My 22 year old mare had a fairly serious injury to her RF DDFT last May (about 50% almost the entire length of her pastern). We promptly put her up on a wedge shoe; injected the tendon with ProStride and did 3 shockwave treatments. She has also been on Total Tendon Repair supplement this entire time. I do turn her out (one other horse at home). She was feeling really good and looking really sound before the last shoeing cycle (about 2 weeks ago; 8 months into her rehab). I called the vet and she suggested we start lowering the fairly steep wedge. I did have concerns about her navigating the snow in those shoes. I spoke with my farrier and he was able to put snow pads on with the wedge lowered 1 degree. He told me that she would likely get sore from the wedge being lowered and we all agreed to go through two cycles with this wedge. (Note: my horse tends toward long toes and underrun heels and I hate wedges because they exaccerbate the issue–I prefer high quality farrier work, which I have). So the reduction was two weeks ago and she is appearing REALLY sore this weekend. There is no heat or swelling, as there was in the original injury, but she is really not wanting to walk on it. I’ve been cold hosing. She gets one Equioxx per day (because she is a 22 year old retired grand prix dressage horse with arthritis). She probably weighs 1,500-1,600 lbs so that is a low dose for her. I have not yet called the vet as I’m not sure if this is the expected soreness or she has reinjured. I am cold hosing, lasering and wrapping. Is this level of soreness (not wanting to move around on it) normal for the soreness from lowering a wedge 1 degree? Can anyone help here? (And don’t bother to tell me to call my vet–I know that, I’m just looking for some information before I do.)
Don’t let her move around much. We had a similar one; her owner was not worried at all about the soreness…said “that happens sometimes”. Turned out she had an additional tear. I would call your vet and be very conservative.
Thank you for that! I have the vet coming with an ultrasound machine on Wednesday. To me, it does not look like normal soreness, but also no heat/swelling/thickening. My farrier said that if she reinjured, it would likely to be where the healing tissue joins the healthy tissue so I think an ultrasound is needed.
You are welcome. There was no swelling w this additional tear, either. Good luck and fingers crossed for you!
Before you change the shoe setup, you could slowly reintroduce the change in posture and stretch to the tendon. One way might be to try the Surefoot pads and play around with thickness and where you position the foot on the pad. Another is to get a easyboot and put a reverse wedge or a pad with softer back in it and let her stand on that for a little bit. This was part of the rehab for a pony I knew with a support shoe/wedge like that. They’d put her in the boot before ridden exercise as kind of a warmup, but I don’t see why you couldn’t do that in the stall or something for X amount of time and see how she does before making a permanent change with the shoeing where she’s now down 1* all the time. For longer wear than just during grooming on the cross ties like the long, you’d want to put a boot on the other front with a normal pad so she’s level.
I spent a BOATLOAD with the vet and farrier on this setup. I hated that high wedge. I was not offered any other suggestion for lowering the heel. Perhaps we should only have gone 1/2 degree. That said, she is WAAAAAY lamer than when she original injured herself and I’m starting to wonder if this is a hoof abscess. Anyway, vet is coming tomorrow and I will ask about your suggestions.
Vet was out today. She did not reinjure, thankfully, just really sore. The ultrasound showed more healing on one side than the other. She was markedly better today after being confined to her stall for a few days, so we decided to keep her to her stall and run for a few weeks to let her get used to this angle. We might have to wedge her up again if it doesn’t improve, but I am hopeful. She’ll stay at this height for two more cycles and the next reduction will be a half degree. Thanks all.
If its any consolation, my 17 yro mare went through this also. She had a DDFT tear down into her foot, so it took about 6months to finally diagnose with an MRI since x-rays and ultrasounds couldn’t find anything significant and joint injections in the feltock and pastern werent’ helping. Once diagnosed, I did the same thing as you. She was very sensitive to changes in her shoe, and sometimes would seem more lame even though we didn’t change the angles. We also used pour-in pads (equi-pak) with the wedge egg bar shoe. That seemed to help. Long story short - there will be ups and downs - and it took her almost 2 years to actually go 100%. She’s back to playing polo again with a bar shoe (no wedge).
Thank you so much for your story. Here is something interesting: I only lasered the side of her pastern that was thickened. When we ultrasounded her last week, that side was completely healed and the other side still showed a lesion (although gray and squiggly instead of black and a hole). So I have evidence that my laser works snd she is getting an extra cycle on the side I ignored. She is feeling much better snd is walking sounder this week.
I know this is an old thread….but can I ask you if the 2 years to come 100% sound was due to reinjury or just very slow rehab? And if what did you do besides therapeutic shoeing? And supplements etc? I’m interested because you’re horse recovered completely, as I believe mine has, but I’d like him to stay that way! My vet is suggesting Adequan, which I’m happy to do, but I like to see what other people have used with success.
