Yes!
It will be in combination with ESWT, and I have an acquaintance who has already offered her red light machine when she heard about the situation, so maybe things could be looking up?
Update;
So today was the appointment for the ultrasound and PRP therapy, depending how bad the lesion or desmitis was.
Well, there was very minimal desmitis, because it was actually an avulsion fracture with 2 little fragments of bone and no disruption of the suspensory fibres or hole to fill in.
So, good news, I guess…? I’m just waiting for a referral to yet another vet who has the shockwave machine to proceed with that therapy, and hopefully he’ll be a good boy for the rehab.
Interesting! I don’t know which condition would be worse, but crossing my fingers that your horse is a good patient.
Thank you!
Well, all his professionals were much happier it was a bone-related issue and not soft-tissue as originally suspected.
He’s a relatively good patient. He doesn’t mind his stall, but he doesn’t like when his”brain” (mare across the aisle) also rehabbing leaves (major understatement!). We’ve created a coping mechanism, and will have alternative remedies if and when needed. I’ve been told that I should be able to think about a return to full work, possibly in a shorter time period than if it was the soft tissue injury first suspected
Don’t you feel better knowing what you are dealing with? Sounds like a good plan in place. Jingles for an excellent recovery. I was thinking I would rather have a bony issue vs suspensory desmitis too
YES!! So much relief (in an ironic way)
I’d really rather deal with a minor fracture than soft tissue injuries, at this point. And I’m seeing a lot of barns with arena footing that just isn’t good, horses that only ever get worked on footing, etc.
He’s a retired eventer, so has been worked on every footing imaginable all his life, and the footing in our ring is very good.
Yes, it’s a very minor break; just 2 tiny fragments, really, off the main cannon bone
Oh, and it’s all outdoors, not an indoor (one day )
That is good to hear. What I see in barns with “bad” indoor footing (too deep and/or balls up in the hooves) is a lot of soft tissue injuries. At my older mare’s previous barn, the BO took out the $$$ footing that had only been in place for 4 or 5 years after 1 of her horses, and several boarders’ horses, who were ridden almost exclusively in the indoor, got soft tissue injuries. The BO’s horse had to be retired, and another went from upperish level dressage to being a school horse for kids. The footing was replaced with something much better, but $$$. It just seems like there are a lot of “wrong” footing materials out there that people are buying.
I don’t know exactly, unfortunately. It was on the old barn website, but obviously the name got changed when the footing got changed. It was some kind of sticky sandlike matter with textile mixed in. It tended to form deep spots, ripples and waves. The new footing had similar materials but for some reason stayed level, and there were rarely holes. Both required dragging every day.
I mostly trail rode, in season. The vet liked that I did it - said navigating rough terrain makes a horse very aware of where its hooves are. We have a lot of rocks and roots on our trails.
Thank you.
Well, a bit of an update:
He’s actually not a very good patient, and rehab is NOT going.
Like at all, not just ‘not very well’.
Stall rest was a bust, even with various anti-anxiolytics and sedatives.
So we decided to try just basic turnout in a grass paddock, but that only works for a short amount of time and then the pacing along the fenceline begins. Unless the mares next door show up near the boundary fence. Then he gallops to the fence to show off his stallion behaviour (he’s been a gelding 17.5 of his 19 years- I was there when they were removed!), then gallops back to his resident mare. He can’t be separated from resident mare- well he can, under carefully controlled situations, but other times for no obvious (to us humans) reasons the separation is too much. Yesterday even the neighbouring mares wasn’t enough to appease him, so it was 40 minutes of galloping back and forth and into his sand paddock and stall and back out (the mare was 25’ away and in sight). Putting him a smaller area doesn’t help- he just paces and spins (I did try at first). So whatever healing may have happened is likely undone completely.
He’s as lame now as he was back in December- February while we were figuring out what was wrong.
Things are looking a little grim for him, to be honest, since weekly (or more frequent) meltdowns aren’t good for him or the other horses he’s living with
Ugh I’m so sorry. You wish you could explain to them the reasons and the consequences!
I think you’ll need to move this horse if you want him to heal at all. Either to a rehab barn (best chance), or a retirement place where they all live out 24/7 or they all come in and go out together.
Yes, waiting for call backs from 2 places as I was typing it out, and still waiting.
The other complicating factor is he’s socially inept, as in
“HI, my name’s Caleb, how 'bout I kick you in greeting?!” , so he’d have to be turned out separate, but with all the other horses, and I don’t know any barns prepared to deal with that. And I’m not prepared to send him so far away I can’t see him regularly (at LEAST weekly, but preferably more often, so within 30 minutes (each way?) driving).
I think you may have to give up the driving distance if you want him healed. If the alternative is PTS, I’d personally pursue a farther barn, even with the control freak that I am.
If you’re in the SE I can make recommendations.
ETA: FWIW, a rehab barn should be able to accommodate him easily!
I’m so sorry rehab isn’t going well - been there, have the t-shirt
I would highly recommend a rehab facility, even if it’s a little further away than you’d like. They are generally very good at handling the “special cases”, plus the horses are all on a similar regimen, which I think is very settling for most horses. It’s expensive for sure, but might be your best shot for a good outcome.
ETA: if you are near central Texas, I have a facility I can recommend highly. Our boy is unfortunately a regular customer
Did you try Trazadone? I had one that cannot do stall rest on ace…16 150 mg of Trazadone and he was quiet and could have cared less.
He blew through very high doses of Trazadone and fluoxetine like they were placebos!
And his most recent meltdown was with 1g Bute/day in his system, as prescribed by our vet since “a horse in pain is an ANXIOUS horse”.
Thanks, though.
No, not SE at all - think NW+ over the border- on Vancouver Island, actually, so very limited spaces, and I can only hope the facilities are willing to deal with him.
I can totally appreciate your control-freakedness: that’s me to a TEE (Nobody can look after him like I can, lol)