BBP2
Well-Known Member
My little mare also has prominent side bone at only 6 years old. She lands lateral to medial, with her forelimbs drawn slightly to the midline. I do think there is a little bit I can do about it, in terms of building her thoracic sling up so that it counters the over activity of her pecs which are pulling the limbs medially as she moves. So I think that will result in a more even loading. But the damage is done to her bones already.Hey all! Atlas went into the vets today. He is as I suspected still a bit lame right fore. Only really responsive to hoof testers across his frogs. The vet reckons a bruise (given he's improving and quickly having been really very lame less than a week ago) or indeed that wound was an abscess that just find of oozed out rather than popped).
I did radiographs anyway and YIKES. He has HUGE sidebones. Not high enough into the "danger area" or the biggest he's seen living a totally normal life but jeez. And worse on one side, which makes sense given I note he lands unevenly which I hadn't noticed until I took some decent slow mo videos, to my naked eye he looked level. The issue is his foot balance actually looks really good. He was, in his younger years, part of a "neglect case" with a whole herd of morgans. I'm not sure how bad this was, but I suspect he didn't receive proper care when he was younger. He does toe in a bit, and my vet says he feels the landing is really conformational and you can't really force it at this point (with Boggle, we used to trim him slightly unlevel when shod to have him land level. When barefoot which he was for good chunks of the year, he did his own thing with his wear). So it's a little tricky as my vet feels given the confo the landing is inevitable. Kinda wish this conformation had been mentioned at the vetting but oh well!
Anyway, the vet was pretty unfussed about the sidebone itself and even thought it was maybe an incidental finding because he wasn't testing sore where you'd expect with a horse with sidebone that was bothering him.
So it's a little rubbish, to have something like that in a 4 year old. But ultimately I'm not looking to compete at a high level or even event, life just isn't like that anymore and the eventing on this side of the USA is so limited unless you trek across the country every other weekend. So maybe not such a big deal and hopefully he will stay sound enough for what I want to do.
It does bother me to just "allow" him to land unlevel though. I'm sure there will be lots of opinions on that! So my plan so far is he will still go to california (vet said he's totally fine to travel), and I'll have him looked at again by a vet there maybe in 6 weeks or so. For now he can just chill.
I'm not going to go down the route of MRI or anything of that nature, I'm hopefully I'll have a totally sound pony in the near future. In happier news, he is fully neurologically normal.
I give her constant access to softer ground like a sandpit and rubber mats whilst the ground is so hard, and have rubber mats at some of my hay stations. I also put boots and pads on her for periods like now when the ground is rock hard to help with the concussion (but have to be a bit careful given access to the sandpit increases chance of sand in them and rubbing, especially when hot and sweaty.
I’ve sort of accepted that she will probably only be a 10km sort of a horse rather than a distance horse, and that I’ll always have to be mindful of the ground and her soundness.
I don't know what to do.
