On Monday night I showed up at the barn around 7:00 p.m. to ride once the day cooled off. To my dismay I found that Freedom’s knee was hugely swollen. I had wrapped his legs because he’d felt a bit stocked up the night before and because the swelling had no where to go except the knee, the effect was horrifying. Visualize a grapefruit.

Almost immediately I saw the cause: a scrape less than an inch long. Before I called the vet I scrubbed the wound to make sure it wasn’t a puncture wound (didn’t look like it to me, but a puncture would where a joint is involved can be very serious). Normally I would also shave the area around the cut but I had sent my clipper blades out to be sharpened!  My guess was cellulitis but since it involved a joint I wanted to makes sure I…