Donkey's lameness - opinions please

[SSM]

For the last few weeks Donkey has been lame, had vet out - nerve blocked - still slightly lame so we blamed shoulder - there has been no improvement, worse if anything. Heidi1 came up on Sunday and immediately identified her feet as a problem. I am fuming at myself for not picking up on this, fuming at blacksmith - I trust him as a qualified craftsman to look after my girl. I am going to post a series of pictures - can all you experts please let me have your opinions. Needless to say I do have another farrier coming out on Friday to in his words 'fix another of XXX's fcuk ups' It may not be fully visible but the inside heels are now at least 1cm longer than the outer heels and the shoe I am holding up is the shoe she pulled off two sets ago, since then she has been wearing these shoes that are at least a cm longer on one - side I think my poor beautiful baby has been shod to fit the shoe and the result is a lesson to me not to trust anyone and get the books out again and relearn everything I have forgotten.

one year ago

last November

Last night

Hoof shots, - she also has a horizontal crack about 2" long just below the coronet band (could find nothing in my BHS vet book)- help!!!!!!

Advise, comments etc would be appreciated.

 

[AmyMay]

Where was she nerve blocked????

I think that her feet look a little dumpy - but can't see a vast difference between the first set of pics and now. Although of course my eye may not be as good as others on this one. She also looks slightly pigeon toed to me - especially on her near fore and this could be putting pressure on her joints. Did vet X-ray???

Two points though - did your vet make any comment on her feet? And I think that the other farrier is totally and utterly unprofessional to make a comment like that about your current farrier - I wouldn't have someone like that shoe my horse I'm afraid. But each to their own.

Hope you get to the bottom of it soon. Presume that the vet did all the usual foot tests to check for corns or abcesses???

 

[SSM]

She was nerve blocked to below the knee, slight improvement but still 2/10ths. No x-rays at the time

I think it is a fairly standard sort of comment, men can be bigger bitches than women often and since I now know of 3 other people who have had the same problem with the same farrier I think it is fair comment. Vet thought shoes looked okay, he will be put straight when I next see him.

We did check foot it's self

 

[AmyMay]

I know when I went through all of this with Amy the x-rays were invaluable in the final diagnosis. She too was nerve blocked - and then feet and legs x-rayed. Just a thought, but well worth considering perhaps??

 

[aran]

did the vet block all the way down - usually lamness is foot related so usually the vet rules that out first. Over the year her toes seemed to have got shorter but because you don't have the heal shots before its difficult to know what to make of the pictures. certainly he is now using bigger shoes on her.

i also dont agree that the farrier should speak of another farrier like that. if he sees a big problem with her feet then he should report that back along the proper channels.

I do think though that she looks more pigeon toed now then in the first picture - athough that might just be the pictures.

If she's still lame then I would get your vet to refer you to a lameness specialist to do a proper lameness workup with xrays etc. They will be able to tell you whether its the shoeing or not.

I hope she gets better soon

 

[Patches]

I'm not that good on feet, but I would echo AmyMay with regards to having her feet x-rayed if that's where you're 100% sure the problem is.

I had Patches x-rayed when she was tripping and what they showed proved to be invaluable in terms of assisting my farrier, who was already doing an excellent job, to tweak his shoeing.

Patches feet didn't look long. The vet said her feet looked really well shod. However, when she was x-rayed it was apparent that the internal structures of her foot required a much shorter toe when shoeing. The vet and farrier were both amazed as you'd never have matched her feet in the flesh to the feet on the x-rays. This balance issue was addressed by the farrier and Patches has been great since.


Edited to add:

At Patches lameness work up, she was flexioned, lunged on hard surface and in the school and was nerve blocked starting at the foot and moving up the leg only if no improvement was shown. X-rays were taken to correspond with the nerve blocks which gave the most improvement.

All four feet were x-rayed though to compare fronts with hinds.

 

[Spot1]

[ QUOTE ]
I do have another farrier coming out on Friday to in his words 'fix another of XXX's fcuk ups'

[/ QUOTE ]

I would like to add to the previous posts. This is a very unfortunate and unprofessional thing for your new farrier to say. Have they even seen the horse yet? It must call in to question there ability to make a rational and unbiased assessment of the problem and therefore compromise effective treatment. I hope that it was perhaps a case of "laddish bravado" and that you can establish a good working relationship to include yourself, the farrier and the vet.

Did the 2/10 lameness after blocking represented some improvement or none?

Neve blocking should normally be able to eliminate the lower leg as a site of lameness.

Looking at the pics there do seem to be a few issues, for instance on the right fore the hoof wall at the inside heel appears lower than that of the outside one, thus requiring the shoe to be "pulled round" to cover it. I would certainly like to see the feet re-shod, it does need doing even if it doesn't solve the problem. I would be interested to hear what your new farrier suggests so I won't say any more.

 

[buzzles]

I have to agree that the only way you're going to find out what it is is to get xrays done, even if it's just to eliminate things. My horse was lame about a month ago and the farrier couldn't find anything (he's a very good farrier) so I got the leg xrayed and although nothing showed up (no fracture, abcess, navicular, pedalostitis etc, all of which I'd been worried about) at least I knew it wasn't anything serious and the vet thought the horse had developed thin soles so he now has pads on his feet. He was also nerve blocked but these were quite inconclusive. Xrays aren't that expensive and are worth it if you can find out exactly what the problem is.

Have to say though that my horse is the biggest wimp imaginable and the slightest thing will make him go lame, the last abcess he had the farrier laughed at him when he saw the size of it, it was barely a pinprick. He also takes ages to recover from abcesses/bruises as it's still in his head that he has a pain and he expects to be sore even when they're healed and he's usually dog lame at home but if I take him to a competition he's miraculously recovered as he has other things to distract him and he's not thinking about his sore leg. Everyone says he's a sensitive soul but I think he's a wimp, he also gets worse if you give him too much sympathy!!