In the grand scheme of equine healthcare, a hoof abscess is not the most dangerous affliction your four-legged partner can experience. These painful pockets of fluid aren’t generally considered life threatening, but they can bring a horse’s competitive career to a grinding—if temporary—halt.
Britt Conklin, DVM, of Reata Equine Hospital and Podiatry Center in Weatherford, Texas, has fought on the frontlines against many an abscess. He says the best abscess advice he can offer owners is to pay attention to your horse and your horse’s environment and to act quickly should a problem arise.
“An average hoof abscess requires timely attention and treatment,” Conklin said. “However, compared to other commonly diagnosed hoof/foot problems, they are not considered very serious. [Horses] typically respond well to treatment, and the horse can often return to its previous level of performance in a short amount of time.”
Although hoof abscesses are usually not a major medical setback, they sound horrible and can appear just as bad when a horse starts showing the clinical signs. That is why a little knowledge about abscesses can be an owner’s greatest ally in ensuring a horse’s speedy recovery.
What are Abscesses Exactly?
A hoof abscess is a pocket of blood or pus or serum that is pressurized and causes pain. There are two different kinds of abscesses— those that originate externally, which are referred to as septic, and those that originate internally, which are called non-septic.
“The most common form is septic,” Conklin said. “Ones that form due to dirt or debris working its way up in the foot, getting trapped and forming a pressurized pocket.”
Dirt and debris generally find their way into a foot by way of a puncture wound, a crack in the hoof or through a seedy toe. Puncture wounds can be the result of an injury or, in some cases, can be caused by a badly placed horseshoe nail. Cracks also may be prompted by misguided management practices and hoof care, as they normally occur when a hoof becomes dry and brittle or when a horse’s “toes” grow too long as a result of infrequent trimming.
Seedy toes or separations at the white line can provide holes or avenues for bacteria to grow. These holes leave the inside of the hoof open to housing the foreign debris that can eventually turn into an abscess.
Conklin stresses that a horse’s environment is a huge factor in the formation of septic hoof abscesses. In fact, he says horses are especially vulnerable to these abscesses during wetter times of year.
“Take, for example, the horse that is kept in a dirt trap,” Conklin said. “When it rains or gets wet, the foot expands and gets very absorbent, like a sponge. This allows mud or dirt to work its way up into any small crack or open juncture of the white line. When it gets dry again, the foot contracts, trapping the dirt inside the foot and, over time, forms an abscess.”
While management practices can help minimize the potential for septic abscesses, non-septic abscesses are difficult to avoid for a horse that is already suffering from a hoof or leg problem. This is due to the fact that non-septic abscesses form when a horse’s body attempts to rid itself of diseased bone or tissue.
“Non-septic abscesses can be found in horses with very thin soles that [experience] a significant amount of chronic sole bruising or trauma, but are most commonly seen in horses with laminitis or founder,” Conklin said.
In diseases such as laminitis and founder, the abnormal movement of the coffin bone shears and crushes sensitive tissues causing them to die.
“Consequently, the body will seal off these areas and try to rid itself of the damaged tissue,” Conklin said.
These sealed-off pockets can become non-septic abscesses.
By themselves, non-septic abscesses are not necessarily more serious than septic abscesses. But when trying to treat the health problems with which they often coincide, they can be an unneeded complication to an already frustrating situation.
Symptoms and Diagnosis
One day you go out to catch your horse, and you notice that he is limping—limping badly—on only one leg. You bring him up to the barn and discover that the limb is swollen, and he has a fever in the foot. A check of his heart rate also shows that his pulse is much higher than normal.
There is a good chance that your horse is suffering from a hoof abscess. Abscesses can form undetected over time. When they finally show themselves, the effect is usually abrupt and obvious. You may not notice a decrease in your horse’s performance, or even a slight limp when he is walking, before he suddenly develops a debilitating lameness and/or swollen leg.
“As a result of their sudden, or acute, onset, a decrease in performance leading up to [an abscesses’] discovery is often not the case,” Conklin said. “The horse will typically go from completely sound to barely able to walk. There usually is no in between.”
Once your horse has exhibited the signs of a hoof abscess, it is vital that you immediately take him to your veterinarian. Your vet will then probably make a professional diagnosis based on a good physical exam.
Though non-septic abscesses can be the result of other health issues, hoof abscesses themselves are rarely misdiagnosed or mistaken for another problem.
“A typical hoof abscess is often easy and clear to diagnose,” Conklin said. “There are very few things that affect only one limb and can make a horse that sore.”
Treatment
If there is a silver lining to the hoof abscess cloud, it’s that abscesses are usually easy to treat and have a comparatively quick resoluion time. The first step to treating an abscess is to find it. Abscesses tend to hang along the hoof wall or the bulb of the heel. Wherever the abscess is located, veterinarians and such as can be the case if related to a more serious problem such as laminitis—aggressive treatment options are required. These treatment protocols may include removing part of the horse’s frog, sole or hoof wall to get rid of the infection. Sometimes vets have even had to resort to surgically scraping (curettage) the coffin bone or using maggots to devour the infection.
But no matter what treatment option is used on the abscess, the after-treatment care regime is uniform. The horse must be kept in a clean, dry environment with his foot covered until the abscess is completely healed.
This often requires owners to step in and participate in the changing of bandages and the monitoring of rest and exercise. The time it takes for a horse to recover from a hoof abscess depends upon how quickly the abscess was discovered and treated and its severity. For the most part, however, when dealing with an “average” abscess, recovery is fairly fast.
“We have treated a countless number of barrel horses for typical hoof abscesses,” Conklin said. “They have returned to performance in as early as a few days.”
Prevention
Abscesses are not a chronic disease. In other words, just because a horse has had an abscess once doesn’t mean he is more susceptible to having one again—unless the conditions under which the horse acquired the first abscess have remained the same.
For non-septic abscesses, the health problem that caused the abscess must be treated, or there will always be the danger that another abscess may form.
The same can be said for shoeing and hoof care practices.
On the bright side, hoof abscesses present owners with the opportunity to identify the management choices that simply don’t work for their horses. Owners can help prevent abscesses by knowing their horses’ needs and making sure they receive adequate care, whether it’s in the form of proper stalling or a tailor-made trimming and shoeing schedule that coincides with an individual horse’s hoof-growth patterns.
It is also important that you choose a competent farrier to maintain this schedule, one with whom you feel comfortable communicating in case you see a problem with how he or she is shoeing or trimming your horse.
Nevertheless, according to Conklin, the most important things an owner can do to prevent any type of hoof problem, including abscesses, is to realistically evaluate a horse’s environment and to manage the horse based on that knowledge.
“Each horse must be evaluated and managed as an individual,” Conklin said. “Doing so will minimize your risk for abscesses and other injury.”
Conklin recommends taking a second look at every element of your horse’s living conditions, especially the ground in your stall or pasture. Ground should be as clean as possible, free of excess moisture, and should not present any undo risk of injury for your horse.
“For instance, if you have a very poor-footed and thin-soled horse, you wouldn’t turn him out on the side of a rocky hill barefooted, wish him luck and expect him to do well,” Conklin said.
In the end, smart choices and quick action are the best way to combat hoof abscesses, or, better yet, to keep them from forming in the first place. And that gives owners a huge advantage in the war against those pesky pockets of pus.
