Mine was navicular. Tried multiple treatments without good success. Elected to nerve her. Made a complete recovery.
Came in from a turnout dead lame. We suspect she also had a soft tissue injury in the foot and after nerving her she felt so good after she hasn’t in so long and didn’t protect that foot.
Completely tore the collateral ligament and her coffin bone floated back and up towards her leg.
There was nothing there to support the the coffin bone in the foot at all.
I have a video of her foot I’ll have to find. When she was standing still the whole hood would wobble because it was unstable.
It was horrible to experience.
Oh wow that sounds awful. Sorry you had to deal with that. A cautionary tale, for sure!
My friend had something similar happen to her gelding. She had an MRI that showed tears to the impar ligaments in both front feet. Insurance did not want to pay out a whopping $7500 mortality claim and said before they would authorize euthanasia she would need to nerve him. This was a young strapping 6yo WB gelding…1300 lbs and really wanting to kick up his heels and enjoy life. She did have him nerved. She really regretted it. Same as theHunterKid’s horse. He felt good and ran and cavorted like he hadn’t been able to in months and I think he completely tore the impar ligament in his left front which was the worse foot. I don’t remember if she got a report from WSU. His legs were sent to them postmortem (due to his inclusion in a study). She got the OK to euthanize but never got any insurance money as it had been over a year of her battling to get him sound. This was a long time ago (late 90’s) when MRI was just starting to be used in delineating soft tissue injuries in the foot. She had to ship him from Boise to Pullman (WSU) to get it. He was part of an early MRI study. Nerving should have never even been on the table for this horse due to the soft tissue injuries.
All in all over the course of this lameness, the insurance company spent $ 10,000 plus on a horse with a $7500 mortality policy. Kind of crazy. The owner wanted to euthanize after the MRI results and really regretted that she didn’t.
Susan
This was my sign that something was dramatically wrong. I regret my decision to this day. It didn’t have to end like this but I never imagined we were battling soft tissue along with the navicular.
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Yes, and that is one of my reservations and/or fears with a denerving. Since they are losing some of the sensation in their foot, they may or may not be as careful when they have full sensation. They could injure themselves or they could be “worse” when the denerving wears off.
Or… as some others have stated, it might be the best thing for him. (as there has been positive experiences as well)
Of course, another example of why it’s important to do certain diagnostics before denerving.
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