Competing a horse with lameness history?

[jangles]

In here rather than the vet forum as I'm interested to hear anyones experiences of bringing a horse back into work after suspensory strains and lameness and competing them again.

The horse is question was eventing BE 100 prior to injury and has competed at that level twice since returning to fitness with no problem. Would you assume that it is now OK to continue at that level eventing and all other PC activities (Tet/SJ/XC rallies and team events) as well as hunting or would you feel that activities should be scaled down and tailored so that the horse was only ever working on ideal ground. Obviously we all want our horses working on perfect ground, but the realities of competing and hunting do mean that horses need to be able to run in a variety of conditions.
I'm not sure if it's worth the risk, but on the other hand we need a horse that can do his job. Any success stories out there?

Many thanks

 

[SusieT]

Very much doubt I would hunt a horse with a strain again-no guarantee of going.
I would if he were sound and enjoying his work do the pc ode circuit etc. but if the ground was very hard or soft, I'm afraid I wouldn't run him, it's not fair.
I would also not be pushing him to the top of his scope, but would consider him a fun horse, (e.g 2"9, 3") in order to preserve him as long as possible. Obviously you have to look at whether this would suit you, I think you may find that if you want to do all these activities, either you will end up with a lame horse again and have to replace him anyway, or ensure you only run on ideal ground and still potentially not have a good result.
Sadly that's horses, and it's hard to get a tough good one that will consistantly do the job/

 

[ISHmad]

How long ago did your horse injure him or her self? What has the vet said? I personally would be quite concerned after this kind of injury to do much hard work but others may feel differently. In an ideal world I'd look for another horse to compete on and do lower level work with this one, if at all feasible.

 

[SuperSketch]

A girl at my yard brought a horse to do BE with (Around BE100, Novice level) and general PC/RC with and he did his suspensory ligaments within 9 months of getting him. They've had him for around 20 months now and for at least 10 of those months, he has been lame.

He had the initial injury and was treated by the vet accordingly, rested for the given period of time and then brought back slowly. She was out competing again, I think it was round a BE90 course which he was more than capable of, and he came back hopping lame once again after the XC. Nothing she'd done, merely a weakness left by the injury. It wasn't her fault and she'd done nothing to impede the recovery process.

Consequently, he had damaged the suspensory ligament once again and had to have yet more time off. He has only just come back into light work and she isn't sure if she'll be able to event him to the standard she wants to now because of the weakness in said ligament.

My advice would be to consider doing lower level work and to really build the work up gradually to avoid further problems.