I was wondering about your boy the other day. I can’t believe it’s been 4.5 months already… I remember it feeling like forever and gosh, it’s such a long layup to endure. I’m glad he is being quiet and good in hand!! It’s so much harder when they aren’t good patients, so to speak.
P.S hearing “very interesting” during ultrasound is never what anyone wants to hear, but I’m glad the callus looks great and it sounds like things are improving!!
“Very interesting” is my wording, not the vet’s. The vet thinks he is healing well. A mystery why that one section isn’t filling in, but you can only see one plane on ultrasound, and she could come up with several theories, but all would be a guess. I have seen non-surgical displaced collarbone X-rays where you can see the bumpy bone callus, and it was fascinating to see something similar going on with this ultrasound. And to me a bit disturbing at the same time.
The exercise is to try to avoid adhesions as well as stimulate the bone and of course start legging up the rest of his body again. He does still have a good bit of soft tissue edema on that side. Which seemed to go down for a day or so after the chiro and getting his ribs worked on. Or maybe just redistributed some as he looked less sunken in comparatively at the girth area on that side. He does like to sleep on that side and now seems comfortable doing it more often, but it doesn’t help the edema.
He really has been the best boy all things considered. My fellow boarders have been pretty accommodating of me having to close most of the barn doors for our walks. But I am sure he would LOVE to get out and have a really good roll, squeal, leap, buck. Probably some months left to go before I might not have a heart attack if he did that. The grass is coming in now and I’m afraid it will all be dead again (given out extreme, early fire season) by the time he can go outside.
Glad to see the positive updates and that he is handling the long layup so well.
Any chance that on a quiet day at the barn you could steal a pole from the arena and place it in the aisle? Obviously you are already being very conscientious about your steps, but it’s one more mini baby step to break apart, especially since the arena is a bit of a bigger variable.
Yes, possibly. I actually have some small landscape timbers at home I was using previously for ground lines but have been in my garage because they need to be painted (same color as the arena dirt at this barn so not that helpful). They are smaller so could probably work and not be a huge inconvenience for others.
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So, we’ve put on the surcingle now a few times. Over a square pad and thin Ogilvy half pad. With my stretchy and fleecy dressage girth. He could not care less about this. Granted, with his large withers, the surcingle isn’t anywhere by his scapula. We’ll see what happens with a saddle whenever we get there. I’ve got the girth snug. No problems.
The only issue so far with walking 15 minutes is that he gets kind of over it and starts nipping at me quite a bit towards the end as well as grabbing any blankets he can get his lips on when we turn around, and I’m having to cluck and encourage him to keep going. It takes us around a minute to complete one lap of the aisle, so he has to do that approximately 15 times. This is with no drugs. I’m still not brave enough to take him into the arena, but he’s so bored. He will pause by his stall and look longingly at any food he left in there. Which he has 23.75 hours left in the day to eat. It certainly could be a LOT worse 
Since the last update, we’ve added the Equicore system a few times a week, put out some poles in the aisle to walk over, and now when we do neither of these things (just regular hand walking), he can go 20 minutes. He can now make tight turns to the right.
Ultrasound showed even more improvement in the previously reattached areas, and the one part that was still fractured last time is now filling in, although still looking somewhat irregular.
Horse is not a lightweight for drugs, so our first experiment with Ace was enough for a pretty civilized bath but no other extra stimulus. It was a dose on the lighter range the vet prescribed but I think we will need to use a bit more.
It’s been hot and with summertime schedules, the barn gets very busy when the tractor isn’t in the aisle, so I have had to do more walking in the evenings. I don’t want to Ace him so late in the day, so we have been sticking to aisle walks.
My vet is hopeful in another month (which will be 6.5 months in) that we can add in some trot, so my homework is to try to get him doing some walking in the arena before then. But I am sure he will get airborne at some point, so waiting on more precise guidance there. We’ve come too far to have a big setback now.
We went into the indoor arena yesterday with 2 1/4 cc of Ace after walking 10+ minutes in the aisle in the bands. Started on a small circle to the left and gradually walked out a bit.
Today no drugs and no bands and walked 15 minutes in the aisle then went into the arena. Had to do some standing around including standing at the ingate for a bit to breathe before entering. Was out of the stall total about 33 mins.
One head snaky thing at the end when he saw another person at the viewing area but no shenanigans either day.
