Sidebone

[Dancing_Diva]

Can anyone give me any advise / stories on experiences of sidebone please?

My 8yr old has been digonesed today with quiet bad sidebone on her front left and developing sidebone on the right as well. She's lame on both fronts on a circle at the moment, and was not 'right' under saddle hence vet visit last week which led us to X-rays & nerve blocks today!

We have a plan on treatment but just wanted to see what others experiences are and could your horses still manage normal work? Or did you find they couldn't manage as much as before?

Thanks

 

[Moodymare88]

Hi there, my 15 year old mare was diagnosed with sidebone in her right fore in 2013. It is very rare for them to be lame with it, my mares was reactive sidebone so still forming but she also had a fracture.

She had it medicated with steroids and did controlled exercise, but touchwood she hasn't had any issues with it since. She does have other problems as well, so doesn't do what she used to, but we do have the occasional jump, hack, school and a blast. It just depends on the ground as well to be honest. She is shod slightly differently and done every 5 weeks to keep her toes short.

She did struggle with the hard ground, wasn't lame, just shuffling, so she as shod with plastic pad inserts as well and this really helped.

Touchwood she hasn't been lame in the front for well over a year 1/2 now

I hope that helps.

 

[meesha]

My mare was diagnosed over ten years ago, tried everything, pads and sidebone shoes didn't help, cortaflex didn't help,barefoot helped marginally but her sidebone is the size of a golf ball and she is permanently lame, has been since diagnosis. Extremely hot weather or lack of movement makes her worse. She is happy enough pottering about field and yard and has the job of companion.

Not what you wanted to hear but remember it is unusual for them to be lame permanently with it and in my case as she was going nowhere it prompted me to buy land, get another horse etc.

Fingers crossed yours is straightforward x

 

[JenHunt]

Our Tom was diagnosed at 6, with sidebone in both fronts and spavin in both hocks.... He was treated with rest, bute to keep him comfortable and remedial farriery. He had 4 or 5 years of taking it a day at a time, being careful about the ground he was going on, and seeing how he felt when he came out of the stable. The bute was progressively dropped until he was only getting it on days when he wasn't happy. He had egg bar shoes with pads for a while, then heart bars, and then back to 'normal' shoes. He's still shod with two toe clips at the front though. The farrier won't put road studs in as he feels Tom is better off being able to slide his feet if necessary rather than the foot getting 'stuck' and jarring the joints...

With time he returned to hunting, eventing (up to pre-novice), and show jumping up to 1m15. He still hates dressage and whilst he'd be excellent at it, he just sees it as an excuse to show us up, and mess about, but that has nothing to do with his sidebone! We just had to pick and choose what we did based on the going - any deep ground, wet sucky mud, or heavy artificial surfaces make him unhappy, probably because it pulls at everything, and equally, jumping on very hard ground makes him unhappy too.

He'll be 21 in April, and he's feeling as good as he's ever felt, in part through being kept fit and active, but also we've finally found a joint supplement that works for us (bespoke from Hack Up, can't rate highly enough!).

the key is time, patience, and listening to him as you go along, as well as a good farrier who'll work with your vet.

 

[Dancing_Diva]

Thank you all for your stories and replies.

We are going down the shoeing route, I'm not sure what shoes we're going for as my vet is going to speak to my farrier and sort that out between them, I've just booked the date of shoeing and informed my farrier that my vet will be calling him.

If my girl can never jump or do too much then so be it, I'm happy doing a little bit of dressage and hacking out if that's all she can manage. If it comes to her having to be retired to the field then that's what will happen as I rent a plot of land so she doesn't cost me much in livery or keep.

 

[Boulty]

Heya. My (then) 9 yr old Welsh D was diagnosed in the summer of 2013 following a period of lameness and generally feeling pottery and not quite right. X-rays showed sidebone in both fronts. Remedial shoeing with seated out shoes was started and when he didn't show much improvement MRIs were done which didn't show what they considered to be significant soft tissue damage. (in fact the vet who interpreted the imaged queried whether the sidebone was the primary cause of lameness but it was literally the only thing the vets could find amiss) I changed farrier (more to do with never being able to get hold of one I was using at time and needing shoes back on asap post MRI as for some dumb reason I'd expected that the onsite farrier at the vet hospital might erm put them back on before they shipped him off home) and he did have about 3 months of soundness before going lame again at the start of last year. My vets suspected it was sidebone related as couldn't find any other reason for it and farrier couldn't find any evidence of any abscess or anything and said it was likely to keep happening and that I'd just need to bute him when it did.

