Well shut the forum down, No one can ask questions anymore.
of course OP is going to talk to her vet. She has to in order to get a script or inject. But they asked for opinions… so we gave them.
Is it possible that this horse doesn’t have arthritis at all, but instead has some other medical issue causing issues? Yes, but at 22 I would bet money on there being arthritis somewhere in there.
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I agree with you that in humans we avoid injections for as long as we can. There are limits on how many a human can get, and there’s a limit on how often. When you inject, it does also lead to the acceleration of the joint breaking down – so I personally go to injections as a last resort.
However, your gelding is older – so I’d think injections would be OK for him. That being said, I’m all about trying other things BEFORE injections. Frankly, injections can be very expensive and there’s always a risk with them.
If it were my horse… I’d have a basic lameness exam done. I think your horse probably is lacking a lot of the muscling and fitness he needs to canter. Yes he probably has some arthritis too, but he might just need more fitness.
I’d talk with your vet. And ask about adequan! It is an IM injection. I think it’s a great “first step” before hock injections. It’s less expensive and less invasive.
I personally try to avoid long term drugs of any sort. For myself and for my horse. Now I know sometimes some of us and some of them need a little bit of something to move comfortably, but I think you have a lot of options.
Good luck! Keep us posted!
First, asking a vet is the best choice here.
But for what its worth, I’ve had similar conversations with my vet. In an older horse like this, you might actually see more improvement with Equiox, as there may be something going on in more than just the hocks. I mean, he’s older and its not out of the realm of reasonable.
However, if the vet says it really is ONLY the hocks, the injections can be great. And you’re not ruining your horse by doing them.
My vet usually will offer both options, and let me decide which makes the most sense depending on budget and the horse in question.
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Your response made me laugh; thank you. I also want to clarify for Laurierace that I wasn’t asking for “what was wrong with the horse,” I was asking for personal experiences in Equioxx and injections.
For the sake of updating, the vet was actually able to come out earlier than I thought, which is great. He had some chiropractic work done and was immediately moving a lot better, but of course at 22 she did believe he was arthritic. (He creaks and pops like old wood floors, you could hear him halfway across the farm.) We want to see if he maintains comfortably on regular chiropractic maintenance work before deciding on what to do next, but it’ll likely be something along the lines of adequan injections since the doctor was worried about the side-effects of long term use of NSAIDS. Which is certainly a concern of mine as well. A can to beat down the road and think about some more for sure.
Thanks again for ya’ll’s input!
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I have several older horses, and here’s my general order of operations as they get older:
When I see them get a little “creaky”, maybe they are picking up the canter worse than usual, or just overall impressions watching them go in lessons, I put them on Equioxx daily. I usually see good improvement from this. If after some time I feel like they need a little more help, I go to Pentosan, monthly IM injection. Adequan is of course the ‘gold standard’ but I have seen really good results with Pentosan and it’s much cheaper. During all of this I also reduce their work load as needed, so perhaps at some point they no longer jump, but teach beginners to wtc and go over poles.
I have done and still do joint injections for competition horses, when I feel them be a little weak or note a decreased performance. I have always experienced drastic improvement with joint injections.
As a note, if I think I’m going the joint injection route, I would do a full soundness evaluation including radiographs for sure.
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