Hello Dr. Teskey,

 

My name is Elizabeth and I am the owner of a beautiful 9 year old black/white paint.  I had navicular surgery done on him last February, 2004.  I had tried shoes and supplements all with no help to him.  The doctor recommended the surgery and it was successful.

 

Now, a little over a year later he is having pain in one of his front legs.  As we were putting new shoes on him yesterday he would pull back and acted as if he was in pain.  He had been stumbling more than usual, also.

 

Is there anything you can recommend to me.  Zech is too good of a horse and I pray that there is something more we can do for him.

 

Thanks for your help,

 

Elizabeth

 

DR. TOM'S ANSWER:

 

Hi Elizabeth,

 

I'm guessing that the "navicular surgery" that was done was to cut the nerves to the feet?  They call it a neurectomy.  The procedure was only "successful" in a retarded sort of way...the pain is coming back because cut nerves grow back between 1 and 2 years later, which sounds like what is happening with your horse.  This is a pretty normal course of events.  The veterinary surgeon who performed this procedure should have let you know that this would happen.  If they did not tell you that this would happen then I think that is very negligent of them and you should file a complaint with your state veterinary board.

 

The fact is that this surgery has done nothing to help your horse with the deformities in the feet/hooves that we know cause "navicular" pain, it has only hidden the problem by numbing the area.  To get honest healing for navicular disease/syndrome, one must change the shape of the hooves to a more correct form to allow for expansion in the area that is "pinching" the bone.  This has never once in the history of veterinary medicine been done with "special" shoeing...not ONCE...yet the farriers and veterinarians continue to prescribe these "corrective" shoes, knowing full well that they are simply covering up the problem, not fixing it.  Truly, many of them do not know what to do with these horses and/or they believe there is no cure and no hope of making them honestly better, so they do what they're taught at veterinary school, which is to cover up the problem with shoeing, and when that doesn't work any more, cut the nerves to the area.  It's as if you had broken toe and we just cut the nerves to your toe so you wouldn't feel it and you would just walk out like nothing was wrong because you could no longer feel the problem.  Nothing was done to get your toe to heal, and when the nerves grow back and report the pain, the damage is now even greater and you're in deeper trouble than you ever were to start with.  It's one of the more maddening things with present day veterinary medicine at least in the "modern" areas of the world.

 

There is absolutely no therapeutic value to a piece of steel nailed to your horse's hooves.  I tried this approach for twenty years before I realized that these horses were only getting worse...and like I said, there's not a single reported "success" in the veterinary scientific literature about curing a "navicular" horse.

 

The good news is that you've emailed me and I can get you lined out on a plan that may save your horse.  True, damage has been done, but if we can reverse the deforming changes that have occurred with the shoeing and the surgery, your horse will be more comfortable down the road.

 

Here is an article that I wrote about one of the navicular horses in my practice...if you're interested in finding out more what to do next, I will try to help you find someone in your area of the world that is knowledgeable that can assist you in some honest therapy for your horse.  What has been done up to this point has hurt your horse, so continuing along a similar path will continue to cause more damage.  We won't be able to fix something using the same thinking/methods that caused your horse this misery in the first place.

 

Best wishes to you...find your way for you and your horse,

 

Dr. Tom T.