Project Dexter results so far

Project Dexter is our research project into rehabilitation of horses with "navicular", caudal hoof pain, DDFT/collateral liagment injuries.

Every horse who comes to Rockley with these diagnoses is included in the project, which runs entirely due to the help, goodwill and support of Prof. Peter Clegg at Liverpool and numerous horse-owners and their vets, to whom I am eternally grateful! Horses are assessed by their own vets, and 10 different (and sceptical!) vets have been involved so far.

The preliminary results for Project Dexter are shown below. The research project started in February 2008, with Dexter and horses are listed chronologically.

As at June 2010, 13 horses are included - 10 have completed their rehab, 3 are ongoing. 8 out of 10 horses are in full work, including jumping and hunting; 1 horse returned to light work; 1 horse (which had severe bone damage) improved but did not return to full work. 7 out of 10 horses have been re-assessed by their referring vet, confirming the improvement or return to soundness.

I have had to shrink the table to fit it onto the blog - if anyone is interested in the full details, please email me: nic@rockleyfarm.co.uk and I will send you a copy.

Horse name	Vet assessment before rehab	Other treatments used previously	Vet assessment after rehab
Dexter 9yo TB	3/10 lame LF	Remedial farriery, barefoot, Cartrophen, joint supplements	Sound In full work
Hector 6yo ISH	1-2/10 lame bilaterally	N/A	Level, shorter stride in trot on 5m circle on gravel In full work
Erik 9yo WB	3/10 lame LF 1/10 lame RF MRI: DDFT damage bilaterally, worse LF	Remedial farriery (raised heel bar shoes), IRAP	Sound LF 1/10 lame RF
Uriel 8yo KWPN	2/10 lame bilaterally	Remedial farriery	[Not yet re-vetted] In full work
Blue 10yo IDxTB	3/10 lame LF	IRAP	[Not yet re-vetted] In full work
Paul 11yo ISH	3-4/10 lame LF	Remedial farriery (wedges)	Sound In full work
Bobby 11yo ISH	4-5/10 lame X-ray: Severe bone damage	Remedial farriery (glue on, heartbars)	2/10 lame
Charlie 9yo ISH	3/10 lame LF 2/10 lame RF	Remedial farriery (heartbars)	[Not yet re-vetted] In full work
Frankie 7yo TB	1-4/10 lame bilaterally MRI: bilateral DDFT, DSIL, collateral ses. lig damage	Remedial farriery, Cartrophen, joint supplement (MSM, glucosamine)	Sound In full work
Lady 10yo Welsh x	2/10 lame LF (straight line) MRI: DDFT damage, worse RF	Remedial farriery (NB)	Sound (straight line) In full work
Lexus 19yo ISH	1-2/10 lame LF	Remedial farriery (heartbars), biotin	In full work
Storm 8yo ISH	3/10 lame LF MRI: DDFT damage, worse LF	Barefoot
Bailey 8yo WBxTB	2/10 lame LF MRI: Collateral ligament damage	Remedial farriery (wedges, Centrefit, PLR), Tildren, IRAP

A different sort of storm!

This was the scene as I came back towards Exmoor on Tuesday afternoon - a pretty dramatic sky by English standards! I just happened to have the camera with me and the wheatfield looked so bright by contrast that I had to grab a photo.

A couple of seconds later the cloud had come right over...no chance of getting haylage done this week, for sure - the forecast for the next few days is very unsettled. The grass has grown, though, so it was worth waiting out the last dry spell. Fingers crossed for next week...

The good news is that the streams which run through Rockley, which had mostly been dry since May, very unusually, are all well and truly flowing again this morning(!)

In praise of Felix

Felix is one of those horses who is so good that (although he could never be taken for granted) you can, very occasionally, overlook him, simply because he does everything with no fuss, absolutely competently and perfectly calmly.

I decided that the least I could do was give him a blog of his very own...

