I have a BOT liner but haven’t tried it yet. I also. Looking at getting a red light pad for him.
Fingers crossed! He’s not super sore just mildly so hopefully getting him moving more will help
I thought this article was really good and informative.
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I’ve used a heated blanket and heating pad in the winter, my guy looooves it. Worth it to help warm up the muscles.
I am 3 years after doing mesotherapy, with yearly hock injections, my soon to be 21 year old is cruising like a champ, we started calling him Benjamin Button because he’s getting better and holding well. His top lines disappears quickly with down time, but that’s age. Its stressful as he needs to stay in work for his backs benefit, which is hard when its freezing out, but we make it work.
KS is a hard struggle, but once you find the right concoction for your horse, you stop worrying as much and get to enjoy the fun again.
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Lunged him finally the other day and he looked pretty dang good. It was in the “spooky” corner of the outdoor jump arena though and he was a wee bit silly so hopefully adrenaline wasn’t masking too much!
I do think he lost a bit of muscle unfortunately. But he had a chiropractic appointment last Sunday and she said that he did look pretty good in his back. So fingers crossed that we can get him going again and feeling good.
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Tagging a few of you that I know are TB people. This is alarming. A 7 year old TB with known cervical arthritis and kissing spine in so much discomfort that he is refusing to breed.
What do the big TB farms do? Continue to inject him with testosterone 2× per week, then IV vitamins until until he dies from anaphylactic shock. Despite knowing this is a pain problem.
The TB farms know. They just don’t care. And we, the general public, get to deal with the aftermath.
Read the article. It’s very eye opening.
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Very disturbing but not surprising… 
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Laoban’s case is very complicated. There was a lot that had to go wrong – and did – the day he got the cocktail meant to help him.
I am of two minds on this subject. The first mind is the ‘race’ mind; these are horses whose prime is their 2-3 y/o year and then if they are good enough, they are sent to the breeding shed. Anything that happens after is irrelevant – this is racing’s current market model. Until this changes, it’s going to be very difficult to get large breeding operations to care about a horse’s life long term. These large operations do care about aftercare, to be clear – but it’s a different argument that these horses produced by breeding organizations like WinStar had these problems in utero. Until there is significant evidence that proves these are genetic components, large breeding organizations aren’t going to step up. There is so much that happens to a horse from the day it is born to the day it becomes a riding horse to the time it is middle aged; at this point a horse has several thousand days to hurt itself, get injured, get caught in something, fall down, get a riding or race injury, etc, and any of these injuries could be environmental versus congenital.
My second line of thought about this is that a stallion in the race horse breeding shed has a very different bodily demand than a horse that is used casually in a riding program. Breeding is incredibly hard on these stallions and most of them are booked with almost no respite; you might think breeding is a dream career but there is so much required of the body just to even mount a mare, much less continually produce enough semen to breed multiple mares day in and out. These stallions are used hard - and while they’re often given therapies to accomodate this use, it doesn’t change the fact that a body can only do so much before it disintegrates.
That’s assuming the horse retired sound, which they never do. There is growing evidence that some cervical arthritis is related to work load, not genetics - and it’s very rare for a horse to retire from racing without some form of significant skeletal remodeling.
That being said - as much as I loved Laoban and loved several of his offspring, I’m not surprised he had clinically diagnosed kissing spine or cervical arthritis based on his pedigree. I do not like Indian Charlie for riding disciplines and I would never double up on Danzig, for these reasons. However, there is no literally no denying both of these stallions were powerhouses in the respective discipline they were bred for – which is racing.
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Maybe I am oversimplifying, but my thoughts are these:
Laoban was a very lightly raced horse. Not uncommon at the level of the game that he was playing, but it isn’t as if he had a lengthy or difficult career. 2 starts at two and 7 starts at three years, for a total of 9 starts. He never ran after Aug of his three year old year.
Agree that the life of a breeding stallion is incredibly strenuous. But he was only 7 years of age. That is a fairly young horse.
To develop degenerative CA by 7 years of age, to me that stood out. At that point he was been in enough discomfort to not be able to breed. Who knows how early he was symptomatic?
The diagnosis wouldn’t have bothered me as much in a teenaged stallion. But we are talking about a young horse who would have had his whole life ahead of him, post race career.
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It’s early to really tell, but when I was watching my trainer ride him this week, I think he was probably chewing the bit, for the first time, maybe ever. It was relaxed chewing too. Really good to see and I think says something about the state of his back. Hopefully it continues 
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I wasn’t sure how he was going to be today. When I walked out to get him he saw me and walked off a few steps. Which is unusual. Typically he’s pretty happy to see me and walks towards me. But he does stop and wait for me after a few steps.
I had wanted to put this Western length back on track pad on him for 20 minutes before the ride but he was so utterly muddy and it took me too long to groom him. So we ended up putting it under his normal pad (it’s a very thin pad) and riding in it. He seemed to like. My trainer noticed he was a little more forward today.
I couldn’t tell if he was a little back sore or not though. Maybe a little in his lower back. But my farrier postponed the appointment by a few weeks so he is at like 9 or 10 weeks in a cycle. It was making me nervous and I’m sure not helping him in any way. Thankfully he gets done tomorrow. My farrier usually is good about appointments so hopefully this won’t become regular.
I’m going to put him back on Roboxin for a bit if he seems sore. And probably make a mesotherapy appointment for March.
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How often do you have to do the mesotherapy?
Well I’ve heard different things… A former trainer at the barn told me to do it every 6 weeks but that seems like a lot. The vet I used for it (not my regular vet) told me it should last about 4 to 6 months. He got in October.
When I’ve looked online it sounds like about twice a year is recommended.
I think it cost me like $240 or so.
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Did you see that Gillian Higgins is doing a KS webinar in March? Should have info on the Horses Inside Out website.
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I just have to say I sure appreciate my horse!
Currently he’s only being ridden once a week by my trainer. Because my doctor told me I still can’t ride yet. And I honestly just don’t have the money for full training at the moment It’s definitely not ideal but I’m able to keep up on a lot of groundwork. I’m hoping in the next 2 to 3 weeks will be able to start riding or get more training rides!
But I sure have to appreciate my 6-year-old horse that is not in a lot of intense work right now. And we pull him out, with his Kissing Spine and wonky stifles and he still just goes to work like a little gentleman!
There was another boarder riding a mare, who is quite the diva, and I had to chuckle… Watching my gelding going around looking happy as a clam was a real contrast to the other horse who was pinning her ears and shaking her head at every transition. Very opinionated thing.
I’ve been using back on track pads on them and he seems to really enjoy them. When I put it on yesterday he started licking and chewing within 5 minutes.
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Hi, May I make a suggestion for a minor change to your setup? If you can get 2 car wash sponges and tape them on either side of your surcingle, you’ll lift it up off his back enough to guarantee spinal channel clearance. Hope you don’t mind me making this suggestion, but it’s cheap and easy and alleviates any spine pressure. Good luck with your rehab! Your horse is adorable!
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Thank you! It does lift off the back a little bit but not much so I can certainly experiment that in something for a little more lift. Will do, thank you 
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An Ogilvy or really any half pad with spinal clearance can work too! The bath sponge method is tried and true, though not exactly pretty 
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Oh! I have two half pads with spine clearance so that’s an option for sure
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He’s been great this week. Moved really well and happy with my trainer on Thursday. And I’ve kept up with his groundwork although no long lining lately. I do lunge once a week but only for 5 or 10 minutes at the most.
Just handwalking (head down) around the farm. There are two gentle slopes and one fairly steep hill. So I walk him around and up those. We back up in hand (head down, not braced), turn on the forehand, turn on the haunches. Then I walk him over poles and some raised cavaletti.
And at least 2 or 3 times a week I do carrot stretches and stretch his legs and stuff.
I think more work will be beneficial but so far he’s doing well. The more he gets out, the better.
I have a vet check in two weeks and plan do mesotherapy again most likely. Saddle fitter comes for a recheck in April. Feeling like we have a good plan here.
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Alright so I had a new vet out, Just a fresh set of eyes. They did pretty extensive palpations. My horse was feeling spring yesterday apparently and was honestly kind of wild lol which is not his normal at all. But it seemed in the air yesterday.
Shee said his back didn’t seem too bad but he was a bit sore in his left SI. And she thought he had a little inflammation on his hind cornet bands. He also was a little tight in his hamstrings. Flexions weren’t very exciting or conclusive.
So we opted to x-ray his hind feet as it’s about the only thing I haven’t x-rayed on the horse. He didn’t have a negative angle behind but was pretty flat. More on the left than the right. There was some inflammation in the coffin bone on the left. So we’re going to do some trimming changes/shoes and go from there.
I’m still going to do the mesotherapy next week and see how that makes him feel. She wants to give that a month to see what happens. If he’s still not spectacular we might try zycosan. Or an SI injection. Although him being sore in his SI has not been a consistent but he has been sore in his SI occasionally like twice type thing. It’ll be interesting to see what changing the feet does honestly. Of course we had a snowstorm right before this and it’s really muddy out so who knows how that factors into a soreness but either way I want to get him feeling 100% if I can…
I do agree with others that it’s all kind of the big picture. Everything affects everything else. Especially feet!
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