Equine accupuncture in hoof -advice please?

[Blythwind]

Hi,

Does anyone have any experience (good or bad) of accupuncture done on your horse to treat any hoof problems (for example laminitis/navicular).

If so, can you recommend anyone? How many sessions did it take for you to see a result? And what sort of price did you pay?

To put these questions into context, my horse went lame in both front feet in August 2010. He had x-rays done which showed some slight changes to the coffin joint but both vet and farrier said they werent really enough to cause the lameness. They couldnt find anything else and I wasnt really ever given a diagnosis on what the problem was. I felt that the vet just wrote it off to old age (21years) despite the xrays showing his joints were ok etc.

He has since had egg- bar and heart bar shoes on (initially with gel infills but not now) and he is sound. However, yesterday my farrier decided to put him back into 'normal' rollers with side clips and he was very lame when turning (fine on the straight).

Farrier says it is because the muscles and tendons inside the hoof have got used to the support of the bar and have seized up. We debated whether to keep him in normal shoes and give him bute to eventually allow the muscles work, or keep him in heart bars. Given the state of him, we took the shoes off and put the heart bars back on.

So i was just wondering if accupuncture might help the muscles... Sorry if this all sounds a bit stupid - you may well have noticed that I am not very knowledgeable about all this!

Thanks for reading, and i'd really appreciate some advice.

 

[LucyPriory]

Just want to double check - your farrier said 'muscles in the hoof'? This seems a little odd as there aren't any. Perhaps he meant further up the leg?

Soreness on corners can be due to low grade or worse laminitis and a whole range of other things. Might be an idea to get your vet out.

Best wishes for a return to full soundness.

 

[Orangehorse]

Only a vet can carry out acupuncture on a horse as it is an invasive procedure.

If you think it is muscles then Bowen Therapy can be useful, or physio, but your vet has to approve anything like that anyway (in case the horse has a condition that would be made worse). If the vet knows the horse anyway and has seen it recently, you can just telephone and ask over the phone if it would be OK and, more importantly, an appropriate treatment. Most vets are quite OK about it, but he might think the problem is in his feet anyway, in which case he would want to see the horse again.

I have used pads with my horse's shoes which worked well. They were quite expensive to start with but they lasted the whole summer and could go back on again. They seemed to do his foot quite a lot of good and they were a bit of a cushion.

Good luck, hope he gets better.

 

[TheMule]

Sorry but your farrier is not talking any sense- there are no muscles in or around the horse's hoof and tendons dont 'seize up'

I'd want a vet to do a proper lameness work up