Although he is only just over 15.1hh, he is the unquestioned team leader as far as the other horses are concerned; if you ever need to move horses, just lead Felix and everyone else will follow. He doesn't throw his weight around, but then again he doesn't need to...

He worked hard hunting last season, clocking up the highest mileage of all our horses, and was ridden by at least 5 different people, all of whom had a fabulous day with him.

Equally, when Lady's owners came up to ride, he was a perfect gentleman for a small 10 yr old rider, going in front or behind at whatever pace she asked, and doing his utmost to enable her to open and close tricky gates.

Then last Sunday we had a cattle break out, and the quickest way to get them back was to go on horseback. I grabbed Felix, chucked a saddle on him and literally went flat-out up for a mile and a half along the road. Bringing them back, we had to herd them onto the lane and then (on a single-track road) get past them. Felix rose to the occasion yet again and went at full speed up the verge and through them - no mean achievement when the mooks are galloping as well(!). He had to do this twice, as Bailey was so over-excited about the whole thing (she adores moving cows but, like a collie, takes it all a bit too seriously) that Andy had no brakes at all...

As I've said time and again over the last 6 years, thank goodness for Felix.

Dissection day and saddlery day

I am hoping in the autumn to run a couple of one-day clinics which will be open to everyone, not just UKNHCP students. Mark Johnson, who teaches the UKNHCP dissection and anatomy modules has agreed to do a special one-off day here, in September, and Lavinia Mitchell has also agree to do a day on saddlery in October.

The full details are on the new Events page above: http://rockleyfarm.blogspot.com/p/events.html so if you are interested, please get in touch!

Rest the injury, not the horse

For me, one of the key aspects in rehabilitating horses with "navicular"/caudal hoof pain/DDFT or soft tissue injuries is movement.

That may sound perverse, but its absolutely vital. All of the horses who come here have a compromised caudal hoof, though the specific injuries vary enormously. Most have also had lots of treatment to try and shore up the weakness, which (for the reasons I talked about last week http://rockleyfarm.blogspot.com/2010/07/horses-hooves-need-support.html and earlier http://rockleyfarm.blogspot.com/2010/06/bar-shoes-and-such.html) tend to address the symptoms, not the cause.

The fact is that these structures only become stronger when they are stimulated by work and unfortunately there is nothing so effective as a horseshoe for taking these structures out of work. Its also the case that usually horses will try to keep moving at all costs - if they can't move correctly because of caudal hoof pain, they will move incorrectly, landing toe-first and putting yet more stress on the DDFT and, eventually, the navicular bone.

If you want to deal with the cause, the critical thing is to start to strengthen the caudal hoof - which means the fibrocartilage within the digital cushion, the frog and all the myriad tendons and ligaments which surround and support the navicular and pedal bones. This will only happen with work, but its counter-productive for the horse to work incorrectly, of course.

Realising this, many vets advise that horses with this type of injury are put on box-rest, but that only solves half the problem - it puts a stop to the incorrect movement, but doesn't build the caudal hoof. Instead, the answer seems to be to allow and encourage movement, but only within the zone in which the horse can move correctly.

Initially, this may be extremely limited - perhaps only free movement on a deep pea gravel track. What we find time and again, though, is that by sticking to this principle we are able to rest the injury while helping the horse to build up the caudal hoof, and that over time correct movement can be re-established.

My long-standing soft spot for dun horses...

...began with the first pony I ever sat on, who was a dun called Porridge, and was followed by this, possibly the second pony I ever sat on, who was called Rupert - I remember nothing about the people (!)...I was hooked :-)

This footage is courtesy of my brother, who salvaged my Mum's super 8 cine footage and played this and many other embarrassing moments on my birthday earlier this year...

Storm update

Another Storm update, following his owner's visit this week. He has made tremendous progress, particularly since on MRI the damage to his DDFT was severe. Here's a brief comparison of his landing from arrival till now.

The footage is here in high definition: http://www.vimeo.com/13159699