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Member
Posts: 32
| I had a recent navicular "scare" with a gelding of mine. It ended up being a heel bulb abscess (THANK GOD!). However, between the time I was told my gelding was navicular and finding the abscess I did A LOT of research on the "disease" as well as hoof care (shoeing v. barefoot).
What are your experiences with navicular disease?
Has anyone experimented/had success with natural hoof care (i.e. natural trimming and leaving the frog alone)?
HoofRehab.com has a lot of really great information, and it all seems common sense. But I wonder how realistic this type of thing is for performance horses, and barrel horses inparticular. | |
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Member
Posts: 35
| My gelding was diagnosed with navicular with bone changes a couple years ago. We tried pour in pads, wedges, corrective shoeing, he was on bute, then previcox, nothing was working. We moved and as a consequence I couldn't find a farrier anywhere near us.... So I pulled his shoes, turned him out on a STEEP ROCKY pasture, I'm talking super super rough country, that's the only place we could find to board him, and I started doing some minor rasping to keep his feet from chipping too terribly and... He got sounder! His heels opened up and expanded almost a full inch across, he started landing heel first again which encouraged his frogs to develop more and get larger and tougher, after the first month I didn't have to give him any pain meds to keep him pasture sound, after 3-4 months he was light/moderate riding sound without pain meds.
Currently he has basic normal front shoes and gets previcox before extra heavy work and is totally comfortable and sound. He's running barrels, team sorting, and the other day we did a 20 mile ride across the desert over rocks and down the edge of a rimrock canyon without a single sore step. I truly believe that pulling his shoes and the fact he had to travel up and down a rocky mountainside between feed and water forced his feet to become functional again, and without the lucky lucky circumstances that brought it about I wouldn't be able to use him today. | |
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Elite Veteran
Posts: 926
 
| With the technology we have today, 'navicular' we now know can be a plethora of other things. I had a friend who's regular vet diagnosed 'navicular', and after the MRI turned out it was a hoof/trim problem. I would certainly start with that, but if it doesn't help, just realize there really isn't a really a diagnosis of 'navicular' these days, it's just getting down to find out which one of about a bazillion things can go wrong in that area of foot. Good luck to you. | |
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