Crumble update - arthiritis of back and low heels

[gillcook]

As some of you will have seen my previous posts 5 year old crumble started with stopping and then relucatance to trot up hills and circles and gradually becoming not a happy bunny, she then developed stringhalt. After trials of danilon and then regumate not helping we went to liphook last week - what a fab place all staff great.
She had bone scan/ ultra sound of back and feet xrays and unfortunately they found arthritis in the articular facets (these are the mikey mouse ears on the side of vertebrae not top bit where kissing spine occurs) in her back in about 3 of the vertebrae both sides in the lumbar region just where the back of her saddle is. The vet injected these with steroids (can't put local in her too close to spinal cord) which may help although if she improves quickly it will probably wear off after 3 months and there will be nothing they can do. Any one else any experience of this??
Also she was found to have very low heels and has needed natural balance shoeing this won't have been helping her back and if this has been the main cause of her pain then she will gradually improve and hopefully be ok for a while until her back causes her problems - anyone any experience of this problem??
She now needs 10 days rest before starting to work her again I am trying to be optimistic but struggling time will tell although I am releived in a funny kind of way to know what is wrong as I have been telling vets for months that there is something seriously wrong with this horse. Any info gratefully received

 

[emelia]

Hi Horsecookie,
Sorry to hear of your problem. My horse has broken back pastern axis on her front feet and she has had egg bar shoes fitted which have helped no end so I am sure the natural balance would also help. Just make sure your farrier gets a good look at the x-rays before he shoes her.

Good luck!

xxx

 

[sally2008]

Hi again horsecookie. If you are successful in finding a good NB farrier to rebalance and shoe your horse you may very well find that it does help her back. If a horse has long toes / low heels they very often have no option but the stand with their legs too far under their body which creates undue strain throughout the body, especially the back. I'm not saying that it will cure your horses problems but you might be pleasantly surprised how much relief she gets. You really do need to find a farrier that fully understands shoeing for correct skeletal alignment.

My vet and farrier recently did an extensive field study (over 3 years I believe) on horses with negative sole-planes. When they were then properly shod with NB the resulting changes were quite assounding and significant improvements were seen. Unfortunately the paper he has written is not published yet but hopefully will be in the new year.

 

[monstermunch]

I'm so sorry for your bad luck.
I agree with Sally on the shoeing. Find the right farrier and you can get some fantastic results.
As for your horses back if she is already showing signs of arthritis then you need to help her as much as possible. It may be worth speaking to a good physio to see whether there are any muscular strength exercises you can do to take some of the load off the spine and onto the muscles.
Also I would get her on a very high strength joint supplement. I know of several horses who were on bute or equivalent for various different arthritic conditions and when they fed this high strength new brand joint supplement they got fantastic results. They were able to stop using bute and some of them even came sound.
So on the positive side you do have options.
I wish you best of luck with it. Hope it all works out.

 

[gillcook]

Hi thanks for that had forgotten about supplements, physio is coming back soon, (she was the one who said back in june that this horse had something wrong in her back) the other thing the vet mentioned was acupuncture which can apparently be useful for this kind of pain