A chilled Filly

Thursday 27 March 2014

At last an update

Things have been a little busy around here recently. Largely because Filly has been on box rest and she tends to be high maintenance !

Here is the story:

For some time I have been aware that Filly has had trouble with the left canter lead. She's pretty good and relaxed on right canter lead, but left was obviously uncomfortable for her. My osteo and I had been working on this for a long time. To be honest when I bought her in September 2012 she was physically a bit of a mess, so we always knew that there would be some serious rehab going on.
To start we worked on the obvious.
As a foal she had staked herself in the front right shoulder. And she seemed to be lame on the front right leg. The scar tissue from this injury was pretty obvious and one of the tendons was very tight. So we have spent the last year or so doing "Filly Yoga". Basically this involved stretching all her limbs at various angles and getting her to relax deeply into the stretch. Clicker training worked a treat for this and after a while she found she liked the stretch. Especially the front legs up and forwards. Often when I pick out her feet she will ask for this stretch by putting her leg out in front of her and expecting me to pull on it. She'll then hold it with a lovely look on her face and maybe chew her chestnut a bit ! This does cause a bit of trouble with the farrier, but he knows her now and is patient.

After a lot of this she was definitely getting better, in fact we were worried we had over loosened the shoulder joint at one point and had to quickly build up the pectoral muscles to stabilise them again. We did this with trotting poles. I taught her to go over a set off poles at liberty with the command poles. She quickly caught on. If she missed one she didn't get a reward. I've seen her miss one out, realise her mistake, turn 180 degrees to do them all then come over for her treat. I really think horses are smarter than some would give the credit for.

Again there was an improvement, but not enough. We decided to get the vet involved. A few weeks ago the vet, osteo and I met at the yard. She was still lame on the right front so we decided to take her into the vets and have a proper nerve blocking investigation done. Trailer training followed as I waited for the appointment. To be fair she loads very very well, but the travelling is not so good. I make a point of loading her as soon as she gets off the trailer so that her last memory of it is loading and un-loading confidently. This pays dividends when we have to load to go home.

Leaving her at the vets for the day was emotionally hard. The results came in during the afternoon and I went to collect her and be briefed on what they had found. The first nerve block had done the trick pin-pointing the navicular area. That is a word to bring dread to any horse owners heart. But the vet had taken x-rays and reckoned the navicular bone was not too bad. What was bad was the fact that the heel on the hoof was too low. The farrier has been working on correcting this fault for the last year. The front left is now pretty good, but the front right had not responded so well.
The result of having the front right heel low was that it was stretching the deep flexor tendon to much, and probably placing stress on the navicular bursa. He reckoned this area was inflamed. To counter this the vet injected steroid into the area and asked for her to return for a check up in two weeks time.

So we returned to the vet on last Monday. And I left her there again. This time they checked for lameness again and found that she was almost perfect on a straight line, but not yet right on a circle. The front shoes were removed and x-rays of the navicular bone itself taken. These revealed that the front left navicular bone was perfectly ok, but the front right had what the vet called a "change" in it. The external surface is very good, but maybe the internal was more ossified than it should be. He said that it was not a great worry as he had seen much worse in perfectly fit horses, and thorough breds are particularly susceptible to this problem.

Back to the farm and the farrier arrived the next day to put the shoes back on. Fortunately the farrier and vet know each quite well and the farrier had been emailed the x-rays and also had a long chat on the phone with the vet. It's great to deal with professionals who care that much about the horses in their care.
Armed with these x-rays the farrier can now continue to fix her hoof conformation.

Filly is no longer on box rest. I put her out today. She cannot be worked for at least the next two months other than some very light in hand stuff. I'm actually not at all worried by this. There is so much to train that I have neglected that can be done at a walk or even standstill that it will still be a busy two months I'm sure. And at the end of it I will have filled in a few holes and I'm sure be rewarded with an even more dependable partner.

For interest here is a link to her x-rays. The first two are of the right hoof and the second two of the left. The difference in angle are obvious !

Fillys x-rays