Yahoo! Good News!

Today was Megan's recheck at the UGA vet hospital. After 6 weeks of Marquis, she has shown improvement. Steve and I watched (and videotaped) all of the field tests and I'm very optimistic that she will recover fully. The vet started with the leg placement tests and Megan stood like a Gumby doll. I don't put a lot of faith in that being a positive sign of neurological deficits. Megan is an agreeable girl -- you tie her legs up like a pretzel and she isn't going to protest.

The next tests were in a straight line -- no visible problem. Onto the circling, she showed some signs in her right hind only. The tail pull test was mildly postive to right side and completely normal to the left. The tests going up and down a rather steep incline raised the vet's concerns over the front feet on the downhill only and then only mildly (I think it's just how she moves). Still showing a little ataxia on the right hind. We then moved over to another area where she was led up and down a pine island with concrete curbing in a serpentine along the curb. The test was did she know where her feet were stepping up and down off the curb repeatedly. (I certainly would have fallen at least once.) She never did anything other than take an awkward step occasionally when she was distracted -- overall read: normal.

The diagnosis in August was grade 1/2 of 5 deficits in the front legs and grade 2/3 of 5 in the rear legs. Today's diagnosis was grade 0/1 of 5 deficits in the front and grade 2.5 in the right rear and grade 2 in the left rear. Overall the vet thought she was much improved. The course of action is to do another month on the Marquis and recheck. The vet isn't totally ruling out Wobblers, but she is less focused on that as the issue.

We still aren't to ride her, but did get the go ahead for ground work to resume! After several nights of no sleep and imagining the worst, I couldn't be more relieved and hopeful!