My horse is broken!

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0310Star

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So today we went for our follow up appointment at the vets. In January she was diagnosed with high ringbone of the short pattern, sidebones and DJD in the RF, so decides while I still have the insurance paying out until December we would go back for a check up!
She has been doing amazingly since diagnosis, the vet is well and truly gob-smacked at her progress and the fact she is fit and in full work again so I had no real worries.
So we lunged her in the hard ground pen and she is 100% sound in that leg to everyone's amazement! After all, she should be lame with everything going on in there! But we did notice she was a little lame in the LF. Nothing major but decided as we were there we may as well do some blocks and X-rays to check there wasn't the same in the other leg!

A nerve block and a few X-rays later it revealed she has the sidebones in the LF (we expected this anyway so not a huge deal) but ALSO slight navicular changes!! :(
Decided to medicate her with Tildren as it would help both fronts and as luck would have it the vet is very positive as we caught it so early! He said if we hadn't have checked the RF in the first place we would never have known until it progressed!

So my poor girl has about everything you can have wrong in both front now, a little selection if everything!

I am not too upset as she is such a trooper the vet really doesn't see any reason for this to stop her in her tracks for a very long time yet :) but £1000 later we have another leg stricken off of insurance!

The vet wants her to go into natural balance shoes on the front to help with break over and thinks this will help a lot but I am not too sure I like the idea of this.... She is currently barefoot and I am so happy with her like this and she is much happier also so I'm not too sure what to do!

Does anybody have any experience with natural balance shoes that could give me some advice on the matter?
My vet is going to call my farrier to discuss it all but thought it may be worth asking everybody on here :)

Thanks in advance!
 
My horse has been barefoot for a while and is perfectly fine on any surface so she does not need to be rehabbed.
The problem I have is that my vet is very pro barefoot so I think for him to suggest natural balance is his professional opinion and also one that he only gives when it really is needed.
I can't say I have had any experience with natural balance shoes so this is why I was wondering if anybody could give me the pros and cons of them :)
 
I would never have my horse shod 'natural balance' I and the horses hate it.

The break over comes far to quickly which means that they take shorter strides and also stumble a lot. They mince along rather than using their shoulders.

Where the tern 'natural' comes from is debatable. I have had many native ponies off the moors, mountains and forest and have ever seen any with squared off toes.
I did research this and evidently it all stemmed from mustangs, when they were rounded up it was noticed that they had squared off toes. What was not taken into account was the fact that this was in the early spring after a hard winter where they had been digging for food. Same herds had normal feet later in the year.

I would leave her barefoot.
 
My farrier recommended putting Jack in natural balance shoes - he felt it would help with his tripping!

Worse thing i ever did - his heels were starting collapse after approx 5 months, needless to say i changed farrier and his hooves are on the road to recovery.

Personally i would avoid them
 
My lad went from natural balance shoes to barefoot after his navicular diagnosis earlier this year. He went to Rockley coincidentally. I wouldn't put the shoes back on purely because the difference in my lad's range of movement is astounding, and the comments above about short strides could have been written about my horse before the shoes came off. Ultimately though, none of us are vets and for a vet who is pro barefoot to say such a thing there must be a reason. Maybe wait until your vet has spoken to your farrier and then ask him for his opinion on it all.

Good luck with whatever you decide :)
 
I would have thought if shes been barefoot for a long time, natural balance would be easier for her to walk in straightaway.
Also I think the barefoot/ Natural balance shoe thing has alot to do with each farrier interpretation.
 
They are very interesting replies! I called my farrier, who coincidently has a very good relationship with my vet as they work together quite a bit. He agrees with me and thinks we are better off leaving them for now until she really needs help from shoes.
He said he is going to speak to the vet and arrange to sit and talk through the X-rays with him and try and agree on the best course of action and then they will both come back to me with the course of action!
It's always hard going against professional advice I think, but I am very happy that they are both being so good about discussing it together so we are all happy with the decision :)
 
Oh I wish I'd had professionals like yours this time last year! Neither my vet nor Farrier were interested in even discussing the possibility of barefoot with me. I ended up spending weeks researching it and then going against both their advice. Put them both on your Christmas card list immediately!

Glad you've got a good way forwards to talk things through with them both. Keep us posted. :)
 
I am so glad they are both so interested in my opinions too! It really does make the world of difference!

Fingers crossed they both agree to stay barefoot :)
 
Are they making the navicular diagnosis from xrays?

If so, they mean nothing.

I have heard it from many sources, several of them vets, that if you xray 100 sound horses then around half of them will have changes visible to the navicular bone.

