DSLD and Hanoverians

[Lord_Helpus]

I have a 6 year old Hanoverian who I bought 2.5 years ago as a dressage prospect. He is gorgeous. He is talented. And he is lame on a sinking hind pastern, with a bad MRI.

I will be having a biopsy done this week for the nuchal ligament test. I know it is a new test. but I have had Dr. Allen of the Va Equine Imaging practice tell me that it needs to be done.

I also understand that DSLD is hereditary, which upsets me because breeders must still be breeding horses who have it. In particular, I was PM’s about one well known stallion who has sired a number of horses with the trait, but it is being kept under wraps so the horse will still attract mares.

My wonderful boy is “W” on top and “R” on the bottom. Can anyone tell me if these lines are known for having (and passing down) DSLD?

Hopefully this disease of the nuchal ligament can be swiftly eradicated in several generations. If TPTB in the WB breeding world declared that foals by or out of known carriers would not be accepted into the stud books, then DSLD in the WB world will become a thing of the past very quickly.

[skydy]

I’m sorry LordHelpus. I have no answers, only sympathy.

That certainly is bad news. Perhaps someone who has recent experience with the condition will post here with info on if anything at all can be done to help.

[Fred]

Very sorry to hear this LH. I remember when you bought this youngster. I have no expertise in this at all, but hope that the treatment will be successful.

[Marla_100]

LH, so sorry you’re still looking for answers for the Goobs. You know in the past during discussions of stallions, posters
have mentioned certain stallions who have “soft pasterns”. I wonder if you approach it that way if people would be more likely to mention who might look ‘soft’. And maybe the full blown diagnosis of DSLD hadn’t shown up yet.
Don’t they say the age of dropping pasterns appears at different ages- not all young, not all older.
Just a thought. Many are unwilling to disparage breeding stallions, which I don’t agree with. I’m with you on thinking that info needs to be shared.

[Marla_100]

here’s a thread from 2016-

https://www.chronofhorse.com/forum/forum/discussion-forums/sport-horse-breeding/331419-dsld-in-warmbloods-and-crosses

[SusanO]

First of all do the test. You don’t know if he has this or not at this point. It may be just that he has sustained a suspensory injury which happens to healthy horses. I think your horse has quite a few full brothers and sisters. Have they had any issues?

I know of two horses that probably had DSLD. One was a TB owned by a prominent foxhunter and sired by Blue Murmur. This broodmare was in to a local farm to be bred. I looked at her and thought “BOY!!! that mare has the straightest hindleg I have ever seen. Just like a post.” Now I suspect the mare was not born like that but probably had DSLD leading to her hind leg condition. This was decades ago and I don’t think anybody knew anything about DSLD but Blue Murmer was a popular sire for jumpers and that was the only one I saw like that. I do not know the dam line on the mare - probably TB jumper bred.

The other was a WB mare. Not any bloodlines in common with your horse. I am not going to repeat them because it is not my horse. If the owner wants to chime in that is fine. I don’t think she was definitely diagnosed but there was something “Off” about her the entire time her owner had her. Her pasterns didn’t drop until she was heavy in foal and she lost the foal. The owner never bred her again because she was worried about genetic issues and the mare passing it along.

I am not aware of any WB lines with DSLD. That does not mean they do not exist. I do know of some stallions that have or might pass along “soft” pasterns. That is entirely a separate issue from DSLD.

[khall]

I knew a D line broodmare with badly dropped both rear fetlocks. Don’t think she was ever diagnosed but was bred and produced premium foals for AHS. I’ve not seen very many WBs with the issue, more in Arabians.

[Stacie]

@Lord Helpus

I will be having a biopsy done this week for the nuchal ligament test. I know it is a new test. but I have had Dr. Allen of the Va Equine Imaging practice tell me that it needs to be done.

It’s not a new test.
8 years ago one of Dr Allen’s team “practiced” on my mare when she was euthanized. They wanted experience doing a biopsy on a living, or in this case, just euthanized, mare. They came out, did the deed and then biopsied her immediately. For free to get the experience. It was a while ago, but I seem to remember that they also may have opened her pasterns to look at the ligaments there. Originally they were going to take the whole lower leg. I think they changed their mind when they saw how upset everyone was that she had to be put down. (I wouldn’t have cared about the leg. I’m a scientist. But I was bawling like a baby.) We didn’t think she had DSLD although she had a bit of dropped fetlock from it being a supporting leg for several years as the other leg was injured. The biopsy confirmed she did not have DSLD.

There is at least one hanoverian stallion that throws horses that tend to break down behind if they aren’t shod more upright than many farriers like to shoe. They need that support with lots of hoof in the back. And for some reason, it’s really hard to maintain. Something about the conformation. Starts very early in life. And not necessarily because they are straight through the hocks.

