PrintSigns of a fracture to this bone are easily confused with other hoof injuries.
The summer of 2008 was a hard one for Gigi Carter. She couldn’t pinpoint the exact time that her intermediate event horse, Inka Dinka Do, started showing signs of lameness, but she does remember that it was a dry summer with hard ground.
“He kept coming up a little bit off after hard work, and I just knew that something wasn’t right, even though he was just a little off,” said Carter, 48, of Round Hill, Va. “So I decided to be safe and get him checked out.”
Carter called Piedmont Equine Practice’s Joe Davis, DVM, who took X-rays. When nothing showed up and “Ink” was still off, Carter decided to go a step further and get an MRI.
“I could just tell something wasn’t right, even if the X-rays weren’t showing anything,” she said. “For the longest time I thought it was a persistent stone bruise.”
The MRI revealed a coffin bone fracture. Even though it was a serious injury, Carter was relieved to finally have a diagnosis. Luckily, the fracture wasn’t too severe as to require any other therapy besides rest and time. Davis prescribed four months of stall rest with only hand walking.
“Ink hates being inside!” Gigi said with a laugh. “We had to buy a tiny round pen so he could at least be outside the barn.”
After the four months of stall rest, Carter faced another problem, bringing an event horse back into controlled work in January. “I’m a sales and marketing manager for a non-profit in D.C., and I travel a lot in the winter,” Carter said. “That made it very interesting to bring Ink back into work.”
Carter got the Argentine Sport Horse, who is now 11, when he was 5. “He had competed some novice, but I took him back down to beginner novice to start,” she said.
She took him up through the levels and was competing successfully at intermediate before the injury. Carter couldn’t say for certain that the fracture happened at an event.
“Bringing him back was slow. We spent a month at the walk, then added in the trot for a month, then the canter, and so on,” Carter remembered. “It wasn’t until the summer that he was ready to compete again.”
Between the stall rest and bringing him back into work, Ink spent a year recovering from the injury.
“I thought we could just jump right back into it at the level we were doing before. It didn’t quite work out that way,” Carter remembered. “It took a few events to get back into the groove of things. But it all worked out in the end.”
Carter ended 2009 on a good note, winning the preliminary The Chronicle of the Horse Adult Team Challenge at the Virginia Horse Trials. And the fracture hasn’t changed her long-term plans. “It is still my goal to advance to the level of our collective abilities,” she said.
But she has become more selective about which events she enters. “Footing is going to be a major factor,” she said. “I’m going to have to get used to scratching him if the conditions aren’t good,” she said.
“I just feel so lucky that Ink was able to fully recover,” she added. “We’ve been together for so long.”
Contributing Factors
A coffin bone fracture can cause the same clinical signs and pain of a hoof abscess. Yet because bruises and abscesses are far more common, a fracture can be easily overlooked. And a delayed diagnosis may worsen the break and lengthen healing time and recovery.
Coffin bone fractures are not particularly common among show and sport horses and recreational mounts.
