It's About The Horse

Gillies_mom · Posted: Thu Feb 09, 2012 4:01 pm Post subject:

Clarissa
It looks like Sonny still has severe laminitis gong by the picture you posted. Compare his stance in the above to that of the horse in Figure 1 of this Chris Pollitt paper:
http://www.laminitisresearch.org/downloads/chrispollitt_(2004)EquineLaminitis.pdf
I would also be doing as Carol is urging, and implement Dr Kellon's emergency diet, it's detailed in the link below:
http://www.horsegroomingsupplies....ellons-emergency-diet-214755.html
Good luck
Kate

Chablis · Posted: Thu Feb 09, 2012 11:49 pm Post subject:

Good luck Clarissa.
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becdubie · Posted: Fri Feb 10, 2012 4:09 pm Post subject:

Yes, good luck to you and Sonny. Clarissa my heart goes out to you.
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Clarissa · Posted: Wed Feb 15, 2012 4:53 am Post subject:

Sonny is very lame today. As each day passes he gets more lame. He is walking on the toe of the LF & can't find a really comfy place to land on the RF.

I can't work out whether it's abscesses in both front feet or if it's the shoeing itself that has caused it. His feet aren't as hot as they usually are when he has an abscess.

In my mind I am seeing pictures of the tip of P3 sitting a lot closer to the sole than prior to shoeing. That is mainly because it seemed to me the farrier shod predominantly to the external shape after shaping the hoof rather than the internal shape despite what he was saying to the contrary.

I was really concerned with the amount of thickness of the toes he rasped off before doing the sole & applying the shoes. I know that is how it has to be done for hot shoeing. He didn't rasp away much sole thickness that I could tell because in the photos it's plain to see untrimmed sole. I didn't actually see him rasp the soles but I did see him dig out the white lines in several places then even off the surfaces. So that in itself may have removed a few ml of sole thickness immediately under the shoe. There's only 9ml on the one hoof & 12 on the other.

All that could have changed the angles causing some small rotation of P3. This is my deep concern. I realize that now wearing an extra rolled toe shoe may make him a bit sore for a while until his feet & legs get used to them but this is different soreness to what I might expect that to be like.

Also he is on 4 bute daily. I did try to cut it down after shoeing but he was so sore he couldn't stand. The last 2 nights he has torn skin off his elbows, obviously having trouble rising. Or spending much more time laying down than even he was last week. He rarely lays down during the day while in the 1/4ac play pen. I wasn't able to find where he laid down in the driveway paddock last night to see if he was laying some place soft or not. All the ground should be soft now with the rain we've had & the grass is all fresh. Perhaps he struggled & ended up on the driveway itself.

I have decided to pull the feed pen apart which is made out of several long steel bar gates strapped together to construct a pen for him that I can fill with bedding hay if those elbow sores get worse. He will hate being locked in such a confined space particularly at night. He has never had bedding before & only been penned at clinics where he had horses all around him. Once Jude & Cassie go off to feed at night he is very likely to burst out causing who knows what damage to himself.

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JackPNH · Posted: Wed Feb 15, 2012 7:18 am Post subject:

Clarissa,

Can you post some pics of the shoeing please.

Steve
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PasoBaby_CarolU · Site Admin Joined: 31 Jan 2009 Posts: 9038

Clarissa, it is your autumn there almost isn't it?

What I learned from my vet with Zar is that horse's produce more hormones in the fall, and if you have a metabolically compromised horse, this is when you'll see them go lame because their hormone levels are greatly elevated. You might talk to your vet about Sonny. Either his insulin is up or his ACTH is up, or both. If he is getting worse, he may need medication to get those levels under control. But you are right, he has to be confined in soft, SOFT bedding.

X-rays will tell you if you are dealing with laminitis or abscesses or both. They will also give you an idea of severity. I'd get my vet there ASAP, x-ray, and get him on medications.
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Clarissa · Posted: Thu Feb 16, 2012 11:24 am Post subject:

Clarissa · Posted: Sun Feb 19, 2012 2:46 am Post subject:

It's 2.5 days since I gave Sonny any bute & he is a little sore on that last foot but I think all is ok now.

Because we had a lot of rain yesterday I felt the ground would be soft enough for Sonny to sleep on without putting him in his sleeping pen. So I put all the horses together in a newly fenced off part of well grown couch beside the driveway last night but Cassie found a way out...typical ! ...... aaannndddd well..... early this morning they got into the orchard with all it's carpet grass (paspalum).

Be interesting to see how Sonny is in a day or so after that. I could tell they hadn't been there long because most of the dew on the grass hadn't been trampled yet. Just a few tracks directly to where I found them grazing.

