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Please Reply to: Bruce Weary bweary@xxxxxxxxxxxx or ridecamp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
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Hi Tiffany--
Thank you for joining the discussion of wind puffs. Always good
to get more than one perspective. Regarding your question about
chronic versus acute wind puffs, consider this: Let's say you have
a horse in your corral with perfect clean legs. No blemishes, swellings or 
defects of any kind. During the night, he injures himself, and you wake up the 
next morning to find
a wind puff (which is a slang term describing a local,contained
filling on either side of the upper portion of the fetlock joint. 
The term is not a specific diagnosis and can be used to refer to an old or new 
one) on one of his legs. This would be a new, or acute, "wind puff" the cause 
of which, and nature of which is yet to be determined. This as opposed to a 
10 year old horse you are considering buying that you notice
has wind puffs and the owner assures you they have been there
for years and have never bothered him. Those would then be 
chronic (and I like Heidi's term, adaptive changes) wind puffs,
and not likely to change. 
In the first case, the wind puff formation is likely an acute
formation of synovial fluid developing as a response to the new injury. The 
synovium and joint capsule have not had time to 
thicken and be the explanation for the enlargement. Aggressive
therapy at this point, will relieve the swelling and promote
healing, and if there are no other aggravating factors, a full 
recovery may be obtained with no residual "wind puff" formation
left behind. In other words, the fact that there is distension
of the tissue initially, doesn't necessarily mean there will be
an inevitable permanent wind puff following. Having said this, 
I will agree that permanent wind puffs (and their various causes)
rarely cause any lameness or other difficulty for the horse. I'm 
just kind of a fanatic about my horses legs, as I imagine many
endurance riders are.     Thanks  Bruce Weary
  
 


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