Need encouragement... anyone had a horse that had a rare injury?

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tasel

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As the subject says. In dire need of encouragement.

Has anyone had a horse that had a rare injury, where vets don't know the prognosis because it's rare?

Well, my horse has one of those things. She injured her LDET which doesn't sound so bad, but it's actually the proximal aspect of the LDET that she injured (i.e. the origin) - a short little tendon before giving rise to the muscle belly that originates off the extensor fossa of the distal lateral femur.

This happened 3 years ago... and she is still not completely sound.

American vets have said that though it's a rare thing to happen, they thought the prognosis was fair to good with adequate rest and rehab, but UK vets just won't say anything because it's an unlikely injury to happen (could be a precedence case, I guess).


Thing is... my horse is absolutely fine otherwise, and she IS my horse of a lifetime...
 
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We had a 3 day old Shetland fial who we now beleive was poisoned on purpose with strickning. (mole poison. Not common these days and has to be sold under licence)

There was another pony in the village with the same symptoms but their vet said it was tetnus. Later it was admitted he probably picked up the poison too. There was also a lab but that recovered also suffered the same.

It took weeks to diagnose but our vet was so convinced it wasn't tetnus and wanted to get to the bottom of it.

His muscles and jaw locked and he was kept sedated until tests came back and eventually the poison was detected.

He was bottle fed and after a few weeks we could take him home from the vets but we had to continue his bottle feeding until he was weaned coz mum had dried up.

He recovered after a couple of months but the vet always warned us he didn't know what his long term prognosis would be. He was 99% fine his back just became very rigid if he got cold and wet. But sadly last summer it was clear things were shutting down. He had the runs despite everything we tried to stop them. He would have good days and bad and had the appetite of a clydsdale and was always a happy little chappy. But as with any animal you know when enough is enough.

So we got the vet to him (the same one who saved his life) and he confirmed it was his liver and arthritis in his back was setting in and he was never gonna improve as a result of the poisoning 9 years previos so we did the kindest thing for him last April.

We still have his mum and loads of photos but the hell we went through not knowing why he was so ill and then finding out someone probably poisoned him malliciously was just heart breaking
 
Well, not an injury but 18 months after I bought my (first) horse, she was diagnosed with epilepsy. First I was told there was no treatment, then after some more months treatment became available but it was unlikely she would live much more than a "few years" due to the side effects. Well that was in 1998 and she was waiting for her breakfast as usual this morning. In between times I've faced massive bills no thanks to the Cascade ruling imposed on us by Brussels, and just two weeks ago was told the price was going up again - by nearly £100 a month, so thats the best part of £500 for all her drugs each and every month, so its a good job I've just managed to reduce my mortgage payments a bit!
 
Hmm, quite. They say that God only dumps as much on you as you can bear, but in this case I'm afraid God has got it wrong!! When the old girl finally goes, I'm going to be the best part of £1000 a month better off - but I'll have lost everything.
 
Fatpiggy, your mare is so lucky to have such a wonderful and devoted owner. I don't know anything about epilepsy in horses - if the drugs can control the condition can they still be ridden? Are there triggers like with people?

My rare injury was my mare attempting a backflip and smashing her withers into smitereens.
Vet had never seen it before, scratched his head, dusted off his big text book which contained one paragraph on broken withers. He advised turning away for 6 months then see how she coped with gradually being brought back into work. He couldn't give any sort of prognosis - maybe she would make a full recovery, maybe just light hacking, maybe never ridden again.

So one year on, she was back to eventing at PN, better than ever, and I even entered our first novice. Never actually got there unfortunately as I had a little scare xc, and decided that actually it wasn't fair to push her and probably wasn't all that safe. Thought I'd rather she lived out her days doing less than that I pushed her to do more and ended her career prematurely.

3 years later she is still in lots of work! She hacks or schools most days and gallops all over the forest with lots of enthusiasm! We don't jump all that much now, but when we do she gets all excited and is full of beans! She also has a sharer who she is teaching to ride :D and who absolutely dotes on her.

OP I hope your horse comes sound soon. It's so hard when even the vets can't tell you what to expect. xx
 
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