Hi all. I’m hoping someone can give me some answers or pointers here. I’ll need to give some background.
The horse in question in an Arab mix. She’s a rescue horse who I don’t know much about. She may have some Morgan in her as well. She’s probably between 6 and 8 years old, but again, I don’t know for sure.
I got her about a year and a half ago, and she has never been lame. That is, until October. I saw her limping one day. The next day, she was grade 4 lame, putting no weight on her right front hoof at all. I had an emergency farrier call because I couldn’t get a vet out, and he found an abscess. Sometime that same night, the abscess broke out through the coronary band at the top of her heel. I did ten days of antibiotics and she recovered very quickly. She was fine until about two weeks ago.
Two weeks ago, she started to limp on that same leg again. I cleaned her hoof well and inspected it, but found nothing. I put her back on antibiotics again to be safe. The next morning, she was fine. No lameness at all. It never progressed to the point of non-weight bearing like the first one had. Again, she was fine after that. That is until yesterday morning.
Yesterday morning, she is grade 4 lame on the same foot again, putting almost no weight on that foot. This literally came on overnight. There was no sign at all of lameness the night before. Again, I cleaned and inspected her hooves. The bottom of the right hoof does have some pretty nasty cracks on the sole near the heel, but no obvious sign of abscess. Again, I had the farrier out. He says it’s another abscess, although he can’t find one. He suspects it’s too deep to be found yet. He also said her hooves were really dry and instructed me to put hoof dressing on them. He did some trimming near the back of her foot, but didn’t seem to think x-rays were necessary since likely, all the x-ray would find is an abscess. There is almost no swelling and no warmth, but I had given her 2 grams of bute before the farrier came, so that might have taken down the swelling.
This morning, she’s still grade 4 lame, but when she does walk, she points very badly. As in she puts her toe down first and tries to keep most of the weight off her heel. She laid down once and had a very hard time getting back up. The cracked part of her sole is obviously very sore because if I clean her hoof and touch it with the hoof pick, she jerks her foot away from me.
Of course, the fact that she is pointing on her toe has me scared to death at this point that I might be dealing with navicular syndrome instead of an abscess. But I’ve never dealt with any kind of navicular problem before, so I don’t know if this is characteristic of what that would look like or not. Would she go from walking, trotting, and even galloping fine one night, to being grade 4 lame the next day?
The first time she went lame back in September, it was definitely an abscess since I saw where it broke out at the coronary band on the back of her heel. Again. she’d never had any lameness problems until then. But ever since then, it’s been a recurring issue every 3 weeks or so it seems like. But this is the first time I’ve ever seen her pointing, so it’s the first time I’ve ever been worried about navicular syndrome.
Her feet are not in the best shape because she was living in some very bad conditions before I got her. I’ve been working with the farrier, using hoof supplements, and so on to try to get her feet to grow out and become more healthy. But of course, that takes a lot of time and is a hurry up and wait kind of thing.
Does anyone have any thoughts? Does this sound like it could be navicular? Or is it more likely just a recurring abscess issue given it comes on overnight like this? Could it just be that her sole is so dry and cracked that it’s very painful to walk on? It might also be worth mentioning that the latest bout of severe lameness came on about 3 days after I finished a 10 day course of antibiotics for the last time she started to become lame. So I suppose it’s also possible there was still some infection in there, and I didn’t have her on antibiotics long enough.
But I’m kind of freaking out here that I’m dealing with a serious problem and we just haven’t figured out what it is yet. Any advice at all would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
