Broken Tail - Anyone have any experience?

[No_Angel]

My mums Mare has been off work for a while due to her breaking her tail. My mum was going to retire her, being that Ceryn is 21, but she is still sound and has been rested a while now my mum is contemplating bringing her back into work again, the vet says he sees no issue with her being ridden.
She has no feeling or movement in her tail at all, it's broken between the base of the tail and croup, so pretty high up.

Has anyone had expereince with a horse with a broken tail? Were they able to be ridden successfully? Did they have issues with the spine or nerve damage in the hindquarters at all?

 

[Trewsers]

I have no experience of this - how did she break it? If the vet says there shouldn't be an issue then I'd certainly try it. Hope it works out that she can be ridden.

 

[mystiquemalaika]

I have no experience I'm afraid just wanted to say hope it all goes well and if the vet says it should be fine then certainly no harm in trying.

 

[No_Angel]

Vet just said to watch out for any nerve damage in the hind end, she doesn't seem to have any issues with it at the moment, she can feel you touching her hind end, but my worries are that it's damaged her spine as the break is quite high up :/

We aren't 100% sure how she broke it. We did have an issue in that the middle beam in the field shelter fell down, but we noticed she wasn't moving her tail and had a steep slope from her croup a week or 2 after it had happened, so we don't know if the beam fell on her and she did something else to properly break it, but she seemed perfectly fine after the field shelter broke, we just assumed it was my mothers big cob who is like a rhino that broke the field shelter with his giant bum. :giggle: It could be that she was kicked :unsure:

 

[TBminx]

Not broken but fractured yes...

Gelding did it putting tail over stable door and scratching it :banghead:

It healed in 6-8 weeks and we didnt daily lifting exercises to try and help it heal mobile :wink:

It has healed fine although a little more clamped sometimes than before and held slightly to one side but no one else notices most of the time just us :giggle:

 

[No_Angel]

I read a lot of things after we noticed it about having the tails in a brace and bandaging them till they heal, but as Ceryns break is so high up it's not possible to do anything like that.
She can't move it at all so has to be cleaned regulary to get any mess away from her bum, she's also had to have most of her tail hair clipped off so that nothing sticks to it.

 

[chev]

No experience myself but would it be any different to docking horses in years gone by? I've seen pictures of working horses with tails docked very high up and it's not had any effect on them. If that's the case maybe Ceryn will be fine to ride? Dunno.... just a thought.

 

[No_Angel]

It's broken sort of end of sacral top of coccygeal vertebrae and it slopes very steeply, so very high up, which is why I'm worried about damage further up as well :unsure: