Resolution!

I could hardly wait to get home from the vet's to relay the good news...

Moon's stifle ultrasound came up clean!!

As in...no injury to joint or tendons. Outside of carrying some excess fluid around the joint...everything looked super clean.

I cannot even begin to tell you all how relieved I am.

The possible negative outcome of the ultrasound has been weighing heavily on my mind this last week.

What the vet does think is going on is that Moon's hocks are starting to fuse...after all, Moon is at that age (14) and that may have something to do with Moon getting so overly ratey going into the barrels. Because Moon's hocks are already well into the fusing process...injections are unnecessary.

What I will have to do is up his Adequan regiment to every 2 weeks, add a glucosamine supplement and start carrying a lot of ice with me to the barrel races. ;-)

I will have to start icing his hocks before the race and after...and after his workouts at home.

The good news is...I can go back to actually putting Moon to work. I have held off of loping him much and kept him off of the pattern except to make a run. The lack of proper work-outs and almost no practice is definitely showing up. We had an 'okay' run on Saturday in Cortez, good enough to pull a check, but I was not exactly happy with the run itself...and then an absolutely horrible run on Sunday, where Moon was throwing me around like a rag-doll again and I couldn't get him drove past the 3rd barrel, so we knocked it.

Well, now that any possible injury/excessive pain issues have been eliminated and I have a treatment plan to minimize the naturally occurring, age related pain...Time to get Moon tuned up.

I am soooo relieved!!!!