Sounds like a pretty good prognosis. Definitely discuss it again with your vet and ask if they can email you through a rehab plan.
I think there are two things you need – luck and a lot of discipline. The luck part – having a fairly sensible horse who isn’t a lunatic in turnout or under saddle. Also the luck part – doing enough work to progressively stress the ligament enough to strengthen it, without stressing it enough to make it worse – a tricky balancing act.
The discipline part – have a rehab program and sticking to it. It’s very tempting to do a little bit more, or just ride in the arena because it’s easier, skip something here, skimp a bit there, overdo it another day ……
My jumper had a mild proximal suspensory tear in the near fore and mild strain in the right fore – as diagnosed by ultrasound. That was 5yrs ago and he’s been great since, back to jumping what we were before (1.10-1.15, schooling higher) and he’s also a field hunter. Interestingly there was no heat or swelling, he was barely lame, and only on a soft surface intermittently. But I’d had loss of performance issues for a bit – he’d been jumping brilliantly, then had a planned 4 week break, then just didn’t jump as well once he was back in full work – very difficult to keep a rhythm to fences, I struggled to find a distance etc.
He stayed on 24/7 turnout in a small-ish paddock with a quiet buddy as he’s pretty sensible (occasionally he’d gallop around like a loon and I just had to grit my teeth). My great sport horse vet recommended this as she says she sees a lot of injuries when horses transition from box rest to limited turnout. Plus that constant gentle movement really helps healing.
We started straight into 5min walking under saddle 5-6 days a week – straight lines only on a hard surface. Gradually added in trot (literally 1min at a time) and finally canter – I think it was about 3mths before he started cantering. At about the 6mth mark the vet said we could return to jumping, but aside from the odd cavaletti or xbar I didn’t really jump him till at least 9mths. At 12mths we were starting back jumping properly. I did a huge amount of farm and trail riding– careful not to go anywhere boggy or deep going or trappy, but lots of long, slow miles. And I didn’t do much arena work either – don’t think I went into one for 3mths and then I was careful to only do a few minutes at a time. I was ridiculously fussy about timing - my husband gave me a new watch for Christmas that year that had a great countdown timer ….
If you want I can dig out the exact program I followed – it was a bit more conservative than my vet thought we could do. I built up the walk/ride times as fast as she recommended, but was a bit slower and more gradual at introducing trot and then canter. I didn’t do any special treatments as my vet didn’t recommend them.
I still don’t do much arena work with him out of the odd lesson – a lot of interval training in fields and miles over my neighbours farm. Interval training is great because I know how fit he is instead of thinking ‘oh, I’ve cantered for long enough today’ (an 8min canter set is surprisingly long). I’m picky about the surfaces I jump him on and very picky about how fit he is before jumping lessons/competitions.
I suspect a lot of suspensory rehabs fail because they aren’t rehabbed correctly and then later on the horse isn’t really fit enough for the job (both cardio and ‘leg fitness’ which takes longer) I know a few other people who have had horses with similar injuries and they seem to progress to faster work, arena work and then jumping a lot faster than my vet recommended and what I did. I don’t know what their vet told them in terms of rehab of course, but it’s seemed very fast to me. Quite a few of the horses have not remained sound. (I also know I’m very lucky that my guy returned to full work)
Good luck!
