Street_Skill
Well-Known Member
Hi all,
I've already written this thread out once but log in timed out and I lost it!
Anyway, I've never posted before but am in need of some advice an opinions on how to get hooves to grow. It's long, but here goes.....
On the 28th of February I transported by 6 year old TB to his first jumping lesson in the trailer. Everything went well and he loaded without problems to come home. I had been travelling for about 10 minutes down a fairly major A road doing 50mph when he started thrashing about in the trailer. This is really unusual as he is a brilliant traveller (being an ex-racer) and you normally never hear a peep out of him. My friend looked through the rear window to see him right in the front of the trailer-in the part that you would walk through to unload down the front ramp. I took me a little while to find somewhere to pull over safely, but when I did I realised that the breast bar must have come down (don't ask me how, I have asked myself that every day and I still don't have an answer) and fallen round his feet causing him to panic. He'd ripped both his back shoes off and there was blood everywhere, dripping out of his feet, on the floor, up the walls, on his leadrope, literally everywhere. There was nothing I could do by the side of the road apart from push him back into the stall, put the breast bar back, carry on and phone the vet on the way home.
When we got back I hosed and hosed the feet until the vet arrived, but he'd basically created a "wound" for want of a better expression at the toe of each of his back feet where the wall of the hoof and sole were no longer attached. The blood was just running out of both hooves, but my vet was brilliant and gave him painkillers, antibiotics and bandaged his feet. Fast forward 7 days and I still had a horse that was in incredible pain (I'd had two emergency call outs in this period for pain relief as he was shaking and sweating and couldn't bear any weight on his hind feet) which I was struggling to manage. I was also having trouble stopping the bleeding. My farrier came to see him with a view to casting the feet in special bandages to stabilise them and to kick start healing as whenever he was weight bearing the wall and sole were moving destroying any new tissue that was forming. Unfortunately Ted (my horse) had developed an abscess by this point in the left hind which was the worst out of the two so my farrier was unable to do anything. After another 3 days the abscess had erupted out of the coronet band and Ted looked like a hat rack-he had lost so much weight and was not eating due to the pain. I was tearing my hair out by this stage for several reasons-I couldn't get enough pain killer into him (despite mixing it in Greek yoghurt!), my vet seemed to disregard my concerns (although in her defence she was newly qualified and is not my usual vet) and I just couldn't see how it was all going to heal without some form of shoe to hold it all together. I made one final desperate call to my vet (thankfully my usual on). She took one look at him and agreed with me-he needed a referral to Newmarket Equine Hospital.
Ted spent 10 days at NEH during which time they stabilised him, got painkillers into him, put him on a broad spectrum antibiotic and started getting him to eat again. They also x-rayed him which revealed by some miracle that there were no fractures. After 2 or 3 days he had a pair of reverse shoes fitted to take the pressure off his toes and they greatly increased his comfort. He also had his feet soaked, cleaned and dressed every day. I collected him on 19/03 with instructions to change the dressings every day and keep him on complete box rest. My vet was happy that he would eventually make a full recovery. He finished the bute about a week ago, and seemed much brighter and happier, eating me out of house and home. The discharge from the infections had reduced significantly and his coat was looking much brighter. He is starting to change it and it was no longer flakey and scabby like it was when he was first discharged. I took him back on 08/04 for further x-rays, a trim and a new set of reverse shoes. Sadly the x-ray showed that Ted had developed Pedal Osteitis (demineralisation and reabsorption of the pedal bone) in both hind feet. The left is worse that the right, but when viewed above there is grey semi-circle of demineralisation across the middle of the pedal bone. His chances of making a full recovery have now gone back down to 50/50 and basically if he loses the lower portion of the pedal bone he is a gonner. All I can do now is support him nutritionally and keep changing the dressings and keeping it all clean. The rest is down to him-he needs to grow some foot and connective tissue/blood vessels and I need to keep my fingers crossed that he readopts the pedal bone and doesn't reject it!
The worst bit is that we just don't know what is going on in there. There may be more demineralisation to come, or we may be over the worst and coming out the other side. He has obviously grown new tissue in those feet as when he was first admitted the pedal bone could be seen in the hoof cavity. That area is now completely full of new tissue. He goes back to NEH on 4 weeks for another trim and more x-rays. He was a bit sore after the debridement of part of his sole and new shoes, but is now picking up again and eating, well, like a horse. We will know more then, but in the meantime I just wanted to know it:
1. Anyone had any experience of an injury like this? What happened and how did you cope?
2. Any tips (feeding or otherwise) to get hoof to grow?
Thanks for reading this marathon, and thanks in advance for your help.....
I'm going to try and attach some photos that I took this morning so you can see what I'm talking about.
I've already written this thread out once but log in timed out and I lost it!
