tendon injusry question?

[rforsyth1984]

just wondering what peoples opinions are for the treatment of a minor tendon injury?
When my horse did one, vet was called immediately, horse cold hosed/ice packed 4 times a day, bandaged on both front legs and kept on box rest for a month (with bute from vet), before spending months getting him fit again.
Someone on the yard im on has a horse that looks like it had a minor tendon injury (leg was hot and swollen from the knee to the fetlock, nodding lame), and a golf ball sized splint on the other foreleg.
They didnt get the vet (horse not insured), no bandaging, sometimes cold hosed (at most once per day) and horse was turned out after a month of partial box rest (i.e was walked out round the yard and lunged whilst on box rest). Three weeks after being off 'box rest' the horse is competing again, for example last week they did dressage on sunday, SJ on wed and fri night, hunter trials on sunday, and was jumped most nights in between.
Have spent all week gritting my teeth and feeling terrified for the poor horse, who admittedly does not seem to be lame yet..... just wondered what others would think? Am I bit old fasioned about injuries, in particular tendons? Perhpas I was a bit over-carefull with my horse, but Id rather do too little than too much and risk him being lame permenently?

 

[vicijp]

Any tendon injury needs 6-12 months total rest, even a bruise.
If they didnt have a vet to it then there is no way of telling if the tendon is actually damaged or not, unless theya re v. exp[erienced (but then if they were it would have had more time).

 

[Sarah_Jane]

No you are not old fashioned. I can't understand that attitude even if you can't afford the latest treatment you can get the injury properly diagnoised and give proper cold treatment and rest. It may have been a tendon but if it was the chances of it going again must be high.

 

[jomiln]

I agree with the above - time is needed. We are very lucky because we can spa them which takes the inital heat and swelling down fast. We then box rest and with discussion with vet start slowly introducing controlled walking whilst still using spa.
Only after a satisfactory scan would horse start doing more work.

 

[christine48]

Without scanning the leg you cannot assess the damage. My horse had a relatively minor tendon injury. He wasn't lame there was minimal swelling and tenderness. If we hadn't scanned the leg we may have not given it adequate time to heal and he may have broken down completelely. You did the right thing, the other horse may not have had a tendon injury at all.

 

[puddicat]

Well the evidence is that tendons get better at a rate and by an amount that is not affected much by all the nonsense things that people do to them. Cold hose for a bit then do very light exercise for several months, prefereably chuck it in a field. I guess if you are particularly gullible or stupid then you can pay some quack for for spa therapy but don't imagine it will make any difference to the overall outcome.

 

[rforsyth1984]

the point that concerned me the most was that 4 competitions (3 of them jumping) in one week is rather a lot for any horse, never mind one thats had time off and is 3 weeks out of being lame with what looked suspiciously like a tendon injury.
Am relieved to know Im not over-reacting in thinking this may have not been appropriate!
Another point of interest - they didnt put it out in the field to recover, they didnt want it to run around and go lame again when they had already missed so many competitions. The mind boggles?!

 

[puddicat]

No I think you're right, it's not a particularly sensible way for them to proceed, and they were lucky. The problem is not knowing for definite what was wrong with the horse in the first place. From their perspective, if they don't know much I suppose the if the horse went sound it must be OK again.

 

[henryhorn]

It doesn't follow the conventional treatment but without scanning you can't be sure it was a tendon injury to begin with.
When Jonty damaged hers, we were unaware for a week what the problem was, just her leg was a little bit sore and she was a tiny bit lame. Once we realised she had aqua therapy, rest for as long as she would tolerate then almost a year off.
It was impossible to keep her stabled, she threw herself at the walls and has been known to climb her door to escape, so we penned her instead in a flat field then turned her out in a paddock with an ancient shetland.
She appears sound now but I wouldn't ever subject her to that horses' workload again.
A retired horse who came here as a livery after being written off as an endurance horse had the worst tendon injury to his back leg I've ever seen, hugely swollen and lumpy.. After a year or so the swelling went right down, now after a few more years he ios 100% sound.. the treatment consisted of turning him out on uneven hilly fields with no rest at all..
The latest prognosis for sports injuries to humans isn't rest but use and excercise them if you can, so perhaps rest isn't the only thing that works.
The people sound a bit silly to me, and they risk their horse breaking down completely with that regime.. Even a sound horse won't last long at that workload..

 

[kerilli]

no, you were right. being as careful as possible about tendons is always the right way. those people are being reckless... or clueless, i'd say.

 

[SillyMare]

Sounds silly.

Tendon injuries aren't that expensive to scan in the grand scale of things (compared to say, a colic op or an MRI).

Can understand them wanting to be careful with money if the horse isn't insured but this seems a bit daft.