I appreciete everyones help, I bought this horse for 100,000 in wellington a few years back with some of the top trainers (also some of the shadiest) yes i know bad decision, anyways he passed the vet except he had some “wear and tear” everyone telling me its a great horse and I need to buy it and blah blah. I showed it for a while then I had some kids show it in the juniors and he did great. About two years ago I was at one of the winter series and he walked out of his stall dead lame, my trainer said he would have the vet out immediately, so the next day all I heard was the horse is fine and he just got injections and after that he was completly sound. So then just last year I decided it was time for me to move on to a diffrent horse so I sent him to a BNT in NY (not naming names) to get sold, so skipping forward there had to be 10 diffrent people vet this horse within 2 months and he failed the vet every time with this “navicular disease” I never saw the x rays or anything. So then with all these people trying my horse he goes dead lame again so then I get a call that this little girl really likes my horse so they leased him out for a year and injected him to keep him sound and now his lease is up and he will be coming back to my farm, (not knowing in what condition) maybe I should just get some good shoeing to make him comfortable and bring him back out this spring and see what i’ve got and go from there.
[QUOTE=hunterjumperx12;7262660]
I appreciete everyones help, I bought this horse for 100,000 in wellington a few years back with some of the top trainers (also some of the shadiest) yes i know bad decision, anyways he passed the vet except he had some “wear and tear” everyone telling me its a great horse and I need to buy it and blah blah. I showed it for a while then I had some kids show it in the juniors and he did great. About two years ago I was at one of the winter series and he walked out of his stall dead lame, my trainer said he would have the vet out immediately, so the next day all I heard was the horse is fine and he just got injections and after that he was completly sound. So then just last year I decided it was time for me to move on to a diffrent horse so I sent him to a BNT in NY (not naming names) to get sold, so skipping forward there had to be 10 diffrent people vet this horse within 2 months and he failed the vet every time with this “navicular disease” I never saw the x rays or anything. So then with all these people trying my horse he goes dead lame again so then I get a call that this little girl really likes my horse so they leased him out for a year and injected him to keep him sound and now his lease is up and he will be coming back to my farm, (not knowing in what condition) maybe I should just get some good shoeing to make him comfortable and bring him back out this spring and see what i’ve got and go from there.[/QUOTE]
Odd thread considering the American vs Canadian hunter one going on just now…
But no, you shouldn’t wait for spring. Get a vet you can trust out and learn what is wrong with your horse now. Then you can decide of a course of action.
Call all the vets who have been involved since the first injection and educate yourself properly on the situation. This has been going on way too long.
Maybe the horse was still well taken care of, maybe not. YOU need to find out and step up for YOUR horse.
This is so sad. This is similar to what happened to me/my parents with my junior hunter…navicular problems that showed up on our prepurchase x-rays were downplayed as nothing. My parents didn’t know better, and I was a kid.
If I were in your position, I’d get a full vet work up, and then probably pull his shoes, turn him out, and see what you have in a year.
[QUOTE=hunterjumperx12;7262660]
I appreciete everyones help, I bought this horse for 100,000 in wellington a few years back with some of the top trainers (also some of the shadiest) yes i know bad decision, anyways he passed the vet except he had some “wear and tear” everyone telling me its a great horse and I need to buy it and blah blah. I showed it for a while then I had some kids show it in the juniors and he did great. About two years ago I was at one of the winter series and he walked out of his stall dead lame, my trainer said he would have the vet out immediately, so the next day all I heard was the horse is fine and he just got injections and after that he was completly sound. So then just last year I decided it was time for me to move on to a diffrent horse so I sent him to a BNT in NY (not naming names) to get sold, so skipping forward there had to be 10 diffrent people vet this horse within 2 months and he failed the vet every time with this “navicular disease” I never saw the x rays or anything. So then with all these people trying my horse he goes dead lame again so then I get a call that this little girl really likes my horse so they leased him out for a year and injected him to keep him sound and now his lease is up and he will be coming back to my farm, (not knowing in what condition) maybe I should just get some good shoeing to make him comfortable and bring him back out this spring and see what i’ve got and go from there.[/QUOTE]
And whatever you do, stop leasing him out. People will just keep injecting him and jumping him until he is catastrophically crippled.
