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[RC] LSD Base????/Regaining it? - Ridecamp GuestPlease Reply to: Carol Mittie fisnw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx or ridecamp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx ========================================== Jeri, We have been there, Done that. Your situation with your mare sounds like a combo of a several different experiences we have had with horses over the years. Here are some things we have learned. 1. 4 months is not enough for a suspensory or any tendon injury to heal. We have adopted the archaic but wonderfully successful treatment of one full year pasture rest. It takes longer to heal, but the tendons heal with all the fibers alligned and the horse comes back just as strong in that leg, due to the constant movement. (It helps to have a brother-in-law with 40 acres of perfect pasture.) If you keep a horse in a stall, they SEEM to heal quicker, but the tendon fibers are encapsulated in scar tissue and that has to be all torn up as well as the rest of the tendon fibers healed when they come out of that stall. When you started riding your mare after 4 months, she was probabley still protecting that leg, which causes other injuries. 2. Any time a horse has an injury, especially a violent one, such as a loosing argument with a fence, or a bad fall, an equine chiropractor should be called. There could be several sublaxations making your horse move differently, especially after a struggle so fierce that she tore off a great deal of skin. Until she can move properly and freely, she is in danger of injuring that same tendon or another. 3. Back to the basics. She needs stretching exercises, such as you get in dressage work. Donna Snyder-Smith has some excellent descriptions in her book "The Complete Guide to Endurance Riding and Competition" of how to condition, in the ring and on the trail. Dr. Deb Bennett describes why you need too as well as some ideas in her "Principles of Conformation Analysis". If you can find a good dressage instuctor, (meaning someone who doesn't think dressage is the end all) you can often learn good exercises for lateral work that can be done on the ground. (I know you should be able to do lateral work and collection on the trail, but some of us have trouble chewing gum and walking. Not running into a tree or up here in the Northwest, blackberry vines takes all my concentration.) Dressage is the horse equivelent of weight lifting and will build stronger muscles along the back and the stomach. 4. The lack of muscle in the hind end worries me. A horse standing around doing nothing should get fat, not skinny. I have a mare who sounds a lot like yours in everything except a major injury to blame it all on. I heard Dr. Beth Valentine speak at the PNER convention last weekend about Polysacarides Storage Myopathy. If this could be the problem with your horse it might explain why she injured herself in the first place. I intend to change the diet of my mare and see it it helps. When I discussed it with my dressage guru she said she had several horses in her barn with the problem. Only one horse had major symtoms, but others all had minor things, like giving their riders a hard time, not extending in the rear enough, minor injuries one after the other. This is in a barn of 20 horses. Putting them all on the fat diet made a differance to all but a few. I think it is much more common than we think. Time will tell. Their are several web sites for Beth Valentine. She is now at Oregon State University at Corvallis. Well, I hope any of this helps. Good luck with your horse! Carol =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Ridecamp is a service of Endurance Net, http://www.endurance.net. Information, Policy, Disclaimer: http://www.endurance.net/Ridecamp Subscribe/Unsubscribe http://www.endurance.net/ridecamp/logon.asp Ride Long and Ride Safe!! =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
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