yes it pretty well sucked. My trainer offered to keep him even though he’s not in training; he is now turned out with a buddy and on daily low dose steroids to keep the inflammation down. No real point in having him ridden and he does trip occasionally particularly outside the arena where footing is less even. Will take it a month at a time I guess. thankfully my old man (in little profile pic) is sound and happy to do some work. He’s 22 and i’m just past 70 with my own back issues so we are a good pair, lol.
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I’m sorry you’re having neck issues with your horse. My mare has neck arthritis, and recently had the basket surgery to relieve minor spinal cord compression and help with her arthritis. She is recovering well - I’ve been posting about it on another thread in Horse Care.
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My horse’s rads were sent to a rad expert and an internal medicine specialist. The rad expert said “ho hum, just some arthritis. Nothing that should be causing the issues you indicate.”
The internal medicine specialist said a lot more, including" I think it’s a Wobbler."
I already had the neuro diagnosis at that point. The horse did better when worked, and wasn’t a tripper under saddle, but had probably fallen two months prior to the April rads, and had been telling me he couldn’t carry me even after the palpitations produced no pain response. The rads were something I needed to do before I gave up trying to ride. I did give up trying, and euthanized last fall.
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My 12yr old Dutch Wb mare has been retired for almost 2yrs now with what started as cervical/neck arthritis. Long story short -going back to when she was about 4 or 5 years old is when we first started noticing issues…it started with her getting Anaplasmosis and Lyme …she never really seemed quite the same after coming down with that…I noticed she really started to dislike any type of collection and resented it …she would become fussy in the bridle , toss her head , wanting to be heavy on the forehand , she became increasingly difficult to collect especially on the left lead -her stride always felt huge and strung out…despite all this she picked up her leads correctly and was able to counter canter , doing flying changes and jumped beautifully…however-something just wasn’t quite right …,she was evaluated by various local vets -eventually over the course of the next few years we tried about everything-chiropractor/acupuncture, saddle fit, injecting neck /sub scapular, hocks, stifles, SI …all of it helped a little but the underlying issues were still present …I finally took her for a complete work up at New Bolten Center where she was evaluated by Dr Amy Johnson…,she did a full neuro exam and found some deficits…neck X-rays revealed arthritis and we also did a myelogram …No compression was found. We put her on high dose liquid vitamin e , and after some time off I tried again…she was again …ok but still not 100% …I went down this road on/off again until about 2 years ago when she started spooking …it got to the point where I had fallen off 2 or 3 times in one week …I brought her back to Amy Johnson and she evaluated her again …she thought her neuro deficits had worsened from 5 years previously and she now strongly suspected EDM …it was at that time when she recommended to stop riding her -so I decided to retire her and not take anymore chances …Not for fear of tripping or falling but due to the unpredictability of the spooking that occurs with EDM.
I wanted to mention though we did have like an almost 2yr stretch where she maintained and was going very well all things considered-I was riding consistently, taking weekly lessons and even showing occasionally -until I had to take some time off when I needed back surgery in 2019…I ended up needing about 3-6 month’s recovery before I rode again…sadly when I started back up after she had that time off it seemed to be the beginning of the end …she didn’t pick up where we left off, and all her issues seemed to be flared up or resurfaced again
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