Kitty's ligaments

["Annette Gordon" <agordon@worldofwonder.net>]

Hi everyone

One of my horses, Kitty an Anglo-Arab mare, sprained her check ligament on
her off-fore by running around like a mad thing in her field which was full
of very sticky mud. She likes to do sliding stops and must have sprained it
when she ran to the gate and then slid to a halt. 

At the moment Kitty's check ligament sprain seems to be on the mend. I rode
her for 15
minutes on both Saturday and Sunday at walk (well almost she decided the
whole thing was so exciting that jogging was more fun - jogging never used
to be in her repertoire). We have hills everywhere so I did a lot of getting
on and off to walk her up and down the really steep ones. She also wore
Sports Medicine Boots on both forelegs to support her legs - whether they do
much good in supporting the check ligament I don't know and I worry that
they may be making things worse. 

After Saturday's ride, (not helped by two runaway horses who escaped from
the field galloped down the lane and sent Kitty into hyper-space with
excitement - if we'd been in a showing class she would have won it) anyway,
after Saturday's ride there was some heat around the check ligament area,
down the tendon. I cold hosed her legs and put some Hilton's Herbs leg aid
on. 

The next day I decided that if I felt any heat at all that I wouldn't ride
and would leave her for another week but amazingly I felt her legs and they
were
both stone cold. So I tacked her up and we did the same again with lots of
jogging I'm afraid. After this short ride there was a little heat as before
but probably less so. 

Then last night I got out all my horse books and looked up all references to
check ligament sprain - the prognosis in them varied from good to bad to
this will recur. So now I'm really worried that this could be the beginning
of ligament trouble for evermore. 

Does anyone have any experience of ligament sprains or know of anyone else
who's had this problem? 

Kitty still has to go for another scan in about 2 weeks to see if there is
any improvement. But the whole thing has made me feel that I need to be so
cautious with her. 

Has anyone got any rehabilitation strategies or advice that might be useful?


And will the Sports Medicine Boots help support the ligament or only trap
the tendon thereby spraining the check ligament further? 

Sorry to require so many answers but we are at a crucial point and things
could get a lot worse if I'm not carefu. 

Annette