I’m sure they are terribly disappointed, but it’s wonderful that they are doing the right thing for this horse. I hope he has a soft landing.
I’ve been unable to find any videos of his gaits. Does anyone have a link?
Thank s
There must have been a point where his gaits looked fine - given the PS after his name, he came from the Schockemohle operation to the French stud, probably not under saddle. Its a cervical spine-related problem so signs are going to be anything from mildly neurological, stiffness, vague unsoundness to possible reactive behavior. Some can be asymptomatic. I’d guess it began to be more evident as he was put in ridden work.
I have a horse that we suspected had ECVM;CT scan showed him to have bone changes in the c6-c7 along with spinal compression and some other milder changes higher in the neck, but not the type of malformations seen in ECVM.
It would be interesting to know his breeding…the condition is inherited.
He’s by Zonik out of La Doria PS.
The post linked above said the first two ribs were also affected so I was wondering if his fore legs were hyper “expressive”
Interesting. Symptoms tend to be in the other direction when they show up - stilted, short, etc. But entirely possible that as a youngster he could have looked quite expressive. I’m no expert on this, lol.
Here is an interesting article. https://www.thirzahendriks.com/post/the-un-balanced-horse
Thank you @2tempe and @Greymaresrule for these articles.
As a past owner of Arabs, and Anglo-Arab and a 7/8 Arab/ASB cross I am now wondering if they had this C-6-C7 malformation. Why? I could NOT get them going “straight”, at all. They would try but then say NO. They also showed other subtle signs that could also indicate this malformtion.
Since I do not ride dressage or show in performance classes I just adapted to whatever the horse willingly gave me. They were not perfect by any means but as long as I did not TORTURE them to try and get what they could not give me, they gave me good if “imperfect” rides and they mostly obeyed me within their physical abilities.
Right now I would really hesitate to buy a horse of any breed that was considerably cheaper than the normal. From my experience, either consciously with malice or unconsciously with no malice at all, amateurs end up with the imperfect horses, often buying them because they are cheaper than the norm. I would also insist on proper X-rays of the C6-C7 vertebrae.
I WAS assuming that my many failures of training or riding were because of ME, and when I learned I have MS I ended up blaming my own disabilities. But now I am wondering if it was not necessarily me, but a hidden bone problem that no one can see without deep imaging of the proper place on a horse.
I had an interesting “problem” with two lesson horses I was riding when I got a Wellep bit that was the original style of the Wellep bit. In the Wellep bit there is a steel cable that goes through the hollow bit cannon. With the original version I found out that when I asked the horse to do the tighter turns I heard this “zing” from the cable going through the bit as the horse put its head and neck in the best place for this particular horse doing this particular movement with me. With regular bits (milder snaffles) the horses did not protest, but given a choice they altered their head and neck from what they did in a regular bit. The horses also relaxed better wearing this particular Wellep bit than they did with the later version of the Wellep bit where they did not have the freedom to move their muzzle as much from side-to-side.
Could a lot of performance horses end up as lesson horses because they have this malformation and they just cannot deliver what their performance riders want? Could lesson horses (and amateur horses) not deliver what their conformation promises because of this?
I am going to talk with my riding teachers about this. I will have to hunt for and dig out my old-style Wellep bit with the cable that is free to “zing” through the cannons to use as a possible indication of this problem. I am now deeply wedded to the titanium Fager bits, but the horses will just have to put up with the yucky (to them) taste of the stainless steel to get more possible information about what is happening hidden deep under several layers of muscles.
All these lesson horses end up light-in-hand when I have ridden them for months. A lot of their resistances to the bit can be from bad training, but now I am considering that this neck problem may have a great deal to do with their reluctance to moving in the “proper” manner.
Reading these articles I am now so glad that I listen when the horses tell me “NO, I cannot do this.” I refuse to torture horses who do not give me exactly what I want, and now it looks like this adds to my safety riding these horses since I am not unnecessarily adding to their pain.
Thank you again for these articles!