Another interesting thing. I had a yearling that started to get dropped fetlocks. It was subtle, but I could see it and made the vet work him up. Turned out he had a compression in his neck that was affecting his muscle tone and that was causing the dropped fetlocks. Essentially, his neck was broken. Really a shame about him. He was a lovely boy.

[Stacie]

@Lord Helpus

.

Hopefully this disease of the nuchal ligament …

It’s not a disease of the nuchal ligament. It’s a disease that affects all ligaments. That’s why they can biopsy the nuchal ligament to look for abnormalities although most of the damage we notice is in the legs. The ligaments in the legs take quite a beating, so it shows up there first.

[staceyk]

So sorry this happened. It’s awful. I think W/R is a very common breeding combo, there are so many Ws, Rs, Ds, it doesn’t seem likely that you can broadly say that any of these lines is prone, maybe a specific stallion.

I have heard of a popular young stallion (starts with F) that has loose pasterns, perhaps passing it on and another (D) that wings out dramatically (you don’t often see footage of this stallion from angles that show the flaw). After I bought my own D/R cross, and he started cribbing, I heard informally that some R line stallions crib (not 100% reliable info so take it for what it’s worth). Years after I bought my lovely boy, I heard that his sire tended to pass on straight pasterns/weak front feet, and mine certainly inherited this – fortunately he is still in work. Caprimond, it seems, had crappy feet, and the info is out there, but you mostly hear it word of mouth.

If I were ever to buy a baby again, I would comb through the breeding forum on COTH, I would talk to breeders, esp. small breeders. I would look at babies whose sires/dams had a track record.

That said, there was an article recently about lameness prevalence in sport horses http://www.horseandhound.co.uk/news/half-horses-lame-saddle-slip-survey-428728 that gave me pause.

[Lord_Helpus]

@Stacie

It’s not a new test.
8 years ago one of Dr Allen’s team “practiced” on my mare when she was euthanized. They wanted experience doing a biopsy on a living, or in this case, just euthanized, mare. They came out, did the deed and then biopsied her immediately. For free to get the experience. It was a while ago, but I seem to remember that they also may have opened her pasterns to look at the ligaments there. Originally they were going to take the whole lower leg. I think they changed their mind when they saw how upset everyone was that she had to be put down. (I wouldn’t have cared about the leg. I’m a scientist. But I was bawling like a baby.) We didn’t think she had DSLD although she had a bit of dropped fetlock from it being a supporting leg for several years as the other leg was injured. The biopsy confirmed she did not have DSLD.

There is at least one hanoverian stallion that throws horses that tend to break down behind if they aren’t shod more upright than many farriers like to shoe. They need that support with lots of hoof in the back. And for some reason, it’s really hard to maintain. Something about the conformation. Starts very early in life. And not necessarily because they are straight through the hocks.

Another interesting thing. I had a yearling that started to get dropped fetlocks. It was subtle, but I could see it and made the vet work him up. Turned out he had a compression in his neck that was affecting his muscle tone and that was causing the dropped fetlocks. Essentially, his neck was broken. Really a shame about him. He was a lovely boy.

I believe in research. How else can future generations be spared the heartbreak from diseases that do not yet have a cure? That said I always want some ashes for an urn so I can remember the good times. And there are always many good times.

[skydy]

Is there any news yet LordHelpus? Hang in there. :yes:

[Lord_Helpus]

@skydy

Is there any news yet LordHelpus? Hang in there. :yes:

Vet is very backed up and the biopsy will take a while. I am taking Goobs to his clinic on Thursday. So results mid next week. In the meantime, he is having a wonderful time running around in his (and Petey’s) 4 acre field.

[halt]

There’s no way to say this nicely but DSLD/EPSA is not exactly uncommon in WBs. I really hope that’s not what Goob has but like I said in the other thread, do your due diligence if it is and let his breeders know.

I keep seeing people bring up TBs with EPSA/DSLD but in my lifetime with horses I’ve almost exclusively seen it in WBs with very little to no recent blood. Just in my own experience, it seems most common in warmbloods and paso finos. I’ve met one TB with it and dozens of WBs with ESPA. And one Standie.

W/R is a very common pairing in the WB world, as it is a “nick” (desired/complimentary pairing).

I’m tired of the tip-toeing around people are doing about this problem where they do everything but name the stallion, which often times means only those in the know are able to piece together the clues to decipher who it is. Is it fear of litigation or is it something else?

The “F Line Stallion” vaguely mentioned above by a poster is Fuerstenball. His grandsire Florestan also has soft pasterns. Lax pasterns/soft pasterns are fairly common in WBs.

Cornell’s stallion a poster mentioned in a different thread was, I believe, Waterford. There are several Waterfords at stud.