Anyway, I've never posted before but am in need of some advice an opinions on how to get hooves to grow. It's long, but here goes.....
On the 28th of February I transported by 6 year old TB to his first jumping lesson in the trailer. Everything went well and he loaded without problems to come home. I had been travelling for about 10 minutes down a fairly major A road doing 50mph when he started thrashing about in the trailer. This is really unusual as he is a brilliant traveller (being an ex-racer) and you normally never hear a peep out of him. My friend looked through the rear window to see him right in the front of the trailer-in the part that you would walk through to unload down the front ramp. I took me a little while to find somewhere to pull over safely, but when I did I realised that the breast bar must have come down (don't ask me how, I have asked myself that every day and I still don't have an answer) and fallen round his feet causing him to panic. He'd ripped both his back shoes off and there was blood everywhere, dripping out of his feet, on the floor, up the walls, on his leadrope, literally everywhere. There was nothing I could do by the side of the road apart from push him back into the stall, put the breast bar back, carry on and phone the vet on the way home.
When we got back I hosed and hosed the feet until the vet arrived, but he'd basically created a "wound" for want of a better expression at the toe of each of his back feet where the wall of the hoof and sole were no longer attached. The blood was just running out of both hooves, but my vet was brilliant and gave him painkillers, antibiotics and bandaged his feet. Fast forward 7 days and I still had a horse that was in incredible pain (I'd had two emergency call outs in this period for pain relief as he was shaking and sweating and couldn't bear any weight on his hind feet) which I was struggling to manage. I was also having trouble stopping the bleeding. My farrier came to see him with a view to casting the feet in special bandages to stabilise them and to kick start healing as whenever he was weight bearing the wall and sole were moving destroying any new tissue that was forming. Unfortunately Ted (my horse) had developed an abscess by this point in the left hind which was the worst out of the two so my farrier was unable to do anything. After another 3 days the abscess had erupted out of the coronet band and Ted looked like a hat rack-he had lost so much weight and was not eating due to the pain. I was tearing my hair out by this stage for several reasons-I couldn't get enough pain killer into him (despite mixing it in Greek yoghurt!), my vet seemed to disregard my concerns (although in her defence she was newly qualified and is not my usual vet) and I just couldn't see how it was all going to heal without some form of shoe to hold it all together. I made one final desperate call to my vet (thankfully my usual on). She took one look at him and agreed with me-he needed a referral to Newmarket Equine Hospital.
Ted spent 10 days at NEH during which time they stabilised him, got painkillers into him, put him on a broad spectrum antibiotic and started getting him to eat again. They also x-rayed him which revealed by some miracle that there were no fractures. After 2 or 3 days he had a pair of reverse shoes fitted to take the pressure off his toes and they greatly increased his comfort. He also had his feet soaked, cleaned and dressed every day. I collected him on 19/03 with instructions to change the dressings every day and keep him on complete box rest. My vet was happy that he would eventually make a full recovery. He finished the bute about a week ago, and seemed much brighter and happier, eating me out of house and home. The discharge from the infections had reduced significantly and his coat was looking much brighter. He is starting to change it and it was no longer flakey and scabby like it was when he was first discharged. I took him back on 08/04 for further x-rays, a trim and a new set of reverse shoes. Sadly the x-ray showed that Ted had developed Pedal Osteitis (demineralisation and reabsorption of the pedal bone) in both hind feet. The left is worse that the right, but when viewed above there is grey semi-circle of demineralisation across the middle of the pedal bone. His chances of making a full recovery have now gone back down to 50/50 and basically if he loses the lower portion of the pedal bone he is a gonner. All I can do now is support him nutritionally and keep changing the dressings and keeping it all clean. The rest is down to him-he needs to grow some foot and connective tissue/blood vessels and I need to keep my fingers crossed that he readopts the pedal bone and doesn't reject it!
The worst bit is that we just don't know what is going on in there. There may be more demineralisation to come, or we may be over the worst and coming out the other side. He has obviously grown new tissue in those feet as when he was first admitted the pedal bone could be seen in the hoof cavity. That area is now completely full of new tissue. He goes back to NEH on 4 weeks for another trim and more x-rays. He was a bit sore after the debridement of part of his sole and new shoes, but is now picking up again and eating, well, like a horse. We will know more then, but in the meantime I just wanted to know it:
1. Anyone had any experience of an injury like this? What happened and how did you cope?
2. Any tips (feeding or otherwise) to get hoof to grow?
Thanks for reading this marathon, and thanks in advance for your help.....
I'm going to try and attach some photos that I took this morning so you can see what I'm talking about.
The grey area of demineralisation is a central band horizontally across the sole of the pedal bone as you look at it from below. Thanks for your advice-I'm keeping my fingers crossed and the kettle on for all those warm salty foot baths to keep infection at bay! 
Thanks again for your help