Lameness: Thrown Shoe, Stone Bruise & Bowed Tendon

The flexor tendon has let go entire, bowed once too often and now torn, the back of the cannon curved like a drawn bow and the fetlock sinking toward the dirt. No firing iron mends this. Your horse will live, graze, and grow fat, but it will never again carry a rider faster than a walk.

• Your horse is retired from saddle work, permanently pasture-sound only
• You need another mount for anything beyond a lead rope
• /me unbuckles the saddle and hangs it on the fence, looking anywhere but at the horse

Recovery It heals into permanent retirement, there is no clock that brings the speed back.·Doctor, urgently

A bad bow, the tendon thick as a hawser and hot to the touch. The vet speaks of the old cures with no joy: rest, blistering, and if that fails, the firing irons, hot metal laid in lines down the leg to scar the sinew tight. It is genuine medicine in 1899 and it smells like exactly what it is.

• Absolute rest, no riding whatsoever for 7 days
• Cold-water bandages changed three times daily for 4 days
• Neat rows of firing scars down the back of the leg, a horseman's badge of a hard year
• /me lays the cool wet wrap along the bowed tendon, jaw set

Recovery 7 days to cool the leg, a season in the story before real speed, hurried, it bows again and worse.·Doctor, urgently

What began as a stone bruise has gone to gravel, matter working its slow way up inside the hoof wall until it bursts at the coronet in a weeping track. The farrier pares the sole to give it a downhill road out, and every soak brings a little more foul relief.

• Hot epsom soaks twice a day for 5 days
• The horse cannot bear a rider, hand-walk to keep the leg moving, 5 days
• A telltale scar line at the coronet band ever after

Recovery 6 days of soaks and drains once it bursts, left to find its own way out, it festers for weeks of story.·Doctor required

The hoof-tester makes the horse snatch its whole leg away, a deep abscess under the sole, throbbing inside a wall of horn that gives infection nowhere to go. The farrier carves a neat crater until dark matter wells up, and the relief on the horse's face is almost human.

• Poultice boot of bran and epsom salts, changed daily for 4 days
• No riding for 4 days, then soft ground only
• The horse points the sore hoof forward at rest, like a dancer

Recovery 5 days once drained and poulticed, undrained, it lames the horse for weeks of story and can rot the bone.·Doctor required

A corn, a deep blood-bruise at the heel where a shoe left on too long pressed its mark. The farrier cuts the shoe off, pares down to the angry red proof of it, and fits a bar shoe to carry the heel while it grows out.

• A special bar shoe and a farrier bill
• Sound at a walk, nodding lame at a trot for 3 days
• No rocky trails for 4 days

Recovery 4 days with the bar shoe and pared heel, 7 hobbling without.·Doctor required

The last shoeing drove a nail too close to the quick, and days later the whole hoof pulses with it. Pull the nail, flood the track with carbolic, and the horse near sighs, but the track needs watching, for a dirty nail hole is lockjaw's favorite door.

• Check the nail track daily for heat and stink, 4 days
• Walking work only for 3 days
• /me watches the horse's jaw and ears close, an old-timer's habit after a dirty nail

Recovery 4 days after the nail is pulled and the track flushed, ignored, it abscesses and starts the whole misery over.·Doctor required

A sprained flexor from the flat-out miles you keep asking for, by morning the leg is filled from knee to fetlock, tight and warm as fresh bread. Not bowed, the vet judges, but on the road to it if you keep on as you have.

• Cold creek-standing twice daily for 4 days
• Walk and easy trot only for 5 days, flat-out gallops are off the menu
• You get a lecture from the vet about how you ride

Recovery 5 days of cold soaks and restraint, or a true bowed tendon and a far worse roll on this table await.·Doctor required

The thrown shoe took a horn chunk with it, and a crack has started up the quarter of the hoof toward the coronet. The farrier burns a check-line across the top of it and shoes with clips so it grows out instead of splitting upward.

• Farrier visit required before any hard riding
• Soft ground only for 4 days
• A burned check-line and clipped shoe every horseman will notice

Recovery Sound in 4 days with the crack checked and shod, left alone, the crack climbs and lames for weeks of story.·Doctor required

A flinty stretch of trail and no shoe to argue with it, a classic stone bruise deep in the sole. Heat in the hoof, a bounding pulse at the fetlock, and a horse that walks like it is stepping on its own regret.