[mvp]

@halt

Cornell’s stallion a poster mentioned in a different thread was, I believe, Waterford. There are several Waterfords at stud.

Since we are naming names, it was not Waterford. It was the KWPN stallion from the 1990s. I thought I remembered his name and when I googled it up to be sure, I saw the wrong horse. Now I honest-to-God can’t remember the name.

He stood at Cornell at the same time as Obelisk, who I also met while I was there.

[Donella]

I am really sorry to hear about your boy. We imported a PRE stallion from Spain a little over two years ago (age 9) and he passed the prepurchase ( done by the Spanish team vet) with flying colours. Shortly after arrival, he started to show lameness in his one stifle, very subtle, but fairly persistent. We would inject the stifle and 4 months later the hocks would be bothering him, 6 months later it was his fetlocks. It was super odd. He is not built at all straight behind ( actually, he is sickle hocked as many Spanish horses are) and not soft in the pasterns. My vet has experience with DSLD and got thinking that maybe he is in the early stages of the disease. He performed an US of the hind suspensories and thought they looked " typical" of horses with DSLD ie “moth eaten” in appearance. We did the nuchal ligament biopsy and it confirmed that he does indeed have the disease. Obviously, I have since done a lot of reading and am more familiar with the disease and as a breeder of Hanoverian horses, this terrifies me. There are some very popular stallions that are currently being heavily used that either have extremely poor conformation behind or they have DSLD. Without the nuchal ligament biopsy there is no way to know disease status of a stallion but if they have the outward symptoms of the disease I will be steering absolutely clear. I shudder to think of the repercussions if some of these popular stallions DO actually have DSLD.

[CanteringCarrot]

@Donella

I am really sorry to hear about your boy. We imported a PRE stallion from Spain a little over two years ago (age 9) and he passed the prepurchase ( done by the Spanish team vet) with flying colours. Shortly after arrival, he started to show lameness in his one stifle, very subtle, but fairly persistent. We would inject the stifle and 4 months later the hocks would be bothering him, 6 months later it was his fetlocks. It was super odd. He is not built at all straight behind ( actually, he is sickle hocked as many Spanish horses are) and not soft in the pasterns. My vet has experience with DSLD and got thinking that maybe he is in the early stages of the disease. He performed an US of the hind suspensories and thought they looked " typical" of horses with DSLD ie “moth eaten” in appearance. We did the nuchal ligament biopsy and it confirmed that he does indeed have the disease. Obviously, I have since done a lot of reading and am more familiar with the disease and as a breeder of Hanoverian horses, this terrifies me. There are some very popular stallions that are currently being heavily used that either have extremely poor conformation behind or they have DSLD. Without the nuchal ligament biopsy there is no way to know disease status of a stallion but if they have the outward symptoms of the disease I will be steering absolutely clear. I shudder to think of the repercussions if some of these popular stallions DO actually have DSLD.

If you feel comfortable, what is the breeding of your PRE? You can PM me if you’d like.

I have theories/noticed that a certain lineage in the breed is prone to/shows symptoms of DSLD. No one really talks about it though.

[Donella]

Cantering Carrot, he is by Esplendido iv and out of a mare by Prometido x Ocle . Ours was an approved stallion and from a top dam line and when we had purchased him we thought when/if he was retired from riding that we could maybe stand him. He has never been used and in light of the recent findings we ended up castrating him (obviously). Is DSLD fairly common in the PRE horses ?

[Dressagelvr]

So sorry to hear about your horse. The only horses I’ve personally known with it were TBs.

[CanteringCarrot]

@Donella

Cantering Carrot, he is by Esplendido iv and out of a mare by Prometido x Ocle . Ours was an approved stallion and from a top dam line and when we had purchased him we thought when/if he was retired from riding that we could maybe stand him. He has never been used and in light of the recent findings we ended up castrating him (obviously). Is DSLD fairly common in the PRE horses ?

It does not appear to be common thus far, but there just isn’t much chatter about it, which doesn’t mean it’s not there. IME it isn’t fairly common and the Spanish are fairly decent at culling breeding stock, but a disease that can present itself later on can be a bit more difficult if you’ve already bred the horse.

I would not breed a horse that has DSLD or has passed it. I have a gelding that would make a great stallion due to temperament, movement, and is a great example of the breed (morphological showing lines), but he self mutilates. It’s 95‰ gone with gelding, but I know it’s something he could have passed on. I just can’t pass that on to other owners and keep that going within the breed. I’ve still kept him around since he’s a great guy otherwise and I truly enjoy having him.

There are 2 other lines that may potentially carry DSLD that I’ve been watching, but not within the breeding of your horse, so this is interesting. Spanish horse hind leg conformation can also be misleading at times since a lot of them can be straight or sickle hocked and sink a little further down at the pasterns but not have DSLD or any serious issues.