I have to say he will need time to build up his sea legs to walking in sand again before we can think about trotting. We had to go very slowly so as not to trip with the Ace on board but he also was walking carefully without it and would occasionally stab a toe, whereas he can march right along quite well in the barn at this point, including over poles. Since he’s being such a good boy so far in the middle of a cold front no less, I’m optimistic about getting through this next phase the right way.
I sure hope he can be ridden again some day. He’s just the best porkchop.
Overall I think this is excellent progress!
Have you / your Vet considered trazadone instead of Ace? The Vets here are using more and more instead of Ace.
My stall rest guy was so much better on it.
Yes, they use that a lot. He is so quiet almost all of the time that I didn’t want him to be on calming meds every day. Second walk in the arena without ace today went better in that he started to get a little faster and more coordinated but was still very sensible.
This is his usual look 
He’s been getting in the arena for walks daily and doing great! His eyeballs sometimes say he is wild but he is keeping himself composed. Getting stronger. We introduced poles in the arena a few days ago too, so now he can do everything in the indoor he was doing in the barn aisle. Worked back up to the 20-25 minute range on sand.
Vet check yesterday and he trotted sound on a straight line! And didn’t turn into a kite!
They want him to get to more trot work but don’t want to do it on the longe line, and I’m honestly not quite sound enough to do a lot of trotting with him in hand. My vet checked out his new saddle (that arrived in March, ordered before the injury), and she thought it had a lot of shoulder freedom. It also has a cutback tree so the tree points aren’t too close to the scapula. And his fat girth still fits 
. So we will start hand walking in the saddle now and see how that goes. Then transition to tack walking, with hopes of adding trotting under saddle within the next couple of months.
He’s been walking under saddle for about 3 weeks now. First day, we hand walked and then tack walked for 2 laps. Now he can do a short hand walk warm up then about 45 minutes under saddle. He’s quite bored in the indoor now, but not quite ready for the great outdoors.
Ultrasound today showed the fracture is fully healed. They still don’t want him on the longe unless he can very quietly trot, starting with the left circle. But the homework is to get him fit and losing some weight. No real protocol down to the minute like for a tendon injury. He’s quick to say when something is hard or he’s fatigued. Sometimes he would rather just chat and beg for cookies instead of walking at all. 
It’s also not a great time of year for his asthma. So we will play it by ear and see how he does introducing trot under rider weight.
That is a great update, especially the part about the fracture being fully healed. Give him a (diet) cookie for me, so glad things are still going well. I remember this taking forever with the horse mentioned above. Glad to read a positive update, but where are our photos???
So good to hear you are on him again. You’ve done such a great job, and he looks like such a sweetie. Yes, please, on the more photos. 
He’s doing some trotting under saddle now. I had very low expectations but he feels super. He thinks it’s very hard work. Mostly just some random straight line trots to start. It’s day 2 and he’s super relaxed about it.
Great update!
After a month of trotting, we’ve started cantering, mostly straight lines. Can piece together a minute or two on a good day, mostly on the left lead. Man, the canter feels pretty awful, and he either wants to be super inverted or roots. The rooting is probably from the air, since my nebulizer controller decided to die right after we started to think about canter. So I prefer he goes inverted with a loose standing martingale on, as I feel he’s less likely to face plant. Just beginning to work very hard at trying a little bit of contact and connection. He will definitely get hind shoes back next trim, as he’s digging his toes in trying to make it work. He definitely favors the left lead, and the right lead feels real choppy in front, but there is hope for the right lead I think.
But for the good news, his trot is pretty great now. He can trot 20 mins or so including with some decent contact, or at least hold the contact for longer periods without getting fussy and needing a stretch. His lateral work is really darn good—helps that he’s got well trained buttons there. He seems comfortable with shoulder in, haunches in, leg yield, and half pass is coming along as are some smaller circles. And when I ask for a little lengthening, we’ve got what feels like a pretty lofty medium/strong working trot and really sound. We can also trot over slightly raised individual poles. After the awkward canter work, he gets good swing in his body in the trot as we cool down. I have not done any turn on the forehand, but his walk pirouettes are back to being pretty excellent. As usual, he is perfectly behaved under saddle. In hand exercising has gone way down as it tends to involve squeals and leaps. Longeing definitely a no.
