Photos of my horse's feet - comments?

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We will stick with the left fore but both look long at the toe. The HPA is fairly broken back in side view and x-ray. In the 6th pic it looks a bit lateral high. In the second pic it looks like something has burst out at the coronary band, interestingly there is a void visible in the x-ray at the distal border in line with this separation. I woldnt be to concerned with the palmer angle and thinning of the soles, 1 to 2 degrees is flattish but not counter rotated and isnt why he is lame. both the palmer angle and sole depth would be where his toe has run forward.
 
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Has he got sidebone AG, or are those lumps on each side on the back view normal?
 
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there is some separation above the coronary band on the lateral side of the left fore. It's not where I expected anything to come out of the coronary band - thought it would come between the hoof and the coronary band not between the coronary band and the skin. Nothing seems to be coming out of it.

Vet thinks he is lame due to deep bruising. It came on acutely one day, got progessively worse until he was almost unable to walk last Monday/Tuesday and had swelling spreading up his leg to his knee - since then it has gradually improved.
 
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there is some separation above the coronary band on the lateral side of the left fore. It's not where I expected anything to come out of the coronary band - thought it would come between the hoof and the coronary band not between the coronary band and the skin. Nothing seems to be coming out of it.

Vet thinks he is lame due to deep bruising. It came on acutely one day, got progessively worse until he was almost unable to walk last Monday/Tuesday and had swelling spreading up his leg to his knee - since then it has gradually improved.
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That looks like a standard place for an abscess to exit on your photo.


It would be quite unusual for bruising without an abscess to swell the whole leg to the knee.

The whole incident as you describe it is exactly right for an abscess.
 
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Nothing can come out of it because it can't drain upwards.

My advice would be to squirt 3% hydrogen peroxide into the hole daily until it has grown down the foot some distance.
 
The hole by the coronet in the second photo does look like an abscess exit hole to me. They normally pop just under the hairline.

It came on acutely one day, got progessively worse until he was almost unable to walk last Monday/Tuesday and had swelling spreading up his leg to his knee - since then it has gradually improved.
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This also sounds like an abscess, although I would have hoped that full soundness would return as soon as it popped. There might still be some gunk in there

ETA. CPT's suggestion is a good way of cleaning it out.
 
the hole on the coronary band only appeared at the weekend, several days after he started to improve. I would have thought we'd be able to see an abscess on the xray? We are 3wks on now and he still has a bounding pulse, heat in the foot and lameness.
 
A Guilding said:
We will stick with the left fore but both look long at the toe. The HPA is fairly broken back in side view and x-ray. In the 6th pic it looks a bit lateral high. In the second pic it looks like something has burst out at the coronary band, interestingly there is a void visible in the x-ray at the distal border in line with this separation. I woldnt be to concerned with the palmer angle and thinning of the soles, 1 to 2 degrees is flattish but not counter rotated and isnt why he is lame. both the palmer angle and sole depth would be where his toe has run forward.
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How would you move forwards from here? Assuming the majority of his lameness is due to some kind of abscess/bruising. Not sure if you can see on the photo but the separation at the coronary band is directly over a rather high nail hole and the lameness originally came on 2days after shoeing. Coincidence or related to the shoeing?

Anyway, assuming we sort this acute lameness we come back to the fact that he has a low grade bilateral lameness and broken back HPA. Vet was talking about injecting his coffin joints and shoeing him with NB or something similar to bring back his breakover point and using pads to protect his thin soles.
 
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the hole on the coronary band only appeared at the weekend, several days after he started to improve. I would have thought we'd be able to see an abscess on the xray? We are 3wks on now and he still has a bounding pulse, heat in the foot and lameness.
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Abscesses track to different areas and make more room for themselves, lessening the lameness. They are not dense material like bone and only dense material reliably shows on xray.

If the abscess was a result of deep bruising it would not be as surprising that he is still lame, especially as the infection is not being flushed out.

It is possible that it has sealed inside again and will need to break out again.
 
i've not much experience with abscesses until this year. my other horse got one in Jan - he was moderately lame for afew days, then sound for a few weeks then absolutely hopping lame - poulticed overnight and some gunk came out of his sole. week later it then burst out of his coronary band. move on a couple more weeks and he finally came sound and it's now growing down his hoof wall nicely.

this one is being very frustrating. my gut feeling from the start has been abscess but after 2wks of tubbing in epsom salts and poulticing with everything from Animalintex to iodine/sugar, spraying with blue oxytet spray and a course of oral abs plus a lot of bute he is still lame and nothing has come out anywhere. i think that separation is marginally bigger today than it has been last few days and it's right above my suspicious nail hole and right where he's been sensitive to pressure for the last few weeks so gut feeling is still abscess!
 
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How would you move forwards from here? Assuming the majority of his lameness is due to some kind of abscess/bruising. Not sure if you can see on the photo but the separation at the coronary band is directly over a rather high nail hole and the lameness originally came on 2days after shoeing. Coincidence or related to the shoeing
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CLASSIC nail bind timing!!
 
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nd a course of oral abs plus a lot of bute!
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There's your problem.

Antibiotics are contraindicated for a non-draining abscess for exactly that reason - they can cause them to 'go to ground' and make them very difficult to resolve.


Bute can also stop the inflammation that is needed for them to eat their way out.

Neither your farrier nor your vet come out of this exactly covered in glory :(
 
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Vet wanted him on bute when he was hopping lame and no sign of an abscess plus tracking up leg. Initially left me abs saying not to use them until it burst as really suspected it would do so in next 24hrs. Spoke to him 2d later and said no sign of abscess bursting so he said use abs and cont with bute. Weaned off bute and stopped on Sunday. Went in for xrays yesterday and told to restart bute.
 
i think that's why vet went for abs as his leg was swollen and hot up to his knee. he had 5 days of doxycycline which finished on Monday.
 
I understand that your horse has other issues, but it does sound like the abscess is still causing a problem.

RE the photo I linked to - the reason the hoof wall was taken off was to open it to the air because the bacteria are anaerobic. I'm not suggesting that this is the right thing for your horse but it did bring my mare sound because the pressure from the abscess was gone.
 
yes - i think he has some chronic foot balance issues but this acute lameness for last 3wks I am still convinced is down to an abscess. Trust my horse to get a super frustrating one.
 
The bilateral lameness and foot balance on your horse would be fairly easy to address, not all horses respond if some of the patholgy has got a hold. 600 quid is ridiculas!!!! would of been cheaper to get me to come up and look and im 100 miles away :). are you at liphook?
 
£600 is my insurance excess (£350) which has only just been exceeded plus the cost of dressage camp that I'm missing next weekend (£250).
 
There's a dramatic angle change just waiting to happen on that LF... imo pursuing that would have better results than injecting the coffin joint. The hooves themselves though - I don't actually think they're that bad. The hoof capsule's scooted forward (long toe, under run heel) which as AG says is probably the cause of the flat p3 angle - along with the weedy frog at the back of the foot. Adequate sole depth will come with a well connected hoof capsule. The digital cushions look pretty good though, the frog will beef up quickly, and I expect you could see some good improvements fairly soon.

Fingers crossed the abscess resolves quickly.
 
I see the angle change that needs to happen on the left fore. The right fore doesn't look too bad though and yet he was lame on this leg when the left fore foot was blocked. I think we'll have to block his coffin joint and see if that improves him before going down the route of just medicating them.
 
No helpful comment other than I love these types of threads, so interesting as my previous horse ended up with Navicular due to a crap farrier (long story, long time ago and a hell of a lot learnt in a short time).

It take's me ages to read them as I have to scroll back to the pictures to see what the person who has replied means. Then I go off onto other threads when someone adds a link.

I'm very greatful for my brilliant Farrier :) Not the first one - he was sacked :mad: looking back I wish I'd reported him.....
 
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