So my guy has been in a stall since September 9th. He was kicked in his radius and had an incomplete fracture. Looked like a green stick fracture. Actually quite difficult to see on x-ray. There was a splinter of bone separated from the main bone, but thankfully it has just been slowly reabsorbing. He’s had some hand walks with just grazing since late November and turned out for about 30 minutes three times with sedation. January 9th will be 4 months. I’m Soo ready for him to return to short turnout time and I want to do it safely. If you’ve returned (an energetic) horse to turnout after a long layup, what was your process? Did you use long acting sedatives? Did you have any negative side effects? I board, so giving him a paste sedative every time he goes out for weeks on end is difficult. Mainly because he’s become difficult to handle. Any helpful tips would be appreciated.
Hand walk and do all the the things you’ve been doing, and while he’s grazing, quietly remove the lead rope, hopefully in a smaller space where he’s not inclined to just bolt off. I would do that as many times as possible before you walk away and leave him to himself, just to gauge his general inclinations.
Ask your vet about Reserpine.
What’s the stall to turnout setup like?
It’s so wet right now the only safe turnout option is the arena. He’s not safe to lead anymore without being sedated. He def would bolt off if he was let off the lead. I will check with vet about sedative.
Every time I’ve done a rehab the vet says no turnout or lunging until you reach the point where you could jump. So built up walk, trot, canter under saddle first. The only exception being if you’ve given up on micromanaging and are trying Dr Green, in which case the horse goes out in paddocks of gradually-increasing size
This is in Southern California, land of little to no 24/7 turnout so YMMV may vary with location.
I don’t disagree with that at all. The question then is - how safe is the horse to ride, and will medication help. It’s tricky ground, and it sounds like this horse is already on edge. Ace is sometimes a great idea. The Reserpine might help. But you’re right - rehabbing from injuries is often about riding them to fitness so that turnout stupid stuff doesn’t kill them.
After surgery, my horse was on stall rest for 2 weeks. After that, I could hand walk him starting 5 min/day and increase this by 5 min every 2 weeks. We slowly progressed to trotting and had our first canter at 4.5 months post-op. At 5 months post-op, he had his first turnout. I used yellow “Do Not Cross” tape and jump standards to keep him in a small area in the indoor. It was probably another 3 weeks until I increased the size. He had his first outdoor turnout at 7 months post-op. We sedated him with SediVet for the first and second times and turned him out in a small arena outdoors. After that, he didn’t need sedation and graduated to a small paddock for a few hours/day, gradually increasing to 8 hours.
I tried reserpine when he was on stall rest. It worked great, but the effects lasted only 3 days. Maybe you can sedate your horse for the first few days of turnout and then see if he will continue to need sedation. Good luck!
You’re right. It is tricky. My horse was pretty good during his rehab, but he did become a bit difficult to hand walk. Riding him was actually easier for both of us even though we started out just walking. Of course, you would want to check with the vet to see if tack walking is ok. And, you have to judge whether it’s safe to get on. The surgeon wanted my horse to have controlled exercise for quite a while before we considered turnout. We did give him ace the first few times we cantered.
Not a leg injury but 3 months house arrest after a tie-back surgery where they didn’t want any speed of air intake. Hand walked x2 daily outside, wintertime—no way that was going to be a ridden task as it was continuous kite-flying.
After that, ace injectable before TO (for 1 week at most) in a 20x40m paddock with a Really Quiet schoolie who needed time away from kids. The ace took the edge off so she would lift her head to run & then forget why she did so. Stayed out all day & didn’t wind up even as the sedative wore off. After a week, no sedative & no abnormal fits of the stupids. Ridden work didn’t start for another month.
Good luck
Thank everyone. I had not even considered exercising first and then eventually turn out, but this might be a much better/safer option for him. I am boarding at the barn with my trainer so I think she would feel pretty safe riding him at first. He’s normally a very quiet horse.
We normally don’t start turnout until they are cantering under saddle. When they are ready to go to turnout, it’s after riding, with a dead head friend in the next field, and with an extra dose of sedation. They are brought in before the sedation starts to wear off for at least the first week. If things are going well, we start letting them stay out as it wears off. For most, it doesn’t take long before they can go out un-sedated.
Thirding? Fifthing? LoL normal “work routine” before turnout.
And adding - use your hand walking time to sharpen up manners. The more of a manners task master you are, the less likely you will have to use more (any) sedation. While it is true that the horse lost its job, it’s also true that an out of work horse can find a “desk” job to keep their brain active and remind them that you are the leader who will call them out for stepping out of line and praise the hell out of them for the simplest task.
Tasks can/should be things like halt, stand, neck down (key to relaxation!), maybe back and /or over (depending on injury), etc.
