Soldier
Soldier was rescued in April 2025 as part of a group of high risk horses close to entering the slaughter pipeline. Initially he was not part of the group being targeted for rescue.
However, a day after helping several horses out of their predicament, it was noted that Soldier had become excessively lame and had great difficulty moving. He was also coming down with a suspected respiratory illness.
It is unknown how Soldier was injured in the 24 hours until we saw him again, but we were able to take him immediately where we had a vet already examining other new rescues.
Veterinary evaluation revealed that Soldier had a swollen right hind leg, with the most prominent swelling high up in his groin area with severe pitting edema. He was very carefully unloaded from the trailer and having difficulty with a 4.5/5 toe-touching lameness of the right pelvic limb.
The distal lateral aspect of the right hind fetlock had a bleeding puncture wound and mild tissue swelling distally. Doing a gentle rocking of the hips while Soldier was in a 3-legged stance with the right hind leg toe-touching only did not reveal any deep bony click sounds or further instability.
Both forefeet had severely underrun heels and long, rostrally-projecting dorsal hoof walls, indicating 9+ months of no trimming/shaping of the foot, possibly longer than that estimate.
Due to the severity of pitting edema high in the medial groin aspect of the right hind, it is suspected that severe soft tissue damage likely occurred, either to muscle, tendon or ligament; and that the proximal swelling is less likely attributable to the more distal limb.
It’s very difficult to assess whether a bony lesion, such as a hip fracture, may also be involved, but it is also within a real possibility that a bony lesion may be a part of the deep soft tissue inflammation seen in the right hind limb.
An X-ray of the left forefoot was taken to confirm whether either long-term neglect or caudal heel pain changes would be another chronic issue if the right hind leg was possibly a soft tissue injury which might heal.
The X-ray showed severe pedal osteitis and drastic remodeling of the dorsal surface of the pedal bone, also with distal tipping of the furthest tip. This indicated long-term neglect, coffin bone remodeling and permanent changes to the palmar surface of the bone due to long-term neglect, flat-footedness and insufficient sole.
Sadly, there was no good prognosis or treatment to successfully rehabilitate Soldier to a pain-free life with any quality and he was humanely euthanized.
More About Soldier
- In Assessment
- Brown
- Gelding
- 2005
- QH
- Colorado