• Nodding lame at the trot for 3 days
• Bran poultice boot overnight for 2 nights
• /me straps the poultice boot on while the horse holds its hoof up helpfully

Recovery 3 days poulticed, 5 without, it could yet turn abscess if ridden stony.·Doctor advised

The shoe is gone, lost a mile back, and the bare hoof has already worn tender and ragged at the edges. Nothing a farrier cannot fix by supper, but until then every pebble on the road belongs to you.

• Walk your horse on the grassy edge of the road until it's shod
• Farrier visit needed today or tomorrow
• The horse snatches its foot up comically at every stone

Recovery Right as rain the hour it is shod, 3 tender days if you make it wait barefoot.·Doctor advised

A sharp stone has wedged itself hard between frog and bar, and by the time you find it the whole hoof aches from carrying it. It takes real leverage with the hoofpick to pop it loose, and the bruise beneath complains for days.

• A mild head-bob for 2 days
• Pick the hooves at every single stop for 3 days, you're a believer now

Recovery 2 days with a night of poulticing, 4 if the bruise deepens.·Doctor advised

Heat and a little filling low on the tendon after too many miles at a lope, the first warning shot before a true bow. Liniment, wraps, and a stretch of dawdling and it comes to nothing; press on as usual and you will meet this table again with a worse roll.

• Wraps and liniment nightly for 4 days
• No sustained galloping for 5 days
• The horse warms up stiff for the first half mile

Recovery 4 quiet days, 7 stubborn ones if you keep the pace up.·Doctor advised

The shoe is loose and shifted, clinches risen, and each stride rocks it against the tender sole. You can hear the problem, a flat clank on stone where the other hooves ring true. A farrier resets it in half an hour; riding it loose grinds a bruise underneath.

• A faint limp until reshod, then 1 day of tenderness
• Get to a farrier within a day
• /me tilts an ear at the hoofbeats, catching the off-note clank

Recovery A day after the reset, 3 days and a proper bruise if ridden loose.·Doctor advised

The dramatic head-bobbing lameness turns out to be a pebble seated snug in the cleft of the frog. It flicks free with one stroke of the hoofpick, and the horse's relief is immediate and slightly embarrassed.

• A tender spot in the frog for a day
• You now check hooves before mounting, at least for a while

Recovery A day at most, less than your worry already cost.·No doctor needed

The leg came up a little filled after yesterday's hard going, warm, puffy, and gone within the first mile of walking as the blood moves. Old horsemen call it stocking up and prescribe exactly nothing but gentler days.

• Stiff first half-mile each morning for 2 days
• Keep the pace neighborly for 2 days

Recovery Walks itself sound in 2 days.·No doctor needed

A clink, a skip in the rhythm, and you were off and looking before real harm was done, one shoe hanging by two nails, ready to twist and stab the sole with the next bad step. You pull it clean with a stone, and the horse pads along sound behind you.

• Lead your horse the rest of the way in, riding it barefoot invites a bruise
• Carry the pulled shoe to the farrier and save two bits
• /me wrenches the shoe free and tucks it in a saddlebag with a grunt

Recovery Nothing to heal, shod by tomorrow, good as ever.·No doctor needed

Whatever it stepped on yesterday, it slept most of it off, a barely-there shortness in the stride at first saddle, gone by the time the dew burns off. You spend more time looking for the cause than the horse spends feeling it.

• The faintest hitch for the first mile, 1 day
• One extra hoof-picking session that finds nothing

Recovery Gone by noon.·No doctor needed

You hear the shoe go slap against a root and find it lying in the trail behind you, whole and unworn, thrown so cleanly it took not a chip of hoof with it. Any farrier, or you, with a rock and borrowed nails, can tack it straight back on.

• Ten minutes of trailside farrier work or a cheap visit to a real one
• The horse never takes a lame step through the whole affair

Recovery None, the hoof never knew.·No doctor needed

The head-bob that had you fearing the worst faded with every mile home, and by supper the horse trots up its paddock square and sassy. Whatever it was, a stone, a twinge, a stiff muscle, it kept its own counsel and left without a note.

• One evening of watching it like a hawk over the fence
• The horse gets an extra measure of oats out of sheer relief

Recovery Already done.·No doctor needed

The farrier hoists the hoof, hunts with the pick, and holds up the culprit with a showman's flourish, a smooth river pebble seated dead in the frog's cleft like a jewel in a setting. One flick and your dramatically dying horse strides out sound as new money, and the farrier refuses payment on the grounds that the story is worth more.

• The pebble rides in your vest pocket as a lucky piece
• Your horse is instantly, insultingly sound
• /me holds the pebble up to the light like it owes them money

Recovery The lameness ends the moment the pebble hits the dirt.·No doctor needed