Rehabbing at home Navicular

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MissMay

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I am interested in rehabbing my potential navicular horse at home. I was wondering has anyone done this or had any luck/links?

I want to remove her shoes and let her adapt to being barefoot which will be a mission in itself. Following this what should I do after this?
Have read Rockley park blog hence wanting to go down this path despite ALOT of heel digging from those around me.

I would be interested in hearing from those who have done this successfully alone and at home
 
I am in the process of rehabbing my warmblood. He started off in remedial shoes, but they came off in the spring and he now wears pads & boots. The most important thing you need is a competent trimmer, who has preferably trimmed other horses with navicular. Ignore the doubters, it is worth it a million times over. I still get a lot of stick!
 
i spent all yesterday doing reading and research wjich is why I have reached this decision.

I am hesitant to do the box rest for both our sanity as she is quiet and chilled in the field I am thinking could she remain out there barefoot immediatly or is it remedial shoes and slowly adapt?

How soon do you hope to ride them? Some of my reading said ride very easily from the get to go to harden the soles but I'm hesitant to go down this route?

I assume my first and best purchase will be very good quality and well fitting hoof boots?

Im so new to all this any horse I know with navicular either went straight to remedial shoes or an old fashioned constant nerve block I would rather deal with it and try to reverse this damage
 
Whereabouts are you op? There's bound to be someone on here who will know of a good trimmer in your area. Remedial shoes will only delay the inevitable. Diet is major - starch free, and a good supplement. Pro-hoof or forage plus is ideal. Access to various surfaces is good as well. Return to work? Depends on so many variables, extent of damage etc. There's loads of stuff out there, this is good: http://thenaturallyhealthyhorse.com/dr-robert-bowker-navicular-disease/
 
I am in Ireland. So not sure if anyone would be much use with a trimmer but you never know!

Ye I would hope to completely avoid shoeing her all together once she gets x rayed and evaluate them with the farrier and vet to remove them.

At the moment she is only on grass with nothing else but must look into her diet alot more closely then this. Its a bit of a shock as we have had horses over 20 years on the farm with no problems treating everyone the same and there has been no problems that we never think about feed.
Currently in winter when she is fed she gets the same as the others- a scoop approx 1kg of standard coarse mix twice a day and all you can eat of our own home cut hay.

they usually get penned in an arena or cattle sheds from November- Feb/April in groups

We have lots of lanes of different surfaces and road, fields etc that I can use to walk her on but Im assuming I wont be doing this for a while?

Currently x-rays are booked for next Wed and I have left her in a completely flat, dry field with a buddy where she is on no medication to mooch around. I would rather keep her out than box rest her or should she be box rested?

Thanks for the link must read up on it, trying to learn as much as possible the last few days
 
A friend of mine did a barefoot rehab at home for injury to DDFT and navicular. Shoes came off and he was kept in a large pen type turn out area that had shelter. Enough for him to move around but not get up any real speed.

Our vet is pretty open minded, and i dont think he has ever recommended box rest for anything, so she worked with him and got a barefoot trimmer to advise.

From memory i think she started walking him out daily in hand on tarmac almost immediately. I dont think he was booted initially. but had front boots for the initial ridden work.

So yes ideally work with vet and a decent trimmer. My limited understanding is that the hoof needs to be stimulated to grow and start to correct itself, so controlled exercise (i.e. walking in hand on a hard flat surface) is much better than just turning out.
 
thank you still trying!

that is great if i can get her moving quite quick we have loads of terrain here that I can walk her on. Lots of hand walking until she is sound I guess is it?

I am planning on starting fairly immediatly once shoes come off in hand 5 mins a day for a week and build up slowly on different surfaces.

So would tarmac on the road be best to begin on as it is hard and relatively flat??
 
Obviously listen to your vet (and try and source a trimmer) but my friends horse was lame to trot up from the injury, but not hopping lame, so got out walking straight away.

I had an enforced barefoot transition with my horse and did a similar thing - basically he was a shoe puller, so i took his hinds off with a view to taking the fronts of, but he made the decision for me and 2 weeks after he'd had a set of fronts on he ripped them both off in the field taking pretty much all the hoof that a replacement set of shoes would need with it....and stood on the toe clip of the shoe with his barefoot hind and punctured his sole!! He was non weight bearing on the hind and extremely sore in front.