Motto of many less then ethical sale barns " Anything to get them sold". I wonder WHY this horse failed so many PPEs? Did they just shut up and hope the next suck…errr… buyer’s vet missed it ??? What did they REALLY do to it to keep it sound enough for evaluation rides and to make a string of buyers spring $xxx to PPE??? Send it to another barn without disclosing and let them try to move it?
Regardless of what they say, I imagine it was more then “just” an occaisional injection of something relatively benign in the navicular bursa and a sensible NSAID regime. Dropping from 3’6" to 2’6" in such a relatively short time span tells me he is hurting and they are scrambling to keep him going.
Bring the horse HOME- and sounds like you can keep him at home? Bring him home and be a Mom to him, he needs one.
Echoing the sentiments of others, bring the horse home, get a full diagnostic work up with a vet who is working for YOU and for the horse’s behalf (not one who just wants to keep the horse showing) and go from there.
The options for horses with navicular syndrome range from full retirement to full work with shoeing and med maintenance and everything in between. Do what is best for the horse, it sounds like he’s earned it.
I think you need to be a more responsible and involved horse owner. Stop listening to what everyone else says and CALL A VET and speak to them YOURSELF. You keep getting screwed but yet don’t seem to be speaking w/ the source of the explanation.
The reason BNTs get away w/ so much is b/c there are SO many potential horse owners w/ blind faith and too much money.
This is hitting very close to home…we bought a horse at WEF last year for an adult client of mine. He “passed” the pre purchase so we bought him to be a low adult/adult hunter. The poor thing has been dead lame since the day he got off the trailer. He was winning the Eq’s, jumping around the Derbies, and showing a ton last circuit. How on earth they masked this navicular for so long is just unimaginable. I feel so bad for this horse(not to mention my client!)…he is on his way to New Bolton next week to see if we can help him out. I will update with what we learn if it might be of any help to the OP
OP, I’m not an expert, but you have many here who are giving you good advice. Take it.
Pay attention to motive when you get advice from people.
From here, it looks like you have FAR TOO MANY “HELPERS” with this horse whose motives may be suspect. You need to be a more hands-on type of owner. I can’t imagine not seeing x-rays/radiographs of my horse if they’d been done.
When I bought Holly, she came back lame the first day I rode her. First vet wanted to stick her with Hyaluronic Acid every 6 months or so (from then on, as needed) for a bone chip in the fetlock. She was only 6 at the time and when I researched it, I found (among other things) that you can only stick a joint so many times, and then the joint won’t take it anymore. My opinion of Vet #1 went down a bit, and he was supposed to be the best in town. I’d researched that TOO.
Contacted Vet #2, a referral from my instructor, who suggested possible surgery, I researched that and decided to go with it. Went back to Vet #1, and started in reciting all my research and ended with “SHE’S ONLY 6 YEARS OLD!, WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO WHEN YOU CAN’T STICK HER ANY MORE??? SHE’S GOT 20 YEARS AHEAD OF HER! WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO???” At that point, he agreed to cooperate with the surgicenter and we’d get her done. it was a bit of money, but I don’t regret it at all.
Get involved. it’s YOUR HORSE.
I’m not going too hard on OP here, she really doesn’t know and has been shielded from knowing by the cloud of BS sent up by “professionals” she put her trust in.
The horse was probably well on the way to being broken when she bought it (and overpaid) with her trainer/agent glossing over the details with a pat on the head and a “don’t worry honey, it’s hard to understand the details and rads, he’ll be FINE with a little management and we’ll sell him on for you when the time comes”.
Fault the lack of professional ethics within the industry and total disregard for horse welfare-stick em and keep em going.
Just wanted to offer my sympathies and support OP. I purchased a former GP horse from an equine vet many many moons ago. It was a complete rip-off as the horse not only had navicular that was undisclosed to me but it had also been nerved fairly far up on the legs. Since I was buying this horse for the AO Jumpers it was very unethical and likely unsafe. Fortunately I could return my horse to the vet and get a refund. I know they do a lot more for navicular syndrome than they did back then so I think it would be worth the time and money to get a thorough work-up from a trustworthy vet. I doubt time off will help this horse so sooner than later would be the kindest for the horse. Keep people out of your decision making process who have anything financial to gain. Sad but true.
What is your goal for this horse at this point? Are you his forever home so if he can be made comfortable you could retire him? Or are you trying to find a new permanent situation for him?
OP, no need for me to repeat the excellent advice on this thread. My recent experience has underlined the fact that I am my horse’s advocate, no one else.
