Hard swollen fetlocks without heat

[About_Time1]

This is such a long story so I’ll be as brief as I can. Basically this is an eight year old Chincoteague pony who I use for lessons and over the last year she has become more and more lame in her back end. I’ve had a number of tests done such as vitamin e, (she was low and this has been addressed) Lyme disease, (she was negative) and PSSM (also negative).

Started off as a stiffness but seemed to work out of it ok. Then one day I saw that after asking her to lift a hind leg for having her feet picked, she developed a muscle spasm in her hamstring. I rubbed it a while but wouldn’t stop spasming. Confused I picked the other hind foot and the same thing happened to that hamstring. I called my vet and we wondered about vitamin e so tested her and she was low. I learned now that without supplementation or a lot of good grass, most horses are going to be low. Supplemented high doses for a month and she didn’t improve. Did Lyme test and was negative. Treated her with a months of doxycycline anyways because my vet feels there are so many tick diseases we don’t even know about so she wanted to cover our bases. We have a huge tick load here so I agreed with her. This didn’t help her.

At this point I began really digging in and researching to figure out what was going on and wