Laura Collett’s Noble Bestman operated on to repair broken pastern

Noble Bestman, the popular 4-star eventer ridden by Laura Collett and owned by Philip Walker, is recovering from an operation after fracturing his off-fore pastern during the cross-country at Boekelo on Saturday (12 October).

He will have to remain in the Netherlands until he is fit to travel, but vets hope he will make a full recovery.

Laura said: “He landed over a straightforward fence and went lame, so I pulled him up. The vets were brilliant and he was taken straight off to the clinic 10min down the road in a horse ambulance, where they X-rayed him and discovered he had fractured his off-fore pastern.

“We had to make the decision whether or not to operate, so I took the X-rays to [team vet] Liz Brown and talked to his owner [Philip Walker], and we decided to operate, which they did at 9am the following morning.

“The operation was successful — it was a clean, straight fracture and they put 3 screws in to hold it together. We were able to see him once he had come round, but he can’t travel for a couple of weeks.

“He’s a sensible horse so hopefully he won’t mess around too much on it, and the vets were quite positive and said that he should be able to come back to full work if he recovers well.”

Noble Bestman has his own twitter account — follow his recovery at @SuperSteveNo1 or through rider Laura Collett (@CollettEventing) or her headgirl Felicity Roberts (@flickrobertsno2).

Full report of Boekelo in H&H this Thursday (17 October).

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