Lame horse, insurance run out

[Clodagh]

Sorry this is so long.

I am running a yard this week, YO away, and there is a mare there with awful confirmation, she is a dead straight line from her withers to her hooves.
She has been lame for about 6 months, longer if you count the back trouble before that was probably caused by moving badly.
She has odd shaped, very upright feet.
After lots of scans and remedial shoeing at Rossdales every month she was sound and jumping again. Now, this week, she has been shod by the yard farrier (not one I use BTW) and has gone lame again. As bad as when all this started.
I gather she has/had reverse roation of the pedal bones, she has no heels at all and is now shod (at £190 a pop) with gel soles and heartbars.
Her owner is at her wits end, she doesn't have endless money to keep trying things and has about £500 left on insurance.
I was half wondering whether to suggest she came to mine at the end of summer and overwintered on 24/7 turnout, no shoes, like mine are. (bar my ridden one is shod). Rockley financially is not an option, I am not making tracks but I do have hardcore, old ley and miles of interconnecting paddocks. What do you think? She is only 7 and her outlook is pretty bleak. She would be trimmed, if this happened, by my farrier who I really rate.

Thoughts? Would there be any point?

 

[ester]

I'd think her worth a chance. My old lad had a similar diagnosis although his feet didn't look odd like you say hers do and has stayed sound for the last year or so and is in more work than I ever thought he would be.

We did put a track (grass only) round our field but purely to limit grazing/encourage more walking as he is a fatty anyway when he was only in walk work (we walked for a good few months as I preferred to be patient and give it a good go). We also changed his feeding and did embrace the mineral spec required suggested by a grazing analysis.

Can you get some pics of her feet as others more experienced on here might be able to advise. I'm very pleased I let Frank sort his own out in the end though.

 

[Clodagh]

I possibly could, but would have to take a camera and it might look a bit odd!
Did Frank just get trimmed normally? Or did you do anything special?
She can have supplements and so on, mine all get fed once a day.

 

[ester]

He got trimmed minimally (but normally per se). Shoes came off and he was not trimmed for 6 weeks. Then trimmed for balance but his feet mostly did the rest. Did boot in front for 4ish months as his soles were pretty flat (due to the pedal bones).

I did get a barefoot trimmer on board.. with the blessing of my farrier who admitted he didn't really have any experience rehabbing feet barefoot- he still shoes our other mare so and had made Frank's feet look much better with remedial shoeing- just not functionally better-but he has taken an interest in progress.

One thing that was very useful was to take slow motion videos of him moving.. we were then able to tell that he was landing badly laterally in front and therefore had likely been putting pressure on his collateral ligaments for some time- worse in his lame foot- and potentially aggrevating the DJD in his coffin joint we thought he might also have (nerve blocked sound to joint but nothing of note on xrays apart from the pedal bone position).

I've been fascinated to watch his feet and movement change tbh, he lands much straighter now (not quite perfect but!) and do everything we did before apart from hunt/too much on hard ground but he is 20 now anyway.

This is a before and after shot about a year down the line- they have improved even further since and you can see how he wears the lateral wall down more.