Pedal bone fracture ..help please

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baily

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Sadly our 6yr old horse has been shown to have a fracture of the pedal bone. MRI this morning. Has anyone had horse/pony with this? How has the outcome been?
Horse hates being stabled. Has been boxed for two weeks already and is climbing the wall and kicking the door..not good with broken foot. He is coming home tonight with a cast on for 6 weeks then bar shoes with quater clips..he has to be on complete boxrest for 4mths!!
At the moment he is living on sedalin.
 
I know of several where the outcome has been a total return to work, and I don't personally know of any failures.

Your only real problem appears to be the box rest and I hope other people can help you there. You might need to start another thread for ideas, or search the ones there have been before.

Can I just ask how come the fracture was not found on x-ray, an MRI is a desperately expensive way to find a broken bone?

Good luck.
 
The x-ray was done within 24 hours of his fall. But nothing showed up at all. The MRI was looking for soft tissue damage instead. As fracture hadn't shown anything up.
Sometimes pedal bone fracture's can take several attempts to show up on x-ray by all accounts. As the fracture matures it shows better after a short time span.
Very expensive and thank god for insurance!!
 
That's common for fractures to need to mature before they will show on an x-ray. I'm very surprised that your vet went for MRI before xraying again a week later, no wonder insurance costs so much!

If your insurance covers only half the MRI cost, as many do, then you might like to have a little chat with your vet as to why s/he didn't repeat the xray after a week before commiting you to £500 MRI costs. Before MRI was available, that would have been routine, and was done to one of mine in the mid 1980's. The first showed no damage at all, but a week later there was a very clear sequestrum.

I hope you manage to get him calm on box rest.
 
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He was re x-rayed before the mri and still showed no breaks..the joint is very full of fluid, horse has gone from being 6/10 lame to 9/10 in 3 days..the amount of fluid in the joint appears to be effecting the x-ray image.
I'm very lucky with insurance company that they now pay 100% of mri's.
 
Mine was diagnosed by MRI after 3 years off on off lameness and having every summer off. He hasn't returned to work as because it couldn't heal 100% it formed a slightly flexible area instead of bone. You may fine glue on shoes help, mine was sore with the vibration of having nails in. He also had aluminium shoes. Box rest wise, when ive had them in like that and they hate it so much then I create a second gate as chances are he will try and leg it at some point and you don't want them to go far. I operate a policy of if they want it they can have it, unless he is going to get massively obese. Treats, licks, use the strongest herbal dope like Valerian you can. Find several toys, things like a decahedron are out in case he stamps them. My friends horse fractured his pedal bone on one of those. Have 2-3 days per toy and then change it, don't use all of your ammo at once with him. Do you have several stables? I know he is strict box rest but if you bedded a walk way to a next door stable then he won't be able to walk further than he could in a box.then he could have a day stable and a night stable, different toy in each.
 
baily said:
He was re x-rayed before the mri and still showed no breaks..the joint is very full of fluid, horse has gone from being 6/10 lame to 9/10 in 3 days..the amount of fluid in the joint appears to be effecting the x-ray image.
I'm very lucky with insurance company that they now pay 100% of mri's.
Click to expand...

Great, your vet did the right thing. I'm pleased for you that you are with the right insurance company too,MRI is so expensive.

It sounds like a really severe break. All the best with getting it right.

I have heard of horses accepting their box rest more easily if they are cross tied during daylight. Something about the psychology of being able to go absolutely nowhere, as opposed to being able to box walk, I think. Tied up with a haynet in reach, of course.
 
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Thanks for advice everyone. Had a look at website and many of the things to keep him happy he can't do. No form of nut ball's. not allowed to kick things. And need to try and encourage him to stand still as much as possible, and not move around. The radio is good idea but there is a law now that yards have to pay for a licence to have radios playing!!
He does love a four pink milk bottle with some honey/marmite in with a few small holes so it drips out slowly, we tie it up swinging in his door way.
At the moment he is having to be kept pretty well drugged up so keep him as quite as possible. But this will be slowly weaned down as the next week pass's.
If he won't settle in to boxrest on the yard he is on at the moment I think I will look into a rehab yard for the 3mths full boxrest.
 
One of my boys was a bit like this and was sedated whilst at the vets to keep him calm! He was very attached to my mare.so settled when stabled next to her but this obviously caused issues when my mare went out so I got him a stable mirror!!
I don't remember it being very expensive probably £30-40 but he was 100% better with this and infact his whole attitude to being stabled has changed ! I have a much happier horse!
obviously depends on the horse think it would drive my mare nuts!!
 
Girl at the same yard as me has a pony just recovering from a pedal bone fracture, she's just coming back into work actually!

Pony was absolutely climbing the walls in the stable; rearing at the door and kicking the walls (not good as it was her near hind), in the end the girl spoke to the vet as said pony always panics in a stable and loses the plot even when healthy so has to live out. Vet agred it was better for her to have a very small pen in the field with lots of hay and her calm friend next to her. She's done really well like this and when she moved to her small patch it all healed a lot quicker! Might be worth speaking to the vet about as it was effectively box rest, just outside...

Good luck with it all, it takes a while with the healing but it's fixable :)
 
It all depends on the fracture, if its into the joint its not so easy to heal.
My horse broke his pedal bone jan 2011 it unfortunately was missed by my vets on the xrays and so wasnt treated as broken until 8 months down the line, because of that it has never healed :( before christmas we debated on a screw but the op would be done through the hoof wall with a massive risk of infection which i and the vet decided wasnt worth the risk.
He is happy but retired now, he has to keep a bar shoe on.
I know of three cases that have all healed and a top vet said had it been picked up on the first xray it would have been healed and him been back in work by the time it was actually picked up :(
Dont get too worried i think mine is not the norm and obviously yours has been picked up which is great. When i found him he was so lame i didnt think he would still be with me so i feel grateful that he can still have a happy life (he is not lame at all and runs, fly bucks, generally had fun).
 
I know 3 horses that have had this injury. They all required long periods of box rest and this was just the start of it as after 3 months rest then then need carefully bringing back into work and turnout.

The first was an elderly pony and he came back into full work, friend had him stabled at a RS on full livery which meant plenty going on and he was not left alone whilst others were in the field and also had lots of attention during the day. They helped with getting him back into work again when he needed walking twice a day etc after he had completed his box rest.

The second was a horse at the same yard I was at, luckily he is a mum daughter share and the mum did not work so she could come in the day and spend time with him too. He is now coming back into work and although it has been a long time nearly a year he is going to be able to do everything he could do before. I don't think they found the walking in hand very easy after the box rest so he went on individual turnout sedated and did not do in hand walking.

The third is in the box next to my pony at the moment, at Priory Farm rehab yard and has just started his box rest. He is a young horse too who was having similar problem at his normal yard so came to the rehab yard and has settled in really well.

I don't know what you are feeding your horse but the horses at the rehab yard are all on box rest diets eg low sugar and low starch, plus ad lib hay and no sugarly licks or treats, My pony has a mineral salt lick on a rope which he loves.

There are major advantages of sending your horse to a rehab yard for box rest or recuperation especially if you work full time so can't spend much time during the day with your horse. My pony has been at the rehab yard for just over 6 months for box rest for his broken splint bone and then bringing back into turnout and work as he was so difficult on box rest at his normal yard that he jumped out his stable first morning of box rest even with a huge soft cast on his hind leg, he normally lives out so being on box rest was a real challenge for him.

He does have a grid up on his stable at the rehab yard to prevent him from jumping out but as the conditions are set up with the box rest horse in mind he settled in really quickly. He is on a block with other box rest horses and they get get lots of attention during the day, with people coming to skip them out every few hours and give them more hay (they are on adlib hay) or groom or just say hallo to them. They overlook the school so can watch things going on in there too. The stables have little mesh windows and you can have them open or closed. My pony had his window open so he could touch noses with the pony next door through the mesh window which meant when they were on box rest they still could have interaction with other horses which I think is really nice. When they are shut they have a plastic shutter so if you don't want your horse to touch another then that is not a problem either. They also have the flexibility to move horses around should two horses stabled next to each appear to not like each other very much. They have been able to do the walking as well after his 10 weeks on box rest as they have a big horse walker and he has been introduced to turnout which is a big a thing as he had to have both the walking and turnout built up very slowly and then I started riding him and he is going to be ready to go home at the end of February back to 24/7 turnout.

TBH honest in hindsight there was no way I could have coped with him on box rest DIY with the hours I work and I would not have had enough annual leave for all the vet and massage therapy he needed.
 
My lad is on his 11th week of box rest with probably 5 more weeks to go I got some Take Control same as Placid its magnesium based and I think its worked as he's so chilled I would think he prefers to be in than out lol. Wishing yours a speedy recovery x
 
My (then) 5yo gelding fractured his pedal bone last November and was prescribed the dreaded 4 months box rest. The first couple of weeks were ok, but then he started to climb up the walls and kick around the stable and the situation became unmanageable. He was getting more stressed each day, and I was despairing.

Following recommendations by a friend and my vet, I decided to move him to a rehab yard in Langley near Slough to prevent him from injuring himself further and to give him the best chance of recovery (and to reduce my own stress levels!!).

The place is called Priory Farm Stables and I can’t recommend them highly enough! They look after him impeccably. His stable is always immaculate, he gets brushed daily, his rugs are changed around and he always has a hay-net in front of him. He gets more attention and TLC than I could ever give him myself in a normal day! I just visit once or twice a week.

His initial period of box rest is up in 4 weeks time, when the vet will come back for more x-rays. With any luck the break will show mended and we can commence controlled exercise on the walker. I will keep him there for this as well and only bring him back once he’s ready to be ridden out at walk and be turned out in the field again.

Have a look at their website: http://www.horserehab.co.uk/

The reason he was not happy in his normal yard was that he was left behind on his own every day with all other horses going out in the field. At Priory Farm Stables he always has other horses on box rest stabled around him.

Good luck and be patient!
 
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My mare was a total nut job on box rest, particularly when others went out. I found her much more settled in a box where she couldn't see the outside world. Maybe there is an indoor stable you could try? Or rehab livery is often partly covered by insurance.
 
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