Dusty’s Lameness Diagnosis

Dusty is not speaking to me right now so I had to use this older photo of her

Yesterday Dusty walked out lame again in the morning.  Lucky for her, our vet was scheduled for a visit to administer the remaining vaccinations. She came out of the catch pen sound and jogged ok.  That figures.  But standing on the crossties while getting the x-ray equipment set up, she developed a slight pulse in her right front. It seems walking in the paddock reduced her lameness and the pulse in her foot, but standing exacerbated it again. Hmm...  

Dusty has had laminitis in both front hooves and has foundered also.  I’m always apprehensive each Spring waiting to see if she’ll have a reoccurrence of either condition. Our vet took an x-ray of her hoof/foot and found some astounding results. Originally, her coffin bone rotation was 6 degrees for one foot and 9 degrees for the other.  Well, her x-rays showed that she is almost totally back to normal.  Apparently, our farrier is a genius/miracle worker.  Thank you Tyler!

I’ve read a lot about coffin bones and my understanding has been that once you have a rotation of the coffin bone it may not get worse but it's usually difficult to get much improvement afterward.  I’m not educated in many things concerning the hoof just the basics of anatomy.  So I may have interpreted things incorrectly.  I didn’t have much hope that her coffin bone would ever return to its original position.  Glad I was wrong.

The vet thought that, along with the potential for a slight flare-up of laminitis due to the spring grass coming up, perhaps since her toe was a little overgrown it could be contributing to her lameness.  Our farrier is due today to shoe her and a few of the others.  Just to be safe, she's back on a bit of bute for a few days, some isoxsuprine for a month, and a grazing muzzle (sorry Dusty!) for the rest of the year. So hopefully by the weekend her lameness will be a thing of the past.  She’s not very happy with us right now about the muzzle, but better safe than sorry.  So she can be as annoyed at me as she likes but as my mother used to say “it’s for your own good!”  (I always hated when she said that, by the way, even if she was right.)

Until next time

Quote for Today

Our perfect companions never have fewer than four feet.

The "Dusty" Diagnosis

This past Friday the vet came to reevaluate Dusty’s suspensory injuries and her laminitis/founder.  The x-rays to her front feet show that she has 6 and 9 degree rotations in both feet.  The ultrasound to her suspensory branches on both hinds show minimal improvement in the right hind and not much at all in the left, where the pictures showed she still had a decent sized hole in her suspensory branch.  Not great news, but we do have a protocol that we are going to follow.

We’ll continue to rest her in her stall on and off during the day. She is allowed out in her own small paddock with a grazing muzzle under supervision a few times a day; obviously no running will be allowed.  She will continue to have her laser boot treatments and will be getting shoes on her hinds, which she doesn’t have now.  The vet and farrier will confer as to what kind of shoes will be most beneficial to help her be more comfortable and give her the support she needs so she can continue healing.  Dusty is on isoxuprine right now and some bute also.  Very shortly we will also be starting her on a DSLD regimen that we used on Sweetie that helped her a lot.  Dusty doesn’t have DSLD, but we’re hoping the supplements will help to heal her ligaments and tissues.  It’s worth a shot and many horses have had good results with this particular treatment (you can find out more about it here.)

Our vet recommended PRP (platelet-rich plasma) treatment as a possibility for her suspensory injuries.  I’ve read up on it and I’m not at all sure it will work; one of the reasons I have my doubts is that the information available says this treatment should be done within 2 weeks to 30 days of the initial injury.  Well, it’s been a lot longer than that, so it might be too late to start.  But I suppose it’s an option.  It’s also very expensive for a “maybe.”  He also mentioned stem cell treatment, which is twice the price.  If I were absolutely sure either of these options would work I might use the butter and egg money and give it a try, but I’m under the impression it could be a shot in the dark.  If the supplements don’t do the trick I might have to really consider these options.  As always, these things are wait-and-see, and healing takes a very long time.

I would like to mention that when we took her out and put her on the longe for a walk for the vet Dusty immediately broke into a beautifully balanced canter as if to say:  “See I’m better, really!  Now can I please go out with the herd!”  This mare will do anything so she can go back to work.  I’ve got to admire her spirit.

Until next time

Quote for Today

Don't look at a horse as an animal; look as if the horse is a real person, because a horse can tell the difference.