I don’t think it’s a cheap versus expensive horse issue. The stallion in question sold for between $30,000 and $40,000 which seems expensive to me though I guess it’s not that expensive in the warmblood market!
It’s hard to image that area but if I was buying a WB I would want it done.
It’s also not an Arabian issue? While it is true that many Arabians have one less Lumbar Vertebrae that doesn’t mean they automatically have EVCM. I’m not sure where that came from.
Your riding situation is quite unique.
The first article said that Arabians got it too.
The Arabians–there is a WHOLE lot of inbreeding/linebreeding in the Arabian breed. Yes my preferred group had more inbreeding than the norm of the breed, but if one goes way, way back in the pedigrees of the Crabbet Arabian horses there was a LOT of inbreeding/linebreeding in the breed. For instance one mare whose pedigree I got into deep had over 400 lines going back to Mesaoud, the straight old-Egyptian stallion that got imported to Crabbet Park in England where he was used extensively to the original Blunt imported horses from the desert.
A more modern example of an extensively used Arabian stallion in more modern times is *Bask, imported from Poland by Lasma Farms. He had more sons and daughters than any other stallion in the American Arabian stud book.
Most modern Arabians are highly line-bred, even those who do not have recent inbreeding. All you have to do is go back 6 to 10 generations back in the pedigree and there it is, Mesaoud, Skowronek, and in this country there was a fashion to use the Skowronek sons *Raffles (from a father/daughter mating) and *Raseyn, now mostly deep, deep back in the pedigrees. *Raffles especially left many lines that were either inbred or heavily line-bred, and those are not the only ones.
When I did the inbreeding cooefficients on my pure Davenports they were had inbreeding cooefficients of around 25%. The stallion *Hamrah left a lot of daughters, who in turn produced more daughters and highly important breeding stallions in this country. In more modern times within the Davenports the stallion Tripoli (head stallion at Craver Farms) was used heavily.
If this C6-C7 malformation was around in the original Davenport importation the genes for it were in my two pure Davenports and probably in my Anglo-Arab half Davenport.
I have a hpothesis. Us amateurs, full of starry eyes, get these horses for less than some others of the same breeding because the Horse Gods want them to have a good home where these horses may end up not being tortured for not being “perfect”. Somebody has to be there to give a decent home to these poor horses.
I am too old to buy another horse. If I were so crazy as to buy one I would try to get proper X-rays of the C6-C7 vertebrae, just so I could ride and train the horse (and let my riding teacher use it in her lesson program) with a clear conscience.
Sometimes I wonder why horses don’t just kill us humans since we can cause them so much pain without even meaning to.
it is worth noting that many horses can get spinal arthritis as they age. In my old TB it did not show up until in his 20’s. More recently my WB was diagnosed as noted above at only 10 yrs old. Some can have true malformations that only become symptomatic when they get to the higher levels of dressage (or jumping) and have to truly use their whole body. The symptoms of “regular” arthritic changes are pretty much the same as the symptom of malformation - and those are similar to EPM, Lyme and PSSM, all of which we ruled out.
Also worth noting that it can be difficult to a true look at C-7 and deeper to T-1 joints with x-rays. My horse was ultimately diagnosed based on a CT scan/myelogram. The myelogram shows where the spinal cord is being compressed. Its a murky thing, for sure.
ECVM is most commonly found in large, fast-growing, long-backed/necked horses. In other words, the complete opposite body type of the typical Arabian. It can be found in just about any breed of horse but is far, far more common in TBs and warm bloods than Arabians.
It also has nothing to do with line breeding, unless one is line breeding specifically for the types of horses predisposed to developing ECVM.
Thank you for confirming 
The post says he is missing the first two ribs. That seems to be a bit more unusual than a typical ECVM variation.
My short-backed, compact Lusitano has it.
“Most commonly found” doesn’t mean “only found”.
I believe the point is that it is highly unlikely ALL of Jackie’s horses that didn’t go well under her had ECVM.
I’m sorry
