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Hey all, I know this is a very old thread, but it’s still the top result on Google, somehow.
In case anyone else like myself comes wandering along looking for stories about what to expect after a soft tissue injury in the foot/collateral ligament tear, this is our current story, and we did things a bit differently.
Sometime in the winter/spring, maybe Feb/March, my horse finished up his long, slow rehab for a LF bowed tendon. Perfectly sound. We had done it! The very next day, when brought in from turnout, he was dead lame on the right front, as though he had broken his shoulder.
What this actually was was him hiking his right shoulder quickly to get the weight off of the left front.
His lameness traveled around a bit and was hard to pinpoint a location to block, a few vets looked and no one had a good answer.
He went on stall rest for a while, because he got his RF canon kicked open and needed staples–and then we had bad weather when he could go out again, so he got even more stall rest. Needless to say–he got stall rested the requisite amount at first, even if not for an exact diagnosis. He then got turned out in a small round pen, and eventually in a smallish field. He still wasn’t quite right. Eventually moved him to a 24/7 turnout place, accepting that this was the end of his show career, at least. Even purely on account of the LF bowed tendon (he had previously bowed both front tendons training to race) he wouldn’t be a H/J anymore.
Anyway. I had a third vet come out, and somehow he saw what others had not, and the horse came 100% sound on a block of the LF foot. Based on block and clinical signs, collateral ligament was implicated. That was in June.
Horse went completely off work with 24/7 turnout with quiet pasture mates. Plenty of grass to keep him out of trouble, because why run when you can eat? Did a feed change to help him lose some excess weight and began changing the angle of the hoof by bringing the toe back and doing 2 degree wedges. Decision against MRI mostly that regardless of the exact mechanism of injury, the course of action would essentially be the same, and he was happy, just not sound to ride. If he never came sound enough to ride again, so be it–so long as he enjoyed life.
Cold lasered nearly every day–usually every other day, and with the combination of things he improved really quickly. He started out with a 2/5 head bob, which went down to 1.5/5 in a month, then 1 the following month and in about 3 months, he was 99% better than he had been–jogged essentially sound, and the vet said it would be okay to start some U/S work to slowly, slowly start tightening things up.
I attribute cold laser with the majority of the progress that we saw–well-documented in helping healing ligaments and tendons heal with proper fiber alignment and better elasticity than scar tissue.
That being said, he had started to canter and gallop in the field on occasion, but was never worse for doing so. Then summer turnout ended and they were put in their sacrifice paddocks–he has his own smallish paddock with cover. Plenty of room to roam around, and even 10x10 would be enough room for him to buck and rear. Took him on a nice, calm walk on Friday evening–and that morning, before I arrived, he had been observed leaping and bucking in his paddock, by himself, just for fun.
He was sound when I left him and standing over the leg normally–which he had been doing more and more as it healed–when it was acute, he would hold it out in front and not weight it directly.
Saturday morning I got a call that he was extremely lame.
Went to see him Saturday and he may as well have had a broken leg.
Did an x-ray to check the foot and lower leg just to make sure the coffin bone wasn’t involved/no other structures were damaged, and everything was clean.
Epsom salt soaked (helps for strains and sprains as much as abscesses and it’s been bone dry here, lately) poulticed the sole, cold lasered every day for the last week and also brought out his magnetic boots for good measure. Overkill, maybe.
He improved consistently every day after the initial injury and almost a week later is walking much better, but when he did whatever he did, he was more lame than he had been with the initial injury.
Since they are in sacrifice paddocks, he’ll be out by himself in a smaller area, anyway, for a while, which is best. He can see and interact with his friends over the fence, so he isn’t isolated.
Overall, we got much better results with him turned out constantly than on stall rest, even if he took the opportunity to be an idiot and re-injure himself.
We are looking at probably another three months before weighted walking, but are still well under the 12 month mark, so I don’t expect that this setback is the end of the line as long as we continue to take things slowly.
He’s so miserable getting put in a stall that I won’t do it to him for this. Case in point: he had to be in a stall for a few hours while he was seen by the vet, and I went to lead him into the barn that night to laser and he balked at the entrance–which he always used to do when he lived in a traditional stall w/ 5-6 hour turnout place. He hated going inside.
He’s 14, and at most, we would be doing trail rides and maybe messing around with dressage, but his hard working days are over, so I’d rather he be happy and take as long as he needs to heal than make him miserable for potentially ‘faster’ healing. Time is the only thing that actually heals soft tissue and the only thing I can do is support that healing in the meantime.
If he doesn’t improve, or improves and then re-injures himself again, we’ll go down to a specialist and do a full workup. I don’t think it will come to that, and I don’t think he’s a candidate for surgery, especially if it’s just to return him to usefulness.
He’s perfectly happy despite the injury, and paws just fine with that hoof as he stands there demanding carrots.
I can update back if anyone is curious on following a protocol that mostly involves time, turnout and cold laser/magnets. Same principle as shockwave therapy, but I have a laser, so I opt to use that.[/QUOTE]
So I am actually dealing with a rather severe lateral collateral ligament strain (no visible tear on MRI) and I can say that it is better to go very very slowly than to try and rush things.
My guy initially went quite lame but showed huge improvement in a week, we figured mild strain to the upper soft tissues of the leg and carefully put him back into work. Residual lameness that he would work out of was attributed to a slight shoulder strain. He showed on this, went XC schooling, etc and was working incredibly well.
Then a month later he had a few days off (normally he never has more than a day off) and came back feeling odd (but not lame). Then after jumping he was incredibly lame at anything more than the walk. That was when we were able to actually diagnose it, and the MRI showed that most of the damage had been done around the time of the initial lameness. He got a PRP injection into the site and has been in a medical paddock since the end of july, a few weeks ago an ultrasound showed very little improvement (4 weeks after the PRP injection), but the hope is that in another few weeks he will be able to increase his turnout size with the plan of him being in a large pasture for the rest of the winter.
My vets think he will easily return to full work in the end, although I will likely restrain from eventing him for fear of reinjury on the uneven terrain (but he should be able to return to jumping). I’ve got a thread about it somewhere (haven’t updated in a while)