I took the decision to let his feet recover, and as soon as he was weight bearing on the punctured hind i got him out walking in hand on flat roads. His front feet started to recover very quickly. About 4 weeks after the shoes were ripped off i had a barefoot trimmer come out and assess us. We got a thumbs up to continue walking out, and received advice on diet / management. I think he had about 6 weeks off before i started riding again.
 
I rehabbed my navicular horse at home. She was diagnosed with hind limb PSLD, bilateral spavin and arthritis of the fetlock all at the same time! This was in October 2011. She had time off initially for the PSLD, and came into work in about March the following year with hoof boots for about 12 weeks. I now hack her out and do some low level dressage.
 
Forgot to add - the only remedial shoes mine had were the ones she was fitted with without my permission at the vet hospital before she came home. They were taken off after three weeks. Not the vet hospital fault, they didn't realise what I wanted to do with her (barefoot rehab) at the time so thought they were doing the right thing.
My program which I set up was long-reining as opposed to walking in hand as she is much saner on the long reins. I started off doing 10 minutes walking a day in hoof boots on the long-reins on the roads, 7 days a week, building each week by 10 minutes. By the end of six weeks we were up to an hour. I then did the same thing, but without the hoof boots for six weeks. I then rode in hoof boots for six weeks - similar program but started at about 20 mins not 10 mins and then finally rode without boots. I did all roadwork as we don't have many other surfaces to ride on apart from the school, but she now goes through stoney fords and on uneven ground quite happily.
 
This is great to hear as I dreaded not getting to ride her again!!

Current train of thought is (obviously depending on vet farrier trimmer etc!) Take shoes off once x rays have been carried out leave her out for few days to get going then slowly on tarmac for 5/10 mins a dat first week and assess go from there?

I guess Ill be looking at new barefoot diets so yes?
Re supplements did you go down this route?
Cornecrusine? Currently use every second day-continue?
 
Ideally you want the shoes to come off around when they are due to be re-shod.

As for diet / supplements, you can get quite involved with the whole barefoot thing. I prefer to keep things simple. Just plenty of fibre fibre fibre. In summer my horse has no bucket feed, in the winter he has a big bucket of low molasses chaff or readigrass, speedibeet and vegetable oil. Supplement wise he has pink powder and pro earth (ebay) magnesium. last winter he had about a 70 / 30 ratio of haylage / steamed hay, between 12 - 16 kilos per night depending on how much grass there was (he is a big horse and takes a lot of feed).

In terms of applying something directly onto feet - i've never found a need, road work is the key. But in terms of cleanliness, field paste is great for wet winters for thrush and i also use keratex nail hole disinfectant for any cracks, tiny stone holes.
 
Unfortunately she was shod about two days before hand so only shod about 2/3 weeks now hence why abcess was suspected.

I have never got our grass analysed as its a farm and the horses fields are just spread on the basis of dairy field readings.
So as a guesstimate for winter feed- beatpulp (molasses free), grass nuts? and maybe linseed or something?
Hay is in front of them as a round bale all winter.

I am hoping to keep her out in the arena with hardstanding again this winter untill very bad then into a large half bedded straw cow shed with buddies.
 
I have done this with my mare, went through the heart bars and gel but 1 year later started having some low level lameness issues again, X rays were unchanged (she was never MRI'd as came sound with heart bard within 6 weeks), vets couldn't decide what was going on so i took the decision to take her shoes off and turn her away over the winter sept - feb, she predominantly lived out. I must say that she has never shown any signs of being particularly footsore even when initially taken off! I started in feb walking her out for upto 30 mins building up to 1 hr for 6 weeks then started introducing trot work, i did not take her in the school at all until about July!
She is fed on a low sugar diet of balancer anf hifi mollases free with adlib hay.
She is not what i would call sound on all terrain, in fact i have never seen her move better!
My farrier has been excellent throughout and supported my decision fully, her landing is heel first and she feels great!

I just took it slow and was lucky that she has good feet
 
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