The injury prone horse

[GraceLikeRain]

@cantstop

Part looking to vent and part looking for actual advice. WWYD?

I’d get a new farrier. Of everything you mentioned, the only thing that isn’t foot related was a fencing accident. It sounds like she’s mentally and physically doing great and trying to get around on junky feet. The question is whether the feet are genetically junky or if you farrier just isn’t cut out to solve the issues at hand. I don’t see any indication of an “accident-prone” horse.

Personally:

1. x-rays
2. ask a good lameness vet for a farrier referral
3. ask the farrier to shoe based on the rads (potentially glue-ons if the walls are trashed)
4. evaluate diet and ensure it is low NSC, low iron, high copper/zinc
5. put horse on a short cycle - maybe as low as 4 weeks to prevent unnecessary lost shoes and distorted white line
6. keep the feet dry and encourage movement
7. accept that it may take 6-9 months to really see improved hoof quality

[No1]

Is she on Regumate? If some of her injury causing behavior is hormonal (the getting all spun up, possibly one of the reasons she’s so hard to keep weight on) you might be able to help her by taking the hormones out of the equation.

[endlessclimb]

Starting to wonder this with my young mare. Currently putting my head in the sand.

[cantstop]

Just a quick update.

Endo f August was bad - she managed to slice her butt wide open while in heat. Big, ugly wound that required stitching and the full program of antibiotics etc. Healed up well. Back to wrk by end of month.

Put the mare on regumate and a stronger bit, she did improve in terms of rideability and really started coming around in terms of riding.

Still managed to get another pretty deep cut in October on a hind leg that required vet to come out, x-rays and all. WE have on idea where she manages this as literally no other horse in the barn does and certainly not her pasture buddy.

She did well for the month of November until she came up lame on one of her front legs, looks like a soft tissue injury, no heat, no swelling, no obvious discomfort. Initially thought it was an abscess and gave her 2 weeks off. Nope. Still lame on outside leg on the circle going to the opposite side.

Year to date vet bills stand at over >5k, hours invested - don’t even know. Maybe about 3 months of riding this year.

Calling out vet this week, but quite honestly I’m starting to resent the horse and am mentally not ready to rehab her from something like a suspensory injury especially because once on stall rest she behaves poorly (rears etc.).

P.S. her hooves have come a long way - farrier is very impressed with her hoof growth now that she’s barefoot. For the first time ever there’s something to trim.

I had her hoof films done as part of PPE, the vet (FEI eventing vet) said feet are not great (thin soles), but nothing performance limiting IIRC.

What to do?

[cantstop]

Update from a vet - diagnosed with a suspensory tear. Prognosis good.

Of course requires the usual protocols- months of stall rest, controlled exercise and shockwave.

At this point, I’m considering three options: 1) retire 2) rehab then retire 3) put down.

I don’t think I have the mental fortitude to bring this horse back to work or do her rehab on more time so all of this would have to be outsourced.

I can afford to “retire” her but am struggling with the decision because every single one of these issues:

1. bruises
2. abscesses (thankfully none after she went barefoot!)
3. endless cuts
4. electric fence burns
5. now suspensory

Happened while she was on turnout. So I do not necessarily think it solves the issue since she has not been in much work anyways?

So while I’m not opposed to retiring her, I just don’t have the mental and time resources to keep rehabbing her. I realise it makes me sound and feel like a total jerk but I just can’t do it anymore.

I’d happily pay a fixed amount of money each year but my biggest fear is that the amount simply won’t be fixed and I’ll have to keep receiving these dreadful calls that she needs to see the vet and it’s an emergency.

I also don’t want her to go through another rehab frankly. This horse will have to be heavily sedated and bringing her back into work will be “adventurous” at best and dangerous at worst.

If anyone can comiserate or have creative solutions I’m all ears…

[pick_a_pony]

Can’t commiserate in the same way but I bought a horse that wasn’t the right fit and brought me no joy. Rather brought me a lot of stress. Keep you up at night and start feeling ill level of stress. Nothing actually wrong with horse but we didn’t click and actually clashed in personality. Sold her on at face value of the good and bad with her and have never looked back. With this one being such a hard case I don’t think you would be in the wrong to put her down. Sounds like she isn’t compatible with life at a level that even the experienced but casual horse owner would want to deal with. Your first responsibility is to yourself and second to the animals you bring into your life. If the second is interfering with the first and you have reasonably tried other solutions something has to give. Short of doing a care lease to own on the mare where she has to stay where she isand cared for to your care standards totally paid for by the to be new owner until they prove rehab and restart has been successful I don’t think there is a safe way to re-home such a horse.

[Peggy]

I feel your pain. LSS I might be tempted to try field board for 6-12 months if you don’t think she’ll kill herself. Establish a max $$ you’re willing to spend. Write it down. But I’d be less tempted to go down that path if your best case scenario is retirement. My backstory follows.

I retired one at 14 who had a series of issues starting when he was 9. High suspensory and collateral ligament in foot. Rehabbed and got more or less back to where we were before which was 3’. Collateral ligament recurred when he was 11. Found neck issues. I now suspect that the chronology was neck --> slight loss of proprioception --> collateral ligament --> compensation --> suspensory. Rehabbed and never got him jumping again. Then developed intestinal issues that ultimately led to a diagnosis of intestinal thickening. At that point I gave up.

I retired him at 14 at a rate of, I think, $350 a month. By the time he died earlier this year, it was $500 a month. You do the math. Looking back on it, I’m not sure I would do it again. Maybe that makes me a bad person. He was happy in retirement. The intestinal issues never recurred. He was easily pasture sound. I met some great people. I always seem to meet great people during these rehab/retirement scenarios.

That horse’s replacement was lame by the time he was 4. Seriously. Turned out to be neck and that there were other horses from the same stock with neuro issues. I rehabbed him once (more or less–by the time we started, failed, turned him out, and restarted him, it was over 1.5 years). He then went lame about a year after we’d started him back with the same set of symptoms. I euthanized him shortly after his seventh birthday. I wasn’t going to pay to retire him and I don’t think his quality of life was going to at all good anyway.

I then bought the nicest, most expensive horse I’ve ever owned and it turned out that city life didn’t agree with him. Most people would probably have given up, but I turned him out for 6 months barefoot, started him back really slowly, and just finished a year of showing up to the meter jumpers.

[steelerino]

I have one who is only 17 with chronic lameness issues I sent off to retirement. It’s cheap ($250 a month includes feet trimming) and he has always thrived living out. But if for some reason I couldn’t afford him anymore or he wasn’t doing well in retirement I would euthanize him no questions asked.

[TheHunterKid90]

Most of your issues seem to stem from feet (and poor barn management)
A rocky pasture is just asking for bruises and abscesses. And I assume you mean she got tangled in a hot wire fence that is suspended by t posts? My last choice of fencing. We have white 4 board with one strand of hot wire at shoulder height to keep them off the fence. I’ve never had a horse get tangled and my fence is never broken.

I would look for a facility that has better footing in their pastures, I would also consider putting quarter boots on when it’s very muddy and that should help your shoe pulling problem.
Maybe she needs a pour in pad if her soles are that thin.
What have you done to treat the splint? In my experience, most splints need some help to heal up.

[barnesthenoble]

I put down my coming 6yo three years ago. When I made the decision it was because something was NQR, had been for a long time, diagnostics couldn’t find anything and I couldn’t sink $$$$ into bone scans and MRIs. Best guess was possibly some sort of neck issue that was hard to find on rads or u/s, or possibly massive pelvic trauma (he came to me with a rearing and aggression problem, I would not be surprised at all if the folks I got him from flipped him over).

He had an undisclosed bow when I got him. Tried to do stall rest, he physically climbed out of the stall. Got aggressive, was like flying an athletic 17h kite aiming for your head when being hand walked. Gave up and turned him out with my other horses for 18 months, tendon looked great. In that time he had some major hoof issues, an abscess so bad I thought he’d ruptured a tendon or something, sliced open parts of his body multiple times, and spent various amounts of time being ever so slightly lame.

Got the all clear to start back into slow work on the tendon, and it became obvious something else was really wrong. I did the dx I could but again, there were financial constraints.

When the doctors pretty much shrugged and said they weren’t sure without another $2k + in dx, I decided to put him down. He was big, young, athletic, could have easily been dangerous to handle in the wrong hands, constantly injured, and in various degrees of pain. Spoiled him rotten for two weeks, made the appointment for a Saturday, dug the hole on the Tuesday before…he maimed himself irreparably and unsalvageably on the Wednesday. I still firmly believe he was telling me that he was done and didn’t want to wait any longer than he had to. He made the choice easier…but the choice had been made before it was the only option.

All of this long post to say: there is no shame in throwing in the towel. If the horse can’t be safely rehabbed, can’t be safely allowed to be a horse, and seems hellbent on crippling itself…I would not be ashamed to put her down. Perhaps try 6-12 months of field board if you can find a good retirement situation you like, and set a hard financial limit. If she thrives, wonderful! If she doesn’t, and is constantly injuring herself or otherwise miserable, make the call. You have to take care of yourself, and honestly, a horse that is constantly wounded or injured or in some state of rehab isn’t experiencing a terribly good quality of life in my opinion. I’m sorry you’re going through this, but consider this a vote of support for making whatever call sits best with you.

[outerbanks77]

@Peggy

I might be tempted to try field board for 6-12 months if you don’t think she’ll kill herself. Establish a max $$ you’re willing to spend. Write it down

This is my thought. I might look for a retirement-specific type place and give her a chance to thrive on benign neglect. I have one that was always NQR and I struggled to get him sound for years. In 2015 he shattered a mediocarpal bone and would conclusively never be sound for riding again and was retired. He gets to bum around for as long as he is happy with minimal maintenance, but I would/will have him PTS if he is eventually needing expensive or time-consuming maintenance or has a need for 4-figure veterinary treatments. He’s turning 19 this year, so it’s at that point where he might go downhill soon, or he might stick around for another decade.

[cantstop]

Thanks all for opinions.

I spoke to my coach (he’s an older, no-nonsense European gentleman) and he seemed firmly in the camp of PTS. He’s kind of seen it all at his age. He said that rehoming her even after fully rehabbed will be tough. She is not an easy, ammy friendly horse and given her injury the market will be very limited to begin with. She’s also not the type to do well on extended stall rest (he’s seen me bring her back into work multiple times). And even then when I do rehab her there’s a significant chance she’s back on stall rest a month later. That’s just not much of a life for a horse.

To those of you who keep prodding about the facility - yes it’s not perfect. However we have another horse and facility has >50 horses quite a few out 24/7. Out of the 50+ horses she’s been ballpark half the injuries I’ve seen happen in my time there and 100% of our vet bills - the other horse is very happy go lucky so far. She’s the only one who’s on intermittent, yet regular stall rest among the horses boarded for sure. So I’m pretty sure a horse can easily thrive in that setup, but, yes, maybe not her. Either way if I’m gonna turn her out it won’t be in this facility since it’s obvious that it’s not working and aim for something lower traffic, even if at the expense of facilities and acreage.

I am leaning towards turning her out somewhere lower traffic assuming her leg can handle it. The way I’ve framed that decision for myself is figuring out how to maximise her quality of life. If she bangs her up again into an extended stall rest situation, I’m afraid she will have made the decision for herself. As said, at this point my ambitions with her are pretty done and any return to soundness & sanity is a complete wild card so I don’t see the point in throwing the whole kitchen sink of treatments, strict rehab etc. especially if it will make everyone involved miserable.

Update: Spoke with the vet right now. Not opposed to PTS or any of the scenarios I outlined. Only suggested not to breed due to chance of her passing down her ways on to the foals. Agreed to do a foot & suspensory blocks to rule out a stubborn abscess before we do any treatment or PTS.

[ihearttbs]

I’ve had one like this before What has worked best for him was to get him a calm companion (in his case a mini horse, donkeys or mules can work well too), that has more sense and that he modeled his behavior after so stopped doing stupid things in turnout.

It really made a huge diff. I think with some of them their overall anxiety levels are so high that they just need a therapy horse.

[cantstop]

Had a recommended bodyworker come out today for the first time.

She was fairly convinced that this is not a suspensory at least, not as a primary injury.

Horse seemed way too uncomfortable on the lunge and not reactive enough on palpation for the suspensory for her taste. She just said the horse does not move like a suspensory horse.

Overall said that mare is in a fair amount of pain but one of those that are too cool to show it. She said it’s possible her crazies are in essence her nervous system getting fried because she doesn’t know how to relax and release tension. She did relax materially after the treatment.

Strongly suggested I block that entire side before I make any irreversible decisions and her money would be on upper body injury based on how she moved today. She suspects something around the left side ribs (extremely tender and she couldn’t explain it -said it could be kick a pull or something) or shoulder. I read this thread: Strange shoulder lameness- need thoughts **videos included**

And somebody commented that their horse had a deep pec pull and … bingo. It all kind of seems to line up:

Pulled Pectoral Muscle?

Has anyone had a horse pull/strain/do.something. to a pec muscle? specifically (I think) the anterior deep pectoral muscle - or the muscle that runs the length of the scapula. Gus did something to his chest - more specifically in the area near the point of the shoulder on the left side. If you go to palpate that area he darn near takes off your head. It’s EXTREMELY sensitive. On the right side he’s non-reactive. Whatever he did, its become noticeable undersaddle, so now he’s out of work for a …

It’s an interesting and relatively credible hypothesis.

One more detail that makes me rethink suspensory - after the bodyworker left I had her try trotting in a small circle in a covered area with hard ground. She was so uncomfortable she would refuse to trot and kind of tried jumping on three legs instead. Just doesn’t add up.

So I’m thinking more muscle or hard tissue. Perhaps arthritis in the neck… Blocks should at least be able to give some clarity on this.

[StormyDay]

Before I’d PTS I’d also find some field to throw her out in for a while, suspensory injury or not.

I have a friend who bought a very fancy WB gelding at 4. He was just a disaster prone guy. It seemed like every other week he has injured himself. He pulled both hind suspensories (while not even in work) and she said that’s it. Didn’t even treat the suspensory injuries, just hauled him to a farm with 30 acre fields and turned him out.
He had a few more scrapes (one was borderline needing stitches, but she didn’t because she truly believed this horse was at best an expensive pasture pet) but somehow managed not to have any more soft tissue problems.
About 3 years later the BM told her to come try her horse. He was sound and had mellowed out. He was vet checked and though the suspensories weren’t pretty they were functional. He went back into work and now does low level stuff; eventing, dressage, etc. he probably could do more but she had a baby and has stopped competing mostly.

You definitely don’t need to wait 3 years, but some issues miraculously resolve once a bit of true R&R is allowed.

[greywithchrome]

@outerbanks77

benign neglect

I love this lol. I have an older TB mare who is kind of a nightmare if she’s expected to behave like a domestic horse with a routine but is the kindest easiest peasiest mare in the world if she’s mostly left to her own devices in a field.

[cheektwocheek]

I’ve owned my OTTB two months!

[outerbanks77]

The six months I had my appendix mare (not OTT) she: got an infection/abscess in her guttoral pouch and had to be quarantined until strangles was ruled out, kicked through the fence and bloodied up both hind legs, slipped and fell on the lunge and had a month off for a sore stifle, coliced a couple times, which turned out to be due to ulcers, probably from all the antibiotics and bute from the previous stuff. Then the following year she fractured her coffin bone and injured her DDFT and was on 1.5 years of rehab. Now fingers crossed she has been mostly problem free for the past couple years. I think age is helping.

[cantstop]

Bumping this up again. Moved her to a new place, which was working out pretty well as it was an under the radar barn in my area, surprisingly affordable with decent although very aged infrastructure.

We u/s the leg again and yep it’s a suspensory injury. She’s been coming back into work fine - sound, but I am not putting her on any sort of rehab program as I don’t have the time and energy. She’s being handled like a normal horse and we are doing flat work a couple times a week. The lesion is filling out on this regimen- so getting better, not worse.

Here’s the kicker though - we were asked to leave because despite the regumate the barn staff found her too much to handle in and out of paddock. This was such a slap in the face because finally I thought things were going in the right direction. She didn’t have a scratch in this new place and has been staying sound for the last 3 months.

There’s a place that will take her nearby, but it is 25% more expensive and arguably lesser quality. Also way more busy barn.

I’m facing three options:

1. keep her in the new barn, but my spouse will despise me for this and the extra expense (this horse has been very expensive) especially in current inflationary environment. We would have to move to afford this ourselves.
2. Put her out in the boonies… likely forever
3. PTS

Again, she is not a candidate for rehoming. If someone responsible would take her I’d pay them to do so lol, but nobody needs a complicated riding horse that also has a soft tissue injury and is a bit hot to handle even on regumate.

My brain tells me 3) is the right thing to do, but my heart tells me I’m putting a healthy middle aged horse that has tons of life left in her to sleep. Where do you draw the line?

[trubandloki]

@cantstop

but my heart tells me I’m putting a healthy middle aged horse that has tons of life left in her to sleep

But is she healthy?

Sure, she might be doing better than she was, but …