You will need more help with the Laminitic horse than you will find here. You need to find the most experienced Veterinarian in your area to help you.

This is an excerpt from an address given by Burney Chapman and George Platt at the Thirtieth Annual convention of the A.A.E.P. in Dallas, Texas. Decemeber, 1984

Laminitis the Movie

Laminitis the Movie II

Laminitis the Movie III

Sequence of Events

Unfortunate Sequence of Events

FAQs at the Northwest Laminitis Center site

Laminitis: How It Affects Your Horse at NWLC site

Explaining Laminitis at NWLC site

Derotation, Coronary Grooving, Resection: Comparative Lateral Views (640 X 480)   (800 X 600) at NWLC site

I hope to replace what I have here now with First Aid advice written by some of the Heavyweights in Laminitis research.

This is a partial list of stages a Laminitic horse might experience.

1. The Horse is just not right. He seems vaguely sore or stiff and is not quite himself. There may or may not be heat in the hoof and a digital pulse.

2. The horse seems stiff in the shoulder and a little short strided. He might seem preoccupied or worried and isn't moving around as much as normal. There is most likely heat in the hoof and a digital pulse.

3. The horse seems distressed. It's now pretty clear something is really wrong. It is difficult to make the horse walk. There is heat in the hooves and bounding digital pulse. He may have the "Laminitic stance".

4. The horse is in Distress. He may be standing or down. If he is standing it seems impossible to make him walk.

   Each horse expresses the symptoms of Laminitis in his own way. A horse need not go through the progression I show here. A horse might be minutes away from complete lamellar failure and just seem "not right". Another horse might be show distress while not being in imminent danger of lamellar failure. The first horse is stoic and the latter a weenie.

   This is a disease that can be beat. If you do some research and act quickly you can get your horse through this easier than you might think. Read everything you can get a hold of, talk to everyone you can, but Please be Proactive. Don't sit around and wait to see what happens. If you don't think you are getting good advice, keep looking until you do.

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   The Obel grading method is sometimes used to categorize laminitic horses by pain levels.

   More on Obel Grading

You need to look for the reasons your horse is "not right". It may be you just need to take him off pasture or give him less high energy food.

This is the time to fix him before he gets worse.

This is also the the stage at which you can most easily prevent your horse from continuing on to the next stages by being Proactive about his condition now.

Now is the time to call the Vet. At this stage the problem is still a chemical one. It's essential the horse receives good veterinary treatment now, before physical damage occurs.

Now is when you want to be providing Heart Bar Shoes or temporary frog support as Burney Chapman describes.

This may not make me very popular with some of the experts, but if your horse's feet are hot I would have someone squirt cold water on your horse's feet while you are on the phone to the vet. This will be most beneficial if you get to the horse BEFORE significant Lamellar damage has occurred. Use Cold Hydrotherapy in addition to, not in lieu of other therapies. If someone tells you this was a waste of time, then maybe you will have wasted some water but that's about all. And if it saves your horse from permanent damage, then we're all happy.

At this stage I think you must provide some alternate means of support for PIII, or answer to someone (at least to the horse) if you are not. The pain that is evident is the result of lamellar tearing (and other stuff). If for no other reason than to make the horse more comfortable, PIII should be supported.

Now the Vet-Farrier relationship becomes increasingly important. Timely and efficacious treatment is needed. Quick and decisive action must be taken. A course of treatment should be agreed on. There must be flexibility to adjust that course to the horses's changing condition, and this requires communication between everyone involved with the horse. Much of the therapy's effectiveness is evaluated by the horse's level of pain. Everyone needs to be aware of what is going on, and of what the others are thinking and doing.

Same as Stage Three only don't waste any time about doing something about it.

Proactivity is something new to most of us. We are accustomed to reactivity. To act before a problem arises may seem more difficult than to wait until the problem exits and then fix it.

The material I recommend for this kind of first aid is indoor-outdoor carpeting. Cut it in triangular pieces the shape and size of the frog (with a little extra at the base to go up over the heels), stack enough pieces on the frog that the pile projects a quarter to three eights of an inch beyond the bearing surface of the foot, and tape the support up around the foot.This gives you a compressible pad that supports but has a little give to it. If you don't happen to have indoor-outdoor carpeting, you can tape a roll of gauze under the frog instead; just don't use anything hard or unyielding, such as plywood, which could create additional problems by applying too much pressure.