but I figured others might be curious. Here’s a series of pictures of his lumpy face:

May – this was taken by my brother-in-law and you can see a small lump on his chin:
(http://bcphotography02.zenfolio.com/img/s9/v91/p2077766583-3.jpg) (http://bcphotography02.zenfolio.com/p66097521/e7bd833b7)

August 4 (before going to the vet school the first time):

September 1 (between 1st and 2nd vet school trips):

September 16:

October 5:

October 23:

A range of angles so it’s hard to compare but you can see we’ve got a lot of the swelling down recently…mostly what’s left is the troublesome bone 🙁

And so it continues. This is the short version….

He came back in September with a hole in his cheek and two tampons stuffed into the hole they made removing all the tooth fragments. We left it all for two weeks, as per the instructions, and then our vet came out and saw him again and was extremely concerned as there was still a *lot* of infection. We changed tactics – removed the tampons and instead were presented with a high capacity dental flushing syringe and instructed to flush the hole out twice a day. This cleared the infection up really well. The swelling round the cheek and soft tissues has gone down considerably and the hole is filling in with gum very nicely :party:

However, a side effect of all the tooth problems has been that the bone around the infection site has continued to grow – it’s producing poor quality, unhealthy bone around the hole which the pathology report from the RVC when he was last in said was an ‘osteoma’ or benign tumour. Our vet was hopeful that this would stop once the infection was under control and all the traumatic removal of bits of tooth had stopped…but he thinks it’s continuing to grow and is now worried it’s become cancerous. 😥 If it has, my understanding is there’s really nothing they can do. We’re giving him a couple of weeks of Bute to get the last of the swelling down but all we can really do is wait and hope and pray that it’s not but I suspect we won’t have any firm confirmation one way or the other for a few weeks.

It’s heartbreaking to think we might lose him and also frustrating that there’s nothing anyone can do wait and see. If anyone has any of those famous EE vibes going spare we could sure use some non-cancerous thoughts 🙁 😥