When I traced their tracks back through the dewy grass, I could see where they went through the old fence & whose small footprints went through first (Cassies!)

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Clarissa · Posted: Tue Mar 13, 2012 3:17 am Post subject:

Yes the sole is bulging downwards on this foot!

I first txt’d the farrier on Friday afternoon early that I just noticed Sonny’s sole was bulging down fast, then with no reply I resent the txt on Monday morning. Still no reply so sent another Monday evening to which I got “who are you?” !!

I asked if he had a number I could call him on to which he said “no”. I txt the brief story & after some too’ing & fro’ing his txt me that he would ring Tuesday AM or visit before 2pm. Well it’s 1pm Tuesday now & no call & no visit. There just doesn’t seem to be any urgency on his part.

It’s 4wks anyway since Sonny was shod & I did tell the farrier I wanted him to come back at the 4wk mark. He either isn’t interested or he can’t be bothered. This is an example of one of the things I was talking about when I said there weren’t any worthwhile farriers in this area.

I was always hesitant to apply shoes to such weak soles without also giving total sole support. Now what do I do??

I'm hoping the farrier will come back today or tomorrow & I guess he will make a bar shoe at least for this hoof if not both fronts.

However I have never been convinced that frog support will stop the slow downward subsidence of the front half of the sole & hence P3. It is my understanding that the frog does not fully support P3, but rather it only partially sits under the rear of that bone. So how can frog support hold up the front of P3, stopping it from rotating & eventually piecing the sole?

From my understanding of mechanical actions, inflexible support under the rear end of something would cause the front portion of that something to rotate downwards when pressure from above is applied.

During my searches of the many websites or farriers who deal with this sort of problem, I haven’t seen photographic evidence that bar shoes have solved the subduction of the tip of P3.

I would like to see full sole support by maybe filling the cavity with some sort of strong foam or rubbery substance that will provide full support yet allow pressure relief at every step.

Does anyone know of such a hoof treatment?
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Gillies_mom · Posted: Tue Mar 13, 2012 9:16 am Post subject:

Hoof Armor

http://www.hoofarmor.net/foundertreatment.html

Clarissa · Posted: Thu Mar 15, 2012 12:12 pm Post subject:

Clarissa · Posted: Thu Mar 15, 2012 1:00 pm Post subject:

Well I found the Hoof Amour online & stuff called Equilox Hoof Support Impression Material. But could only find the Hoof Amour Equilox here in Australia. It's more for glueing shoes on rather than sole support. So far I haven't found the Impression Material yet but it must be here somewhere because the videos were Aussie.

While watching those videos for the impression material I noticed a great precast aluminium bar plate being used for foundered horses. That would suit me.
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Clarissa · Posted: Fri Mar 16, 2012 5:00 am Post subject:

What a truely terrible smelly mess !

I got a txt from the farrier this morning asking if today was good to do Sonny to which I said yes. When he arrived I had Sonny all ready with feet hosed clean due to amount of mud around the place & standing on the piece of carpet I dragged out again from under the house to provide soft footing for him.

Farrier (JW) took one look at the RF & agreed the sole did look rather bulged out. He tested around the tip of P3 & said emphatically “yes he’s definitely rotated, did you get new xrays?” “No” I said. He said he couldn’t make a bar shoe without knowing the degree of rotation so he could set the frog support bar.

Now you’d think he could have rung me when I first asked him to look at Sonny last week.

Instead he just ignored me until it suited him, then demanded xrays! I told him I only had $200 left in kitty which doesn’t even cover the xrays since they are $300+. He said he wouldn’t reshoe Sonny without xrays.

I asked JW to pull the shoes to which he said “he’ll collapse now you know”. Meaning his soles will collapse & P3 will rotate more. I’ll take that chance I think. I asked him how & why that would happen & he couldn’t answer. I went on to say that there is no evidence that shoes of any kind solves this problem. But they do sometimes stop it from getting worse. Sonny needs sole support not frog support. This ground is very soft. Surely that is support enough. Shoes just stop the hoof from flexing whether that is a good or bad thing.

Suspending the soles off the ground 4wks ago by means of rim shoes just gave them another 1.5cm to drop basically.

I’m well over shoes! hmph

Apart from anything else, just look at the bloody mess of manky rot & gunge that had been developing under them. angry6

(You'll have to wait until I am free tonight when I've got time to upload the photos)

I have been managing this problem with Sonny for over 2yrs now. Yes there’ve been good & bad times. But nothing to compare with this horrifying situation. While I’ve been doing his feet there’s been no rotation but sometimes there’s been some rot.

