Healing Tendons When Cave injured his tendon at Rolex
Kentucky last year, he was put on a round of anti-inflammatory medication and groom Emma Ford initially worked on reducing the inflammation with ice and bandaging. “As with any tendon injury, in the first few
months it’s important to be proactive,” she says. “You can’t just say, ‘hey, let’s heal!’ He was getting iced three times a day initially with a combination of whirlpool boots and ICE-VIBE horse boots, which are basically a dry wrap you can put in the freezer and then it has an outside shell with vibration panels. These are great because I didn’t want him standing in water every day ‘til his skin rots off, and the vibra- tion helps to reduce swelling. I did that twice a day for the first month and even today I’ll use that now and then. After jumping or gallops I still use the whirlpool boot but after a tough flat session, for example, the ICE-VIBE boots are easy to use and efficient.” Once the initial swelling went down, it was time to focus
Emma Ford, Mr. Medicott’s groom, took special care of his tendon injury with a strict regimen of hand walking.
on rehabilitating the tendon fibers so that Cave could get back to work. There are numerous rehabilitative treatments on the market but Phillip and his vet, Dr. Kevin Keane, opted to use Equine OrthoCare’s IoniCare therapy system, which stimulates circulation to promote healing. “I’d heard about the Equine OrthoCare system; there are
a lot of products on the market but I liked that they didn’t make any wild guarantees,” says Phillip. “They kept it simple by stimulating the leg and tendon to heal better. A main problem with tendon injuries is there’s not a lot of blood supply there; this stimulates that naturally with electro-stim- ulation. If you put it on yourself, you can feel the pulsing. You apply a lubricant to the horse’s leg first so it gets good contact, and it’s on the horse for a couple hours a day. You can’t just put it on and leave him alone, so it’s a bit labor- intensive, but it was worthwhile because of its effectiveness. In my experience with older horses, tendons don’t heal that well but we are fortunate that his has healed up great.” Emma says, “All I know is it’s been amazing. We are still using it on him. Obviously we want to do everything we can to make sure we have a happy, sound pony! That’s the main thing and then everything else is what we’d do anyway: ice after jumping, ice after galloping and poulticing. At this point, it’s all preventative.” “Another thing we did is once temperatures started to
drop we would warm up the tendon before work using the ICE VIBE boots by heating up the pad in a bucket of hot water before putting it on the tendon,” she recalls. “Like humans warming up or pre-stretching any muscles, warming tendons or ligaments prior to work reduces the risk of injury.”
Staying Fit While Healing Throughout Cave’s treatment, Phillip remained focused on
bringing the horse back to upper-level competition. “Even Warmbloods Today 15
after Kentucky [Rolex in 2014] I kept him walking, so he’s been in work a long time now,” Phillip says. “After a couple months he started slow trotting, just one minute one week then two minutes the next. By November, he was in full flat work and then started heavier work. I’ve put a lot of slow cantering on him.” The injury was a small hole in Cave’s tendon, which has
completely healed now. “We’ve scanned it quite a few times. Once it’s filled in the goal is to get the fibers stronger. You have to strengthen it over time by gradually putting tougher loads on him,” he adds. Emma continues, “I think a big factor for his recovery
is that we always kept him in work, walking. It’s not like he had three months of stall rest; I think you have to keep stretching the tendon a bit to lay down healthy new fibers. It was only five minutes of walking to start with and we worked up to 25 minutes hand walking and then he walked under tack. He’s actually more muscled now that he has been before.” Last year Cave was fit for the four-star level when he suddenly had to take life easy. Fit horses can be hard to handle but Emma says he was a superstar, considering he wasn’t even allowed out in a round pen. “We could only hand-graze him for the first four months,” she says. “There were days when there were too many people in the indoor and he’d have to wait until the end of the day to walk, but in general he behaved himself very well. He’s extremely happy to be back in work though--he didn’t enjoy being on vaca- tion! He’s very excited to get back jumping!” Cave is back on his regular four-star fitness program now,
and apart from maintenance with the Orthocare, receives Emma’s standard (albeit top-notch) care. She notes that his feeding plan really didn’t change much throughout his recovery. “We kept him on Cosequin (a joint supplement) the whole time, and other than reducing his feed when he was off work we basically fed him the same as usual,” she says.
Photos courtesy Emma Ford
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