Rehab lameness

[sassyequine]

I have a 6 yr old warmblood dressage/SJ who has been lame since last July, initially Upper suspensory desmitis which blocked out to his TMT joints and front feet, he has had 4 sessions of shock waves and ongoing cartrophen plus rest and is about 90% sound from these, they were not candidates for surgery. However he then had to have surgery at newmarket at end of November on the meniscul cartilage in his left stifle, pretty succesfful operation with endoscopy tidy up. Going well until his hot headness got the better of him and he escaped from yard by jumping the 5 bar gate, down the drive and around several fields, as you can imagine I was not impressed! He was on box rest with walking in hand until end of Jan and then horse walker build up for 4 weeks, he has since been on walking work and started 10 mins a day trotting last week. I should add he is a typical young warmblood who having been broken late and then SJ straight away (before I had him) has now had 9 months out of education, he is a little wild to say the least and is prone to broncing without warning! Therfore at the moment we are restricted to the indoor and outdoor school as he is unsafe on the road and the bridle path is too muddy currently to risk his ligaments. He is now 8 - 9 10'ths sound and my vet and surgeon believe we should continue to bring him back to see how he progrsses, they were'nt expecting him to even go this sound ever again.
I would be interested to hear from any experience owners who have suffered the same thing and what sort of rehab schedule you followed and the end result?

 

[BethH]

Can only tell you about my rehab programme after my youngster had kissing spine surgery so obviously is not the same situation, but the best piece of advice I can give is to take it as slowly as you need to but be consistent. Decide how many day a week to work and initially how long, stick to walk and increase by a couple of minutes every day. I got a really good sound walk first ensuring he was using back legs/back end properly which gave a good swing through and really helped his stride on the front end, it took about 4 months to get a really good calm effective walk but it was worth the wait as has made the trot and canter far better balanced (it will probably take you far less time as Ryan can be a bit of a hot head). He had picked up loads of bad habits with the way he used himself as he was sore and in pain so we have had to re-educate his brain as well as he body. By taking time he has stayed sound being worked 5 days a week and we are now up to 1.5 hours on hacks and 45mins- 1 hr of (fairly basic) schooling although he gets breaks back in walk as we go along.

As you know your horse best trust your instinct when you think he has done enough and stop on a good note!

You probably know all that already but it has worked well for me!