At the same time, if you MRI 100 lame horses with navicular changes, all or very nearly all of them will have soft tissue damage.

It is, consequently, extremely unlikely that your horse's current foreleg lameness has the slightest thing to do with minor changes to the navicular shown on xray.

It drives me completely mad that vets are still making this diagnosis. This information has been known for years now :(

You horse is most likely either feeling the sidebone or has some soft tissue damage.

Is the frog in contact with the floor in the lame foot? If not, this appears to predispose to soft tissue damage, with the foot loaded peripherally like wearing a shoe.

Does the horse land toe-first with the lame foot? If so, this has been demonstrated to cause deep digital flexor tendon damage inside the foot.

I hope things go well with the tildren, but the last thing I would think of doing would be to shoe.
 
This is what my farrier said! He said any horse of her age (almost 15) will show slight changes so I shouldn't really go by it and the Tildren will hopefully help this anyway without looking at shoes.

I wouldnt say she was lame, just uneven! Like I said, you wouldn't have noticed it if it wasn't for the fact she was lunged on hard ground. The side bone is well formed and has been there for a long while looking at it, it is also no where near any other bone in her foot so the vet said he would very highly doubt it would cause her being uncomfortable/sore on it.

I do trust my vet 100% though, he is very very good and my horse has done amazingly under his care so I also have no reason to really doubt him... :-s
I think I need to wait until him and the farrier sit down and go through everything, and see what conclusions they come up with! :)
 
Stay bare foot and get a trimmer instead of a farrier!!
Have had a horse with navivular and misshapen feet that went barefoot and is Now fine and my mare came to me barefoot and with side bone and WLD. Got a proper trimmer before doing the training myself. Side bone had gone now! Still gets WLD but this is related to long standing shoulder damage. It is worse with mad grass this year but we have previously tried to improve it with various diet/supplements to with no muck. Ot is very Minor usually and she is.never laMenlo indent worry about it too much! :-)
 
I 100% would not change who does her feet! My farrier is fantastic and works with a lot of barefoot horses, he is also a remedial farrier. The vet said her feet could not be better and his work really has helped her as it has already bought her sound in her bad leg!

I did toy with the idea, but then thought, why change something that is already doing such a fantastic job and has bought my horse sound in a leg she should be lame in :)
 
Waltzing Matilda said:
Side bone had gone now! Still gets WLD but this is related to long standing shoulder damage.
Click to expand...

WM I don't understand your post. How can white line disease - an anaerobic bacterial infection in the white line, be related to damage in the shoulder?

And surely sidebone is ossification of the lateral cartilages, and once cartilage has turned into bone it cannot change back to cartilage? Do you have xrays showing bone turned back to cartilage?
 
baker190 said:
I 100% would not change who does her feet! My farrier is fantastic and works with a lot of barefoot horses, he is also a remedial farrier. The vet said her feet could not be better and his work really has helped her as it has already bought her sound in her bad leg!

I did toy with the idea, but then thought, why change something that is already doing such a fantastic job and has bought my horse sound in a leg she should be lame in :)
Click to expand...

Your farrier sounds great there's no way you should change to someone you don't know you have nothing to gain from doing that.
One of my horses who did not cope BF he is in natural balance shoes and being shod by a farrier recommended by the trimmer she great in them much better foot fall than he had in 'normal ' shoes.
He's hunting and happy so don't write off NB shoes in the future but I would not be going there yet.
 
I would love to know how effective the Tildren is as i am considering this for our WB who had just had the third steroid/hyloronic acid injection wityh a second course of Adequan,thus maxing out my insurance.He was diagnosed with coffin joint issues from xray and nerve block.The recent hard ground made him quite sore and stiff.Sound like there are similarities with your horses issues.WB has natural balance shoes,and is shod 4 weekly.I have to say i do woory about the longer term prognosis.
 
I also don't understand who side bones can 'disappear'? They are formed bone and as far as I am aware, non reversible so have you had X-rays as proof of this?

I went and checked on her this morning and she is absolutely fine! I thought she would at least be a littlw sore and feeling sorry for herself but she is absolutely fine! Wubdahorse your WB does seen to have quite similar problems to me mare so I will do a post on her progress with the Tildren in a few weeks :)
 
That would be great as i have no experience of the efficacy of Tildren,only what other people have told me.I do hope your horse responds as this will give me some hope for WB.I'm not sure if the Rockley farm treatment would be beneficial,but open to advice and guidance,bearing in mind the insurance will be maxed out.Also WB had an accident as a yearling where he put his foot down a rabbit hole,and this caused a twist of the bones in his left foot,and he dishes on that foot too.
Can't believe i posted earlier without checking for typos.
 
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