Now after just 4wks in shoes his soles have dropped & his feet are full of rotten black stinky gunk. & lets not forget that I put shoes on Sonny in July last year for a few weeks when his feet were too sore to walk on. But the soles never dropped that time, nor did they get full of stinky rot more than they already had. angry4

I wonder if JW’s tools were contaminated from the previous horse.

So I’ll get the bloody xrays, but I won’t be getting this farrier back.

I’ll deal with it myself. When JW finished testing Sonny’s hoof, he just dropped it with no respect for the horse & the hoof fell to the floor which made Sonny wince. And when JW pulled the shoes he didn’t even nip the clinches off even though they were now protruding proud of the hoof. He just dragged them through the horn tearing it & making the holes bigger still.

After JW had left I trimmed away all the manky rotting smelly gunge & dribbled in some Keratex Hoof disinfectant that luckily I had recently purchased. It easily filtered right through the hoof structures coming out the coronet band at the abscess holes, nail holes, places where the hoof had been rasped too thinly previously & it flowed across between layers of the sole on one hoof. I’ve just now mail ordered 2 bottles of Thrushbuster from the race horse suppliers in Brisbane. Hopefully that will deal with this new form of smelly thrushy rot.

We’ve had gallons of rain here. duckie

We’ve had our full annual average rainfall in just February alone with March shaping up to be just as wet with a massive monsoon trough headed this way by Sunday night with cyclones embedded in it. The whole place is awash & muddy. Almost every day that it rains we have nearly an inch. There is no dry ground for the horses to stand on. I move them from paddock to paddock every 2 days.

The ground will have to be the support for the sole as it has been these last 2yrs. I will manage the rot until the worst of the wet season is over, then I will think about dealing with the sole issues again. Until then, the soft soil & mud will support his soles & stop them falling further. I’m sure I’ve caught it in time. Vigilance & a propensity for copious photos caused me to see it immediately it happened last Thursday evening. I txt’d JW Friday morning but it took him until today to get here.

The RF sole did get worse during this last week. But I think now that the shoes are gone it will release & relieve. The tendons can relax, particularly that one that runs down the front of the cannon & pastern. There might be another abscess in the sole/heel cushion now that the sole is bearing weight again but with this very soft muddy ground & thick soft grass I doubt there will be much concussion.

I’ve got a heap of photos to process & upload, but they will have to wait until later as I have other things to do right now.

Whilst trawling the internet for sole support preperations I went to the Equilox website to look at the Hoof Armour stuff. They had a video of an Aussie guy applying an aluminium bar plate using the support medium. The plate was a precast almost full sole plate with a D shaped part removed where tip of P3 would be. I saw something like that at the farriers suppliers down the highway some ditance from me here. I am headed down that way again in 3week so I might call in & have a look. That plate could either be glued or nailed on. It wouldn't work here until the dry season anyway.

Sonny is booked for xrays next Monday morning first thing.

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Spitfire · Member Joined: 02 May 2010 Posts: 129

Why mess around with texting? Why didn't you ring him and tell him "I think my horse has rotated, what can we do for him?" instead of complaining that he didn't text you back. It is NOT his responsibility to chase YOU up.

I think he showed professionalism when he stated he couldn't fit a bar shoe without X-rays. I wouldn't like anyone just cowboying on a set of bars without knowing the why, the how much, and the where to first. Again, all could have been fixed if you had just rung him. Surely he doesn't have a text-only mobile.

This is pretty serious. Your horse needs a vet RIGHT NOW.

Clarissa · Posted: Fri Mar 16, 2012 10:50 am Post subject:

I appreciate your concern Spitfire but if you'd read my previous 2 or 3 posts you'd know that I did ask farrier first off last Friday for a phone number to call him to discuss Sonny. He ignored me for several txts over several days then finally said he had no number for me to call him on.

When I first got onto him 5wks ago I asked for bar shoes. We txt'd back & forth & he never said he needed xrays to work from. I told him the last set of xrays I had were from November last year. When he did see the horse a week later he said Sonny wasn't bad enough for bar shoes even though he had arrived prepared to make & fit bar shoes of some sort. He even told me it would take at least 2hrs & cost $100 for each shoe. At that stage I was thinking the he would apply some sort of bar shoe to all 4 feet.

So if he was prepared to apply bar shoes before he had even seen the horse, why now does he need xrays?

Anyway it's all water under the bridge now. The damage has been done & I will have to fix it.

Sonny has his boots on tonight with the thick soft pads inside. Before booting him I cleaned under his feet & applied more Keratex. The Thrushbuster will take at least a week to get here I guess.
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