But what will it do to bone spurs?
This is a bit of a long story, so bear with me, or skip to the end and read the summary (in bold).
My upper level jumper is a TB with stereotypical TB feet. We’ve come up with a plan for shoeing that has worked quite well for the 7 or so years he’s been doing the 1.40m - 1.50m jumpers, and he’s been remarkably sound during that time. Horse will be 16 this coming year, so he’s no spring chicken. Currently sound.
This summer my farrier came out and did the horses the week before a set of 3 shows in a row. Over the next few days this horse became mildly and inconsistently uncomfortable acting on his LF when it was on the outside of a small circle or tight turn.
My suspicion was that his toe nails were bothering him. We had switched to copper nails a couple of cycles prior and the difference it made in his foot quality was surprising. My farrier had commented during that most recent shoeing that it was the first time he’d ever been able to truly clinch the nails in that horse’s feet. Long story short, we reset the shoe with 4 very low nails midway through the week of show 1 (and scratched everything). It took another week, but the horse got progressively better from that point onward. For week two of the set of shows he felt great on the flat, but was still pulling to the right over jumps (only did small jumps in the warmup during that time to gauge how he felt). Midway through the week he started feeling normal over the jumps again so we did the GP at the end of the week and he felt normal. Week 3 we went back to the FEI classes (he passed the FEI jog) and he did a full set of Welcome Open/GP/GP that week.
He definitely didn’t feel “stellar” in the big classes. But he didn’t do anything particularly odd, just had a few rails in each class, and I didn’t suspect anything out of the ordinary…or IOW, it seemed like one of those horseshowing weeks where we just weren’t “on it.”
Fast forward through the fall and up to this week. 2 more shoeings in that time and again he’s had issues with the LF medial nails (we narrowed it down to only those nails bothering him). Had a vet come do x-rays so we could see what we’re dealing with and…(drum roll)…
Looks like there’s a recently healed fracture in his coffin bone in the medial wing down in the toe. Vet’s estimate is that he was likely dealing with it within the last few months. :eek:
Our assumption is that August is a reasonable guess given that it’s the only time he’s ever been lame on the LF. If we’re correct, he jumped around that month with a broken coffin bone. He was very clearly diving right to avoid landing on his LF during the acute phase. After that it was business as usual. To make me feel like a complete and total schmuck, he received zero bute in that timeframe because of FEI rules.
We also discovered that he’s got pretty big bone spurs on the lateral side of the navicular bone in both front feet. Vet’s comment was that “those don’t usually mean nothing.” Also, he mentioned there is some lightening of the navicular in the RF.
So now with that background laid out, the vet’s suggestion (quick side note that this is not my normal vet - she has recently started farming out the x-rays) is to do a round of Osphos.
So here’s my real question:
TL;DR - Horse jumped around a show or two with a broken coffin bone (unbeknownst to us). Still sensitive to medial nails in that foot (the nails that go right over where the break was). Vet suggested Osphos. Complicating the suggestion (in my brain) is the presence of navicular bone spurs.
Will the use of Osphos impact the bone spurs at all? The idea of giving the horse something to help bone develop/mineralize worries me in the presence of not insignificant bone spurs. Recommending vet hemmed and hawed a bit and didn’t answer the question.
My vet is not an immediate fan of the Osphos suggestion, so is researching and I’m waiting to hear back from her. So while she’s talking to her colleagues I thought I’d put it out to those of you here who have experience with any of the above issues to see what collective wisdom COTH can provide while I wait for my vet to come back to me with her recommendations.
On a relatively random side note, the vet who suggested the Osphos said that there are really no downsides to it. But the last time a vet said that to me it was in regard to omeprazole usage, which led to a couple of bad colic episodes to the tune of about $10k in vet bills before we figured out that my guy couldn’t tolerate long-term omeprazole use. So I fully acknowledge that I might be a little gun shy to the idea of “drugs that really don’t have a down side.”
