Has anyone had any experience with a horse that broke their withers? Did they recover? Did they return to riding?
I owned a horse that at one point in the past broke his withers; he was healed by the time I got him, and had no problems whatsoever with ridnig.
Yes. I had one. Did it out in the pasture somehow. She was off for about 6 months (more due to it being winter and not wanting to get back on a greenie on snow and ice than a need to be off for that long.) She came back sound and went back to normal life, and when I sold her the PPE vet didn’t mention it, thought the purchasers already knew about it. Hers broke forward and to the left, if I recall, and so didn’t affect saddle placement or anything else. She did have a bit of a hump…
I also know of 2 others–one was a dressage horse who flipped over in the cross ties. He was off for a while, but there were other human circumstances involved in that rest period, too, but he came back to work as a very respectable schoolmaster. The other was a hunter-jumper, that belonged to a friend of mine and she came back to competing as well.
You do need to watch out for a couple of things. First is the positioning of the “broken bits.” It may well affect future saddle fit and comfort under saddle (I know someone on here had one that couldn’t wear a saddle afterwards but turned into a very nice driving horse.)
Secondly, sometimes there are bits of bone floating around that can pop to the surface and cause issues–according to my vet, this is relatively uncommon, the broken off processes tend to end up just being bound up in all that muscle there and stay put. He won’t surgically remove them unless they are causing a real problem, as it’s potentially risky digging around that close to the spinal cord.
So I guess it is situational, and not all that uncommon in my experience. Good luck with it!
Our first horse was a “rescue” OTTB who was just starting her re-training when she pulled back while tied, flipped and broke her withers. There were a lot of abrasions and swelling. We did not get the swelling down; the withers abscessed a couple of weeks later with a volcano-like eruption of puss and yuck.
After the eruption the mare had a fist sized hole where her withers had been. It took about six months for the hole to close up enough to have the vet sew it up. Even after being sewn up, it re-opened. At that point, we x-rayed and found a bone fragment still inside. The fragment emerged on its own after a few weeks, and then the hole closed. Mare had a depression where her withers had been, and I still have some of the bone fragments somewhere.
At that point, mare’s retraining commenced. Unfortunately, it was not successful, but we think that was due to track baggage and not the withers incident.
At the time of the mare’s incident, we were brand new horse owners who (in hindsight) relied way too much on our “trainer” who was a DIY type and only called the vet for anything as a last resort. I think I first discovered the COTH forums when researching withers injuries where I found a fair number of stories of very high level successful horses who had broken withers in their pasts.
Key points:
- Involve the vet sooner rather than later
- get x-rays to determine the extent of the damage and to know what you are dealing with
- be aware that saddle fitting may be a challenge
Wer had several horses brought to our place over the years when injured in herd situations.
One was a mare who had gone down under a rail when being chased and it was lower than she was tall. She broke her withers getting up.
I know nothing about the vet call or the rehab but she was ridden again later.
I’ve known a couple that fractured withers and returned to successful racing careers (one a steeplechaser, one a flat horse) after several months off to recover.
