Page 113 - January 2019

All breeds are susceptible to pastern injuries and conformation may play a role.”
“Another important thing is to have plenty of support on the back of the hoof
so that the heels don’t sink into the ground as far. We often use a pour pad to help keep the foot on top of the ground. I pour all of
my ringbone horses. I believe that the bones descend as that foot loads, and I think there’s sometimes a little pinching as those bones/ joints descend. They press together in the load phase of the stride. So, I always try to ‘open’ the affected joint to alleviate that pinching, which is what I believe causes the most pain. If ringbone is on the front, whether it’s low or high, I raise the angle of that foot to normal or slightly above normal to have less pressure on that joint,” Allen explains.
“So, I use a lot of pour pads or Equi-Pak to prevent or minimize some of that down- ward movement of the joint and the bony column. For support in the heel area, we
can use a bar shoe or an open heel shoe with pour pads. Frog and sole support with a pour pad reduces the amount of downward move- ment within the foot and the joints.”
If a horse has ringbone on the side rather than the front, he may trim a little more on the opposite side to “open up” the affected joint. “This is a tricky situation because I
am talking about putting the foot slightly out of balance. I always start by putting the foot in balance with a basic trim, but if I am not getting satisfactory results, I tweak it a little by using super-fast glue on one heel,
or on both heels, to raise the angle a little more. I can modify the balance with this method. The nice part about using the glue to change the balance is that if I don’t like the result, I can rasp it off the shoe without having to reshoe the horse,” he explains.
Allen often uses a wedge pad on these horses, which raises the angle. But if it needs a bit more tweaking, he can add a bit more to the shoe with the glue. “I can also monitor it from one shoeing to the next, which gives me a lot of flexibility to be able to adjust or modify the angle to make it more exact for what that horse needs. I can squirt it on there, give the horse 24 hours
or several days, and see how he does with it. This is better for the horse than leaving him barefoot to see how the foot wears. Everyone wants to figure out how it wears and where it is most comfortable and experimenting with the glue added onto the shoe lets us figure out that comfort zone,” he says.
The glue is durable and almost as strong as the hoof wall. “It holds up very well, especially if you make sure the shoe is clean when you apply it. It sticks to an aluminum shoe even better than steel.”
Allen has had good luck with a number of cases that have gone from being very
lame to being comfortable after a couple shoeings. “One horse was so lame he could hardly walk from one barn to the other. After we started working on him, he was getting better and better. We felt good about that because at first the owner was thinking about euthanizing that horse, so we feel we accomplished a lot with that one.”
Extra care should also be taken when handling the foot and leg while trimming and shoeing to minimize discomfort. Horses with arthritis are often uncomfortable when their legs are handled in shoeing positions. “A ringbone horse will have discomfort when the joint is flexed. Sometimes a horse with severe ringbone can’t flex those joints very much. It’s similar to a horse that’s arthritic in the knee. We don’t bend the leg much, and we keep it as low as we can,” Allen says.
DRUGS THAT MAY HELP
“There’s a relatively new drug that may help called Osphos. This is an injection
in the muscle, and it’s a drug related to Tildren,” says Allen. Osphos is a biophos- phonate and like Tildren is being used for treating bone-related lameness like navicular disease and ringbone. Osphos became avail- able in the U.S. in 2014 and is administered by intramuscular injection, whereas Tildren has to be given intravenously over a period of several hours and is more expensive.
“In some cases, Osphos will actually de-calcify the ringbone and reduce its bulk. I have not seen this personally, but the drug label says it is potentially possible for it to reduce calcium deposits. Originally, it was meant for treating navicular problems and bone remodeling, but there are many other things it can do. If I have a client who has a horse with ringbone, I tell them they should consult with their veterinarian and ask about this product. It doesn’t work for every horse, but some horses are helped tremendously,” Allen explains.
If the ringbone affects the joint, the horse will need help from a farrier to alleviate the pain and lameness, often with the use of corrective shoeing.
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EQUINE HEALTH