My mare had been barefoot for 11 years, never quite right, but happy to work. She was crooked as all get out, but when she became chronically 4/5 lame in August, it was time for a full workup. Long story short, her case is bone cysts on the outer edge of her RF navicular with a possible old fracture on the margin.
Her feet are perfect and her trims had been fantastic, but it was no longer enough. She is now shod in front with a wide outer web and a small tail for added stabilization. I have her on B-L pellets (and will use NSAIDS if absolutely necessary), and she is now a very low1/5, 100% when she is warmed up. I hope to get her back to little jumps, but am happy she is comfortable and feels strong and fluid.
If in the future she needs more, we’ll go to eggbar and/or Tildren.
She has earned everything I can do for her.
Good luck!
[QUOTE=boosma47;7263236]
OP, no need for me to repeat the excellent advice on this thread. My recent experience has underlined the fact that I am my horse’s advocate, no one else.
My mare had been barefoot for 11 years, never quite right, but happy to work. She was crooked as all get out, but when she became chronically 4/5 lame in August, it was time for a full workup. Long story short, her case is bone cysts on the outer edge of her RF navicular with a possible old fracture on the margin.
Her feet are perfect and her trims had been fantastic, but it was no longer enough. She is now shod in front with a wide outer web and a small tail for added stabilization. I have her on B-L pellets (and will use NSAIDS if absolutely necessary), and she is now a very low1/5, 100% when she is warmed up. I hope to get her back to little jumps, but am happy she is comfortable and feels strong and fluid.
If in the future she needs more, we’ll go to eggbar and/or Tildren.
She has earned everything I can do for her.
Good luck![/QUOTE]
In my personal opinion at a 100 Grand, you should have walked away. 100 Grand horse should be near perfect and certainly no foot issues. Don’t care where you bought him or from whom. Also full set of radiographs done before writing the check. Sorry, lesson learned. Hopefully you can get a good vet to fix him up. Trilren is a good choice
There is no FIX!
I’ll be blunt, but it’s because I worry about the animals. I know you’ve been led on, and it’s hard to get a straight story sometimes. Especially from a distance. These “trainers” have done both you AND your horse a big disservice. He’s probably lucky to have you instead of someone who’d totally break him or send him to become someone’s dinner.
Pull his shoes, get him home, get him some good veterinary help to bring his comfort level up to something tolerable, and retire him. He’s in pain. He sounds like he has way more than navicular going on and it isn’t fair to make him pound his sore feet and legs into the ground like that (landing off a jump). He deserves the good life; he doesn’t need to continue working.
Sounds, too, like he’s a good boy. The sort with the “I’ll do anything to please you, even if it kills me” attitude. He could’ve turned dirty stopper/sour and nasty beast by now. Treat him well. He’s earned it!
Navicular (which is a ‘tell all’ word for caudal heel pain) can sometimes be managed and sometimes not. As someone who has had horses with caudal heel pain my first recommendation is find a fantastic lameness vet, be at the appointments(!) and arrange for some diagnostics and arrange for an MRI. Only once you find out why the horse is having hoof pain can you figure out if you can manage it with shoeing, moving the horse down a division, minor medication etc. or if its a retirement situation.
Some horses can have a lesser career (a job) and some have to be retired.
And OP…don’t be hard on yourself…as you can see on this board…many people have bought horses that have heel pain. I have one that X-rays like a million bucks, but MRIs like a piece of crap. Take the bull by the horns and find out NOW what it going on. Time is of the essence as this is a degenerative syndrome and slowing the process now will potentially help the future of your horse.
Good luck.
You and your horse were both taken advantage of. Now it’s time for you to help your horse, and not be another one in along line of people who have been “using him up” until there is nothing left. Leasing a lame horse is not a good idea…the lessors have no vested interest in the future of the horse, and will do things to get it sound enough to show, but which are not good for the horse in the long haul.
Get the best best vet you can to do a work up right away and become a more involved and educated horse owner for the sake of this horse, and your future horses…not to mention your pocket book!
Lots of good advice here. I will just add that I would have the horse seen by a good lameness vet before pulling the shoes and turning him out. Dr. Green is great for a lot of issues but many horses with these kind of issues really need/benefit from supportive shoeing and don’t do well barefoot.
Choo choo…
Where are you located? Can you get to New Bolton or whatever the similar clinic is in your area? You need ANSWERS about what’s going on and then you can come up with a plan…
