Horse’s stifles stick, not back, but forward. They clunk sometimes, he drags his toes behind and catches the left hind and stumbles on it, he is stiff going down hill.
Also, he was lame, had a lamness exam, he went sound when hocks were blocked. He had them injected and now he is sound but still has stifle stuff. Vet wants to inject.
Is this how it usually goes or do vets usually X-ray the stifles first?
Are stifle injections usually successful?
I wouldnt go to injections w/out more diagnostics. Depending on what’s going on, injections can help. But there are a lot of parts to stifle. Xrays, maybe ultra sound. Not a simple answer.
Not sure which kind of imaging.
The vet said, yes I could order diagnostics. Didn’t say which kind, just to call the office. What might be going on in there? This is not upward fixation of the patella.
I would love to hear from anyone who has dealt with this kind of issue.
Video?
UFP has a lot of different types of presentation… but… the symptoms you’ve mentioned are not unusual for UPF - how does the vet know it isn’t UFP? I’ve seen UFP present during either phase of limb movement (stance + swing).
Were the stifle issues there before, and the vet was thinking that injection of the hocks would help? It could be possible the stifles are aggravated because the hocks were sore prior to injections – however, usually sore hocks are secondary and not the other way around.
I wouldn’t be doing any other injections until you have x-rays/ultrasounds. There really are a lot of different things that could aggravate a stifle, and injections are only the answer sometimes - but I’ve found not always. Sometimes the stifle can be a red herring for other things, like cervical arthritis (which fits the symptoms you’ve listed) or SI disease (doesn’t really) in which injections would be a waste of money.
Toe-dragging with catching would make me leap to UFP immediately. Barring that, some sort of stifle lesion could cause the dragging and the clunking, but I would think it would be quite consistent - they are usually fairly lame when a lesion is involved. Other out of the box things would be suspensories (toe drag + stiff downhill) or c-spine arthritis (which fits all of the symptoms above).
To give you two recent examples:
When Boo had his medial tear in his stifle, he was very lame - 3/5 - weight bearing, but very quick and snappy. He never slipped or caught behind, but he was lame and would drag the toe along the ground and keep the leg out behind him as long as he could before landing on it. It was extremely evident.
Another gelding of ours slips and catches his stifle most often at the walk when he is first asked to collect, sometimes at the trot and never at the canter. Was not lame. At first we thought weak stifles and we chiro’d and put on two months estrone with no improvement. Some other stuff happened, that made us think of his neck: x-rayed his neck and he had some pretty significant remodeling. Injected his neck + the slipping went away for about 8 months. He’ll have to have his neck injected/maintained routinely the rest of his life, I think. He’s10.
Oh thank you! This horse has had neck problems but osteopathy, chiropractic and acupuncture and TTouch (which is what I do) have not helped. I just had a CranioSacral person come and she zeroed in on his neck immediately. So I have made an appointment to take him to a local clinic (Piedmont Equine) and have his neck Xrayed and also his stifles imaged which ever way seems appropriate. I feel more hopeful about him now.
The vet checked for soreness in his suspensories but did not think they were a problem. I feel like we have made a little progress with the hock injections as he is more sound than he was. This horse wants to keep his hind legs forward under him. In all gaits, his hind legs rarely go out behind him at all. But at the same time, he does not track up well though that has improved slightly with the injections.
When his stifles catch it is when his hind leg is forward. It tends to lock a little and makes it difficult for him to move. He does drag his toes and is stiff going down hill.
I hope I have a good outcome to our appointment next week.
I had a somewhat similar situation with my horse just in the last month (You might be able to find my post “symptoms of loose stifles”). Only difference is my horse wasn’t lame, flexed ok on hocks, but failed left stifle. We xrayed to make sure there was no OCD or anything else going on in the stifle. Xrays came back clean, so decided to inject the left stifle and both hocks (We injected the hocks because often when a horse has stifle problems they compensate on the hock joints. This could be what was going on with your horse). Recovery from injections was fast - 3 days off with bute - and then a couple days of light hacking and then back to normal work. Its been a week since injections and can’t say I have seen any earth shattering differences, other than smoother lead changes and he is straighter to jumps. I am hoping the injections will improve my horses work ethic a little bit, but that we will see over time. We are heading to a show at Spruce Meadows next week and that will be a good indicator of how things are going.
Hope everything works out for you!
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