Does anyone on COTH have experience with fractured withers?
How long was your rehab time?
How long until your horse wasn’t sensitive/in pain over the withers?
Did you ever bring them back into work? How did that turn out?
Any tricks on keeping them more comfortable under saddle? Wider channel?
Anyone have a horse re injure the site later down the road?
TIA
Anyone?
I havent had one, but have seen a few.
I know of one that is currently in rehab, it was about 8months I think of not riding, and he came into work, but as I understand it may have some residual pain and was unreliable under saddle. I believe he may be retired from showing and only ridden occasionally (what I mean is I think he was cleared by vet but has some behaviours that have appeared that cant be specifically associated with the injury, but werent there prior)
I have seen a couple that did it as young horses and they were fine by the time they came into work, and it didnt appear to limit them at all.
Not much help sorry.
A horse at a barn I used to board at fractured his withers - I don’t know all the details about the injury or rehab, but if I recall correctly, he was back under saddle and jumping in about a year. He seemed comfortable at first, but started refusing and was brought back out of work due to SI issues. I have no idea if the SI problem was the result of an injury that co-occurred with the wither fracture, or was compensatory, or totally unrelated. That’s about when I changed barns, so I don’t know the end of the story.
He definitely had misshapen withers due to the injury, but I think not in a location that interfered with the saddle (in an obvious way, at least). I imagine the ability to fit a saddle comfortably with this kind of injury is extremely variable.
Maybe try sizing up the tree width to make room for padding that can be trimmed to fit his/her shape? That might give you more flexibility in fitting the whole back if a wide channel under the cantle isn’t needed, for example.
I have a client with a mare who fractured her withers 3 years ago. She had complete fractures with displacement of 5 spinous processes over her withers, and she’s gone from 16.2 10 16.0. That said, she has recovered completely, and went back to competition the following year at the PSG/Inter 1 level. She was on complete rest for 6 months, the saddler came and reworked her saddle so that it has air panels in the front and wool in the back such that we can ensure a good, albeit asymmetrical, fit in the front, and she came back to work with no problems. She was on pasture turnout during the 6 months of rest, so she didn’t lose a great deal of muscle. In actual fact, we’ve been surprised by how much more through she is now compared to prior to the accident!
Wow.
Just wow!
Like high five to the owners, trainers and everyone else involved… Wow.
Yes. It happened to one of mine. He broke 3 of them off. Plus cracked his shoulder blade. He ended up with 6 mos off but came back sound. I did have to watch how I fit his saddle since that shoulder area did have some scar tissue.
He was just a low level horse so no jumping, just trails and basic dressage, but he was fine even going down hills.
I had a school horse that did. He pulled back and broke a rope and flipped over right on his withers, He was a little sore, but not terribly. I think he was working pretty much right away. He just suddenly had flat withers. I never had him checked out because it was not really an issue. My horses are always in really good shape and have a lot of conditioning, so I don’t know if that was a factor.
I know one horse who likely had it happen based on what the X-rays looked like probably years after the fact. We also knew the horse had flipped itself at least once when being broken during groundwork. Nothing obvious from the outside so probably not a terribly bad injury but developed severe arthritis there while still young. Never reliable to ride. Generally sweet but could be hot and had a tendency to “out of the blue” buck people off. Owner was meticulous about saddle fit and had one of the best saddlers in our area working with the horse. Also tried a variety of tack including Western, which the horse seemed to like for a while. But again, never reliable, so they did some imaging and decided to retire. Decided that there was nothing to be done to make the horse rideable. Not sure if the injury had been more obvious and the horse rested at that time would have done anything.
Seems that if the injury is more to the top of the spine, it would be easier to recover from in that location than if something that would lead to arthritic changes and interfering remodeling.
Thanks for the comments everyone.
We are 7+ months out at this point. It looks like it was broken several years ago and was re injured which is why we even knew it was there.
Seems like it’s kind of 50 50 on ride-ability after healing. Maybe it’s time to take up driving lol
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