Foundered Horse

This ole gal is a trooper, lemme tell ya.

Justin suspects both feet are laminitic but without a radiograph he is not certain about her left front.

Anyways, she is like 30 years old. She is retired. She's a pasture ornament. But her owner wants her as comfortable as possible while she lives out the rest of her life.

Justin does what he can for her, but at this stage, she will always be in some state of pain.

Right:

P.S. Don't feed your horses sweet feed. It can cause this to happen!

Left:

She can't stand up long enough to have shoes nailed onto her feet, so Justin knew he wouldn't be able to put wedge shoes or a pad on her.

Her owners were used to having her doped up to get her feet done because she was in so much pain.

Justin tried without the sedatives this time, and it went well, but he had to work fast.

Instead of nailing on shoes, he opted to use glue-ons. They require the horse to have its feet on the ground to let the glue set, as opposed to having her foot up for an extended period of time to have nails driven in.

Here, he has trimmed and rasped as much as he could. He set the shoe on backwards to raise her heel and put minimal pressure on the circumflex artery. The circumflex artery runs through the foot, and laminitis causes blood flow to slowly be cut off. This causes the laminae in the hoof to essentially die. As that happens, the condition worsens until the horse gets proper treatment or needs to be put down.

The finished product. Looks funny, but she was able to bear weight on it and walk a little easier. Her condition will never improve; it's too late for that. She can only be kept moderately comfortable.

#vettec #glueonshoes #therapeutic #laminitis #wedgeshoes