anyone had any experience of hock injury????

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HJ77

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Does anyone have any experience of their horse or pony with a gastroc (gastrocnemius) tendon injury. My boy came in from the field with a hock the size of a small planet on the 18th Nov, had the vet out immediately who at first thought it was a dislocated superficial flexor tendon. After numerous scans over the last few weeks it has been confirmed that the primary area of damage is the gastroc tendon!! I am gutted as this looks to be a career ender at best. He is currently on box rest and bute to reduce the inflammation (we are on week 7 of 12 so quite a way to go yet). I have tried to find some info on the net around this type of injury but have found very little. My vet said it was a very rare place to injure. I feel quite isolated as not able to find anyone with a similar or shared experience. If anyone has experience of this type of injury good or bad I would like to hear your tale.
 
Excuse the multiple spelling mistakes that follow!
My boy had a core lesion up the middle of his gastrocnemus and he pulled a small area off the inside of his hock taking a chip of bone with it.
He was a very good candidate for stem cell treatment so he had this, a daily hand walking programe and repeat scans at 6, 12 and 20 weeks. He had just shy of 6 months of box rest and came out of it sound. I never jumped him again and have to be careful about how deep the going is on hacks and turnout but have lots of fun on him 4 years on.

Good luck!
 
Thanks Missmac for sharing your experience of this type of injury it has given me some hope at least that all is not necessarily lost! take care.
 
Not same sort of injury but my boy got cast one evening in the stable but got out of it without us knowing anything about it. Put him out followig day he was fine not lame nothing. Brought him in that evening he was slightly lame but still nothing to pin point what was going on and a couple of days later swelling gathered in his hock and trip to vets for numerous x-rays and he had sustained a chip fracture in his hock. Now has slight arthritis in it but is sound.

Hope he mends soon for you! Chin up and positive thinking x
 
not sure if this is similar but my friends 4yr old damaged his hock when being transported over from Ireland! after about a year of it repeatedly swelling up and him going lame, she had it scanned, it was confirmed that he had a damaged tendon sheaf! treatment was to just build him up walking up to an hour and a half a day on the roads 5 out of 7 days a week! this didn't really happen for one reason and another but he's just had a steroid injection in this hock and within less than a week she's hacked him out a few times and touch wood its not swollen up again, where as before it would have been up after the first hack!
 
No worries.
There is hope but i think i was lucky in that he took to box rest much better than i ever expected him to. Hand walking was exciting at times and there was an incident with a cyclist that set us back a way. I think the fact he is a wee native rather than a lanky tb helped as well.
Keep hope, keep everything crossed and pray to every god going but be prepared that he may not come sound.
Keep us informed!
 
Thanks to you all: missmac, kerrieberry and lozhug for sharing your experiences and for the positive vibes. I feel a little more up beat now.Time is a great healer I guess and we've got plenty of that so lets see what happens. Take care and Happy New year! x
 
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