This horse had never been good to shoe (hated nails being hammered in) but he seemed at his worst when he was lame (despite this vet and farrier were adamant that it was unrelated) and on that particular shoeing managed to cut the inside of his own leg and sent multiple shoeing flying through the air when he reared when they were only half nailed-on. He'd previously caught the farrier on the arm, kicked a different farrier and nearly broken my foot. It was getting to the stage where I felt he was going to need sedating for everyones safety (rather problematic given that he had to be boxed over to the farrier and only full IV sedation appears to work on him for other procedures)

I'd previously had a horse on long term bute and it wasn't a road I wanted to go down again with a young horse if I didn't have to and was also rather reluctant to either keep risking life and limb to get shoes on or sedate him. I also wasn't happy with how the shape of his feet was changing.

Bearing all of this in mind I decided I wanted to try taking him barefoot. It was an option I'd looked at when he was first diagnosed but I'd wanted to give remedial shoeing a chance and until he went lame again i thought it was working well enough to want to continue. He had been extremely sore when he'd had his shoes off for MRI so I knew that realistically I didn't have the set up to keep him comfortable initially. I also didn't really know what I was doing enough to feel confident going down that road without support. So he went down to Rockley Farm to benefit from their track system and Nic's knowledge and experience and was there for just under 13 weeks. (Think he'd have been quite happy if I'd not come back for him as he loved it there)

His angle of growth started to change by an insane amount whilst he was there (I wish I'd measured it so I could tell you how many degrees it altered by) and he went from being unsure on even a good arena surface to being happy to walk on concrete and landing correctly.

We've had a fair few stumbling blocks since he came back as he seems to be quite grass sensitive but we're slowly moving in the right direction by continuing to follow Nic's advice, addressing his diet and giving him as much movement on a variety of surfaces as I can manage.

Initially this involved lots and lots of walking him out on the roads in hand as well as both ground work and ridden work in walk and trot in the arena and then gradually started ridden work on roads and introduced canter on good surfaces.

Currently he's schooling well at walk trot and canter and hacking out happily on roads, grass and mud (still not a fan of stones right now). We're planning on doing some Prelim dressage this weekend (did an intro one a few months ago), have done a few indoor le trec events and I'm hoping if all goes well to start jumping him again later this year and to move up a level with the dressage.

He's now nearly grown out all of his shod hoof and his feet are totally unrecognisable compared to how they were. The hope is that as he continues to do more and more work then the structures at the back of his foot should keep on getting stronger and better developed and I'm praying that this will allow him to compensate for the shock absorption that he's lost due to ossification.

A bit of a random one I know as I'm not sure if part of his problem wasn't his sole sensitivity (probably at least in part due to his diet not being as good as it could be) showing itself even in shoes

 

[JenHunt]

Boulty, that's really interesting! Have his feet got flatter or more upright?

I only ask because Tom's feet are very upright, to the point that one of them is borderline being club-foot, with a very concave sole. We tried him without shoes for a short spell (literally a couple of weeks) but he wouldn't leave his stable because he was so sore. This is a horse who hates being in for more than a few hours, he's too active and stressy (nosey!) to cope with being in for long! The vet put his soreness down to the extra spread his feet had with no shoes on putting more pressure on the ossified structures in his feet.

 

[Boulty]

Glad there was something vaguely useful in amongst the essay.

His feet started out quite flat with very thin soles (as in they would flex if you put pressure on them in certain places, mostly near the toe) and a loooong toe.

As his new foot has grown in at a totally different angle his toe has shortened by somewhere in the region of an inch, his soles don't flex any more and he's slowly staring to get some concavity to his feet. Not sure if it's an illusion caused by the shortening of his toe but I think his feet are slightly wider now as well. They aren't symmetrical (I assume because they're compensating for the sidebone?) but they seem to be serving him ok.

We're about 9 months in and maybe not quite where we should be progress-wise as we don't always cover mega amounts of mileage as I have to fit hacking around working full time but at least our slow progress is in the right direction

 

[Princess Rosie]

We had a livery who came on shod and had sidebone, we took him to barefoot and first few weeks we avoided all Stoney ground as tender on all fours, within about 6 weeks he was showing a remarkable difference and he's now 5 months and the difference is incredible in him (he'd been shod for 13 years) you have to be committed to take to barefoot, we used keratex and he has cavallos for hacking out (but can manage now without them).

It doesn't suit every horse and our farrier was convinced we'd been calling him to put shoes back on and is very pleased with his progress and quality of his hooves (he has four feet which are very different shapes including one very boxy foot).

I hope you can find a solution.

 

[Dancing_Diva]

My mares been barefoot her whole 8yrs and has perfect feet, so barefoot at the moment isn't an opinion. Although I'd rather her be able to stay barefoot as I don't like shoes myself.

We'll just have to see what works for her really I guess.