Lamanitis v. club foot & Cushings

["guest@endurance.net" <guest@endurance.net>]

K S SWIGART   katswig@earthlink.net


If I am understanding you correctly, your husband has a client 
with a barefoot horse that has four sore feet with a history
of hoof abcess(es).

And is suspected (for various reasons) to have the following 
conditions:

Possible Cushings
Possilbe hypothyroid
Possible hypertyhroid (because it has been given supplemental thyroid???)
Possible lamanitis
Possible club foot
Possible contracted tendon/s
Possible founder (some radiographic evidence of rotated coffin bone)

If it were me, and I had a barefoot horse with four sore feet,
the first thing that I would try to see if it alleviates the
soreness is to put some kind of hoof/sole protection on the 
horse.  Nothing fancy, probably just plain old steel shoes, but
maybe pads as well (but probably not, I would just put steel 
shoes on and if the horse were still sore I would "pad" the horse
with EasyBoots to see if additional sole protection made the 
problem go away).

If that doesn't make the problem go away (i.e. the horse isn't
just sore because it is short in the foot), then the next thing
I would do is do my damnedest to discover if indeed the horse
had Cushings.

Because in my experience (limited to 5 horses, fortunately none
of them were mine), horses that have Cushings and sore feet 
are ...  goners.  I have yet to see any horse that has been 
diagnosed with Cushings (via whatever blood test that they use 
to discover this--don't ask me what it is) AND has sore feet
to ever recover from this condition.  The horse spends the rest
of its life (has been between 6 and 18 months) with progressively
sorer feet.  An assortment of "treatments" have been tried, some 
of them have been diagnosed and treated for Cushings before 
their feet got sore and, in some, the soreness of their feet was
the first time the vet was called and it was then discovered
that in addition to being lamanitic they also had Cushings.  All
of these horses have ultimately had to be put down because their
feet were just too sore to continue standing on.

So....if I had a horse with four sore feet AND I had a reliable 
diagnosis of Cushings in the horse, I would just jump straight 
to the end and have the horse put down
There may be vets out there who have seen more horses with 
Cushings and sore feet who will say that these horses have
been successfully treated (for their sore feet) and have 
gone on to useful, or even comfortable, lives.  .  

I would not waste time, money, resources to extend the misery of
a horse that, in my experience, has no chance of ever having 
anything other than sore feet.  But, as I said, I would want a
reliable diagnosis of Cushings.

If the horse doesn't have Cushings.

If the horse has four sore feet, the fact that it may or may not
have a club foot would not be something that I took into much
consideration; although it would be nice to know the events that
led up to the four sore feet (information which wasn't provided
in the original post).  Was it something that happened over 
night (i.e. was the horse sound one day and lame all around the
next)?  Did it come on slowly one foot at a time?  Did the horse
have an illness (or a trip to the feed bin) preceding the
condition?  Has there been any change in management?  Training 
program?  Does the horse have any history of lameness otherwise?

As to the question of whether or not the rotation of the coffin
bone apparant on the radiographs is caused by founder or caused
by a club foot.  It is my understanding that though founder
usually happens in both left and right feet, rarely ever is it
symmetrical (different degrees of rotation in different feet), 
so the fact that the rotation is apparant in only one foot and 
not the other would not necessarily mean that it couldn't be
founder.

kat
Orange County, Calif.

p.s.  All of this does, of course, presume that the horse does 
have sore FEET.  And if it isn't clear as to whether the horse's
lameness is orginating from its feet or elsewhere in its body
I would want to find that out first.  A simple nerve block will
answer this question.