My process has been that the horse can go in a medical paddock (size of a couple stalls or so) after that kind of length of layup after horse is able to do a fair amount of hand walking. Sedatives if needed. Or Prozac and ear plugs in my horse’s case. Ideally, regular sized turnout not until the horse is cantering under saddle or some rough equivalent of that (not sure for this injury the timeline of adding a rider). We did turn mine out in a bigger paddock a little bit early because once he was transitioning from rehab facility to home, he was trying to kill himself in the small run which wasn’t big enough for him to buck in place. But he was under saddle for over a month and could longe, just not up to 5+ min of cantering under saddle yet.
Outside time is good for them if you can make a small enough space. We did initially expand his medical paddock some, which was good for his mental health. But he still couldn’t get any kind of speed going.
Even though your injury was a fracture, you have to treat all the soft tissue structures the same as any other injury for which they have stood around for 4 months.
I’ve been through long layups a few times because my old man is injury prone. Like two soft tissue injuries, one orthopedic surgery, and one colic surgery level of injury prone.
First, tranquilizer is your friend. I’ve tried long acting (did not work for us; made him skittish) and short acting (ace worked well). I started with Ace injections then Ace sublingual then Ace compounded into a feed topical. I recommend the compounded feed topical. It’s easy.
As another poster said, we did lots of hand grazing and then we quietly removed the lead rope while I stood close by. I used a small area with grass because he’s very food motivated. If you only have an arena, I would use jump standards & polls or something to section a small area off and throw good hay or hang a hay net. It doesn’t matter if he moves around to start. It’s a mental thing. Let him stand there and eat the hay. If there’s a dead quiet old guy buddy, that might help, too. We eventually progressed to turning my guy out with my old mare because he’d stay close to her and she would not do anything (they’d been out together previously and she was stalled next to him).
Then, I literally sat there and babysat him. I loaded up the kindle, grabbed a chair and a bucket of grain in case I needed to catch him immediately if he got stupid, and I sat there just on the other side of the fence and read a book or cleaned tack. We worked up from maybe 20 minutes of turnout to him being out for 3 hours (I read A LOT of books).
You know your horse best. Think about the scenario that has the best chance of keeping him calm and try to create it. For example, if your horse can’t handle being turned out alone and is less likely to keep a level head if he’s the only one in the arena, make sure he’s not the only one in the arena. Even if that means you just have a friend hold a horse nearby.
ETA: We did turnout before we ever sat on him. I know that’s not typical, but my horse struggled to maintain any composure u/s if he wasn’t being turned out regularly pre-injury. We tailored the rehab program to him in order to give him the best chance of success.
Good luck!
I’m going to suggest something that is perhaps not available in your situation from your description. When you turn him out (with acepromazine), put him in a situation where he is not shut in again… an “in and out” situation, a stall or shed with a paddock attached. Then don’t shut him in the stall again. It is usually the “point of release” that is where the most fireworks take place, if you can avoid that, there is less running around and celebration associated with the point of release. Good luck, it’s always a tense moment for the owner.
I agree with @NancyM - if that’s an option for you (might not be if he’s in a show barn type environment), it really helps if they stay “out” after the initial release, even if “out” isn’t a very large enclosure.
I had an older gelding on 6 months of stall rest who luckily loved his stall and was very easy to handle. Once we reached the point in his rehab phase when we were doing a little trotting under saddle, he started going out in the round pen for turnout. I aced him the first day and then chose not to watch what happened after that. Lol. He was coming back from an avulsion fracture of the cannon bone at the fetlock joint, so not terribly dissimilar to your horse’s injury.
On the other hand, I had a two year old filly on about a month of stall rest this summer. Obviously, rehab work under saddle wasn’t an option for her. We put her on Reserpine for the last week of the stall rest period and the first few days of turnout. I first put her into a pen made of corral panels that was about the size of a stall for a day. We put a quiet senior gelding in a round pen right next to her. The next day, we combined the two pens and put her in with the gelding for a couple of days. After that, she and her new friend went out in a 1/4 acre paddock together for another month before I allowed them access to a 2 acre pasture. My filly was really, really naughty the day she was “out” in a pen by herself, but she settled down as soon as I put her in with the gelding. If there is a very quiet buddy horse you can put out with your guy, it’s worth trying!
When my horse was on restriction I had to deal with the realities of the boarding barn. All horses were turned out all day except in the worst of weather. If kept in alone, he bucked, reared, and kicked in his stall. So the BO was kind enough to construct a small “hospital paddock” so he could get out but not run much. We tried reserpine, but it didnt work well for him. Ace kind of worked, but took a while to kick in and didnt address the just turned out time and the vet didnt want to do that long term. We finally got him quieter on Trazadone. This also allowed me to do handwalking more safely without him rearing! Eventually the drug did cause a side effect of noisy breathing, so we discontinued, but by then he was doing more and the weather was warmer.
