**UPDATED** GOOD NEWS-BAD NEWS :-( **so, what do you know about...

So the good news is - she DOES NOT HAVE WHITE LINE OR SEEDY TOE - what she does have are crappy feet (we knew that!) - the vet recommended Farriers formula, and a couple of cycles of front shoes til her feet grow out - and that hopefully will take care of that - he said normally he sees feet like hers on old broodmares, not horses getting regular care from an "excellent farrier" - (he knows the fellow we use)....he also figures her feet grow really fast, since it was only 4 weeks since they were done...of course, with everyone being "fluffy" its always a dilema on how to get stuff into a horse that doesn't get feed regularly.

but the bad news in Arrows cough...not calling it COPD, or whatever they call it now Recurrent Obstructive airway?....heaves is as good a name as any.....probably allergin born, since they are out 24/7, etc.etc. Worthy has heaves too, had it for years, was sick one spring probably 12 years ago, changed the environment for the old boy...but it obviously does not suit Arrow! Now, Dolly is 5, Arrow is 10 - Worthy is 30 and in better shape (this week anyway) then the other 2 who added together...are 1/2 his age....so Arrow is on meds for a bit, not steroids yet, I saw the post from Rude about MSM too....He has been coughing occasionally this spring, luckily when the vet was here there was no problem to get him to do it - he said usually he gets to the farm and the animal won't cough for him - he said for whatever reason, pollens, etc., it's been a really bad spring on PEI for horses who have a tendency toward lung problems. He sounds TERRIBLE today, I have never heard the rasp in his airway before...my poor teddy bear Wed a.m. - I think there is something in the barn he is allergic to - he wasn't coughing like that before he went in, and he's not coughing now....thank goodness!



white line disease and seedy toe? I've only really heard of it in drafts, not light horses...
pretty sure that's what is going on with Dolly, did some reseach online, boy I hope I'm wrong...I'm calling the vet tomorrow...this is nasty stuff...wonder if they can do a foot transplant between her and Worthy?
Then to complicate it just that much more, my usual farrier is from NB - may have to nab a local guy for this, if she looses a shoe I may need someone closer....

May 22 - 1 week after farrier

yesterday




and the left hind is starting to crack....
my sweet girl!

I've never had to deal with it personally but I know, conventionally, farriers try to remove as much of the diseased material as possible to allow healthy foot to grow out.

The product TC uses for thrush - White Lightning - is also used to treat WLD. I would give that a try, it can penetrate all the places the disease gets into without cutting away hoof. TC probably has lots of info on this.

Oh that looks really awful.......tea tree oil is something else that is recomended instead of a lot of other products that eat into tissue as well as the disease...I wish you would talk to TC also before you go getting another farrier in to perhaps do more damage...............

EM that one shot you have of the underside of the hoof............is that after a farrier had worked on that one????

ohhhhhh .. nasty stuff... you can ask Sailor girl on this one too.. her older horse once suffered from white line.. omg he lost most of his hoof.. it was awful.. thank goodness we had an awesome farrier at the time and he was able to save Wilbur's feet..
TC is the best on to ask on Dolly's problem.. dear sweet Dolly.. I hope she can be fixed up soon..!

She has thrush....

As for WLD...maybe... hard to tell, but she does have a lot of extra hoof wall there... I think you can get a lot of her foot trimmed back to keep from more chipping... She is holding her weight up on hoof wall alone when standing on solid flat surfaces (Like she is in the picture), and if it is already weak, her own weight will create more flaring, more chipping..

Her hoof wall quality is pretty cruddy looking, but get at things now while the summer growing season is faster growth then in winter..and you can be far ahead by fall..

For sure, do a Whitelightning treatment...well a few actually... But it will work on the thrush and the WLD if any...

A good time to start would be after a much needed trim... Everything will be clean and excess hoof gone... You will see a huge difference in the new wall coming down after a month...

What does she eat ?

I suspected she had thrush too...I found a bit of stinky black gook last night in that foot...Joan, the underside pic is from yesterday, the farrier was here around May 15th, so about 4 weeks. My first step is the vet, I am going to call them tomorrow, I would only get a new farrier for her for shoes (maybe) after I talk to my regular guy...and that would only be if he can't get over right away, if that is what she needs...
TC

Quote :

A good time to start would be after a much needed trim... Everything will be clean and excess hoof gone... You will see a huge difference in the new wall coming down after a month...

I'm not sure what you mean? She was trimmed 4 weeks ago, her feet were perfect, no chips, cracks or flares - and a week later you can see in the first pic what started to happen...when she came here her feet were long, with the race horse trim, in fact she still had shoes on the hinds...but her feet were solid...right now they are only on grass, but all winter she was fed HF/HF to get her weight up, plus a full mineral top dressing, or Equalizer, which ever I had, plus free choice hay.
Where does one buy this Whitelightning?...I may need it to drink....

I think TC means to start the WL treatment after a fresh trim.

My local tack store carries it but you may have to ask for yours to bring it in special order. If they won't, I can send you some from here.

Two of my horses had white line disease.Tried a lot of things and could never get it to stay clean up until this past year. Went to a lecture that Dr. Bob Wright gave at the CAN AM on something else,after ask white line disease. The first thing he ask me about was I feeding sweet feed? Which I was. :sad-smiley-044 He had a couple of recommendations: change their feed to oats,use a white salt lick,put a horse mineral block in with them,and change the mineral I was using in the feed to a different one. Then after the ground dried up a little ( our place is very wet in the spring) to get my farrier to debrided their hoofs the second time for Foxy. It has now been just over a year. Willow who only had two hoofs with white line feet are great. Foxy who had all four in bad shape also has no sign of white line disease. At the time I had six horses and only two had white line disease.Dr. Bob Wright said that there is two things to remember debrided to get all the infected area gone and to change the diet to help prevent the problem coming back. Hope this gives you a little more info from someone that been there. :dogwagging2.gi

Quote :

I'm not sure what you mean? She was trimmed 4 weeks ago, her feet were perfect, no chips, cracks or flares

Yes, I mean after a trim, things are opened up, and clean. All that overgrown hoof wall is gone etc.. As for 4 weeks, she should be trimmed every 4 weeks anyway...especially if you are lacking abrasive ground for her to wear down her feet on her own... and even more especially due to the hoof wall needing to be in check more frequently then a normally strong hoof wall...( I would be touching up the walls every 2 to 3 weeks actually...)

As for her frog, make sure it is not being cut away...at all.... (little hanging tatters can be removed, but no slicing and dicing)... she has hardly anything for a frog, so to have more of it cut away will make her very sore...


You can debride or dremmel away the hoof wall that has the disease under it. I for one do not feel comfortable doing that, it is very evasive... Makes me nervous.
The whitelightning, however, will get up in amongst that disease because it is the vapour of the solution that does the work. So no hoof wall removal is needed.

That combined with lots of movement to stimulate good fast growth, and she will grow out the disease faster then it can eat away at her hoof.

Shoes? Well sure, if you are thinking about "holding the hoof together" but you don't need those, and you have to be careful about creating periphrial loading, the moment a shoe is nailed on, you have that... Just a word of caution on that one..

There are other more "hoof friendly" convential methods, (Especially when you have a lack of wall to nail to, and nails just invite more fungas and crud into the hoof wall structure) ..you can try hoof castings... These will allow you to continue to soak or treat the hoof, where a shoe will block the solution from getting to where it needs to be...


She is not being fed sweet feed, however the short grass shown in yur pictures could be quite high in sugar... Due to it being stressed. Maybe that is an issue? I am not sure. :scratch: Might not be helping matters. At least until she is over this problem.. Every little bit you can do to promote a tight new wall connection, will just help make this problem go away that much quicker.. :)

WL can be bought at Waynes Sadderly in Truro, I know for sure, or you can order it online. Another good product is "Cleantrax"...

Some info:

WLD
http://www.hoofrehab.com/end_of_white_line_disease.htm#Whiteline

Hoof Casts
http://www.hoofrehab.com/hoofcast.htm

Feeding the hoof
http://www.hoofrehab.com/diet.htm

Frog management
http://www.hoofrehab.com/frogtrim.htm

Hoof walls
http://www.hoofrehab.com/wallcracks.htm


Hope something helps... :)

thanks TC! I left a message for my vet, he's out until later this afternoon...I would really prefer to not have to shoe, for sure, I have read up on it, its quite a process, and can certainly cause more issues - and I don't think she's at the stage yet of needing that much support! (I hope)
***reading madly****

Well it happened to Wilbur about 15 yrs ago...WLD. I don't recall all the details and I have no pictures and I think it was mainly on his left front. I always had him shod anyway, but he really needed shoes especially for this treatment because so much of the wall had to be removed/debribed and had to be rebuilt temporarily with putty/resin, it needed the shoe on to help keep that stuff on and to make it possible to stand and walk on it...when most of the wall is gone on one side it puts tremendous pressure on the opposite side of the foot! It was radical and scary to look at...the wall was gone on mostly the outside about 2/3 up!!! Farrier said he picked up bacteria from the soil or something...nothing mentioned (in those days) about his diet...I believe he was getting sweet feed then but not on grass. It took several months to grow out but it worked and it never came back, even though he's always had "not so good" feet...no matter what supplements or topical treatment I put him on. Good luck with your mare!!!! :882297.gif:

Its hard to tell from the angle of the pics but those big chips appear to be her self maintaining. Her toes are really long....I know a good BF trimmer on PEI who could help...

EM They have White Lightning at the Charlottetown vet clinic. I told them it was such a good product and they brought it in. Best of luck!

MP - that's where my vet will be coming from...! That should work out ok...got a call into the farrier, he's always really good about getting back to me.

**Updated** see original post...

Yay about the feet!
Did vet say anything about the thrush?


Sorry to hear about the coughing horses... :/

Worthy being 30 and doing well.. yay for that.. so sad about Arrow's breathing.. hopefully it will get better once the season changes.. I know all about that one.. seems I am having a problem with allergies this year.. never did before.. grrrrr..
Glad Dolly feet will heal up now that you have a course of action.. good for you for being on top of it.. All your horses get the best care I'm sure.. look at them.. well fed and well loved, sometimes we can do all that and still have problems..
fingers crossed for you that all will be ok...

Great news about the feet. Must be a huge relief. We're having a rough spring over here too. The amount of pollen in the air is unreal. Everything is covered. The water tanks have a skim of pollen on them no matter how many times a day I clean them. All my critters are coughing. Hopefully the coughs will be gone when the pollen load lessens. Ugh!

Great news on the feet........not so great on the breathing.......its hard to juggle them I know........had 4 here all winter with just one run in and they hated each other so moving them around for individual needs sucked......but its what you have to do.......stalls for one, run in for another, blankets or none...you just keep trying your best and loving them........checking to see if you are doing it right at least in your own mind...........god love you Nancy.........just keep on keeping on.,

I think that the Island has a really bad effect an both equine and human respiration systems.

My father is severly asmatic and he gets far worse if he is on the Island for any amount of time. I also know a couple of cases where a horse came from the mainland was here on the Island and developped the heaves quite badly only to go back to the mainland and was significantly better in a short period of time.

This is such an interesting topic, thanks for posting! Glad to hear that it wasn't WLD

keep us posted on progress Ellie Mae...

thank God I haven't heard Arrow cough in days, plus he had to be in the barn all day yesterday and no cough or runny nose!! YEAH! He is now on meds once a day for 5 days, then 5 more doses every second day. I have yet to get a ride on him since he got sick, vet said it is fine unless he starts coughing...My farrier was here yesterday, we have decided to trim/rasp or do whatever Dolly needs every 2 weeks if necessary rather than shoe her right now. I know you don't want to thin the wall any more than you have to obviously...If it turns out she needs shoes, we'll put them on. The breaks on her feet were no worse by yesterday than they were when I took the pictures, he feels too her digging in the sand box is definitely a factor to the breakage. I watched her the other day, she gets as close to the top of the dirt pile as she can, and shovels loose soil down the hill to roll in...nice. Her feet look GORGEOUS today! I'll try and get some pics tonight, in between rain showers...Actually, I couldn't be home when the farrier came, so we spoke on the phone. When my vet heard who I use, he told me to do whatever was suggested...he trusts him that much...
I've already started her on Hoof Restore, I also bought some of the Fiske's Conditioner, so she's going to get that too!
you can see the pile in the background - Dolly and Arrow's funpark :roll:
getting the sap off Arrow is another saga...

Julie, Conner, Arrow June 2009