Adding some cranial-sacral type work with him now to see if we can help him build new neuro pathways for some of the sling muscles which feel like they are likely to stay a little bit wonky after who knows what damage happened to them through this. I haven’t noticed a difference exercising him, but his posture for his afternoon standing snooze is better after one session.
Also he’s slimmed down so his clothes fit again just in time for the weather to change.
Had his usual chiro out, and he feels like a new man. Which means, based on her treatment, most of his recent struggles have been from his old/chronic stuff (lumbar fusion, old (now) SI injury, and asthma) coupled with the standing around and lack of fitness.
Sports vet looked at him and said if she wanted to be really picky, when he goes to pick up the RF to move it cranially, it’s not quite as good as the left. But whether he still needs to build strength and work out some soft tissue junk or whether it’s an indication of a future limitation is anyone’s guess. Good news is he’s very sound. New exercise to add is more ground poles at walk and trot on turns and at angles to encourage more reach when tracking left and more lift when tracking right. Did that today, and he was a rockstar. In fact, just his ability to do trot poles smoothly has gotten waaay better than even a week or two ago.
Next steps are hind shoes, Adequan, and getting his chiro on a regular schedule to hopefully improve the canter which is coming along at a snail’s pace…still short bursts totaling a minute or two is all we get, although the quality is improving somewhat.
Doesn’t seem like we would get great results with treating the SI directly without more strength and movement, but we’ve gotta get him pushing better to build the strength. At least he’s quite eager to canter on the left lead, even though he offers a bit of cantering in place when I’m asking for something else entirely . Maybe we’ll have refined the walk-canter transition and the pirouettes by the time we’re done with all this.
Excellent update!
Been a while since I updated, and it’s been a bit of a roller coaster. Hind shoes and Adequan did help quite a bit, and we started getting to where we could make full laps at the canter. Right lead remained questionable most days but we had glimpses of great things. Started back with regular chiro which helped him a lot.
Then he started to get sour, sucked back, whining about working. And then the canter got worse faster than it had gotten better. His back was very sore. My nebulizer broke and it took forever to figure out which part was bad (several of them, thankfully most replaced under warranty). Trotting on a loose rein was about all he could muster somewhat willingly. We took a giant step back and did more walk days, more rest, more long and low trot. Went outside for hand grazing as weather and barn traffic permitted.
And despite more bodywork and all the things, he got so cranky he kicked me twice over two days while grooming with no warning. Usually kicking is not his thing, and I get plenty of warning in any case. So now I have an avulsion fracture in a finger on my left hand that may need surgery. So the vets came out and put ProStride in the SI, IT joints, and L1-L2 a week ago, and we upped his Robaxin. He looked sound at w/t for the exam before injections, but he was very sore and obviously complaining a lot!
Despite being on a high dose of Robaxin for him, not only is he not asleep but he’s got a lot more go (for him), and now that he’s back under saddle, he keeps wanting to canter. Especially if I ask him to try do any hard-ish kind of work. Like canter was much more interesting than shoulder fore in trot today.
L lead is still much stronger/more balanced and fluid and the one he will offer, but we can canter right, and it’s still anyone’s guess how much of the hitchiness on the R lead is from the hind end or the front. By the time he feels pretty warmed up he’s already tired. I suppose he could have done more damage to his hind end and back when he flipped, but I did not want to take him up to the hospital for imaging, where we’d almost certainly get wild and slip on the pavement.
I was watching a clip from Clooney’s retirement ceremony last weekend where he actually got cantered around the ring in Geneva. If you don’t know, he broke his right humerus after Tokyo and had to have it surgically repaired. It gave me some hope.
Oh… not the update we’d hoped for, but fingers crossed that things get better. Sorry to hear about your finger and about his change in kicking… Ouch!!
I had a guy on layup that also wanted to canter versus do anything else. He was on layup for an SI strain with some stifle involvement and it was very difficult to convince him noooo, you are only supposed to be doing walk and trot leg yields, Rudy! 
I really hope he didn’t tweak anything else with the flip. Something must be going around, I swear it seems like a lot of us on COTH lately have had one hurdle after another. I really feel for you with the rehab, sometimes its like you fix one small thing then something else breaks or goes, and then you’re fixing that while they’re still recovering from soreness in other areas… Ugh. Sending big jingles to you and your boy. 
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