Open Heel vs Eggbar shoes for Navicular

[mojo7777]

Trying to make a very long story short here. My horse, who has a bone spur on the navicular, has been in three degree wedge pads, with regular open heel shoes, for some months with little improvement. My farrier would now like to try aluminum open heel wedge shoes with Equipak. I will talk to him (and the vet) about his reasoning re open heel, as opposed to eggbar, but I wanted to get some input so as to be informed in advance.

There are so many opinions on how to deal with this. I’ve heard that open back shoes can cause the heel to collapse in the center by one person of strong opinion! I am personally in favor of trying as many different approaches as necessary to see if we can hit on an effective one.

Has anyone had experience with open heel, as opposed to closed heel shoes, when treating navicular disease?

[prudence]

Did you try the aluminum open heel wedge shoes?

[SportingSun]

Try the aluminum shoes. If that doesn’t work I would recommend a sneaker type shoe like the epona shoe which has worked well for my navicular gelding.

ETA: fwiw you should see an improvement within a week of putting the new shoes on. When I started with the epona shoes for my horse The change in comfort level was pretty much instant.

[prudence]

Thanks SportingSun!

We have the aluminum wedge shoes with small heel extenders on with no improvement over 1-1/2 months. I was thinking of asking the shoer to try egg bar shoes. I will go read about epona shoes.

[mojo7777]

Yes, same here. The aluminum open back wedge w/ Equipak did not work. I will check into the Epona shoes too, but my boy is now retired and living the pasture life of Riley. His new buddy gets all the work now. I may start a new thread on the cheapest pasture sound maintenance method.