To Folks Who Are Very Familiar with Navicular Xrays

[Simkie]

100% agree with the other posters–your horse is sound. Ride him. They can’t read the rads and navicular radiographs really seem to be a fairly poor indicator of soundness, anyway.

But also…I’ve personally had enough really shitty experiences at CSU that I would never, ever take their word on something like this. Send the radiographs and the MRI off to someone else–someone who specializes in this stuff–for a second (or third, whatever you’re up to :lol:) opinion. That’s the beauty of imaging…it’s portable. You can have it read by the best, most experienced, person in the WORLD, if you want, generally for nothing or next to nothing. Take advantage of that

[beau159]

@Princess Sparkles

A horse isn’t a cake. You can’t “save” them for later. They are either going to be sound or they aren’t, and all you can do is enjoy the precious time we all have with them.

Love this line!

This describes perfectly why I still barrel race on my horse with fusing hocks, heel pain, and stifle issues.

With proper management, I am able to keep him happy and sound and competing. Some say I shouldn’t because it’s going to “use him up” faster and that he should be retired. But why? He’s happy and he loves his job. The day he tells me he needs to be done, then we’ll be done. And he has a home forever with me no matter what. But until then, I am going to have my cake and eat it too.

And his front feet x-rays look perfectly normal. Yet I have to do a lot to keep him sound (special shoes, injections, supplements, etc).

So OP, maybe be happy you have a sound horse that just has crummy x-rays. Because he’s sound.

[ytr45]

Thanks everyone for the feedback. And moral support!!

[Ghazzu]

Not to spread undue optimism, but…

Some years back, a study was done in which 5 sets of navicular radiographs were shown to 5 different board certified radiologists, who were asked to rank them in order of severity, in terms of “navicular disease”.

There was little agreement amongst the radiologists, and no correlation between the radiographic ranking and the clinical signs shown by the horses in question.

Would a really “bad” set of rads give me pause if I were doing a PPE? Probably.
If I already owned the animal in question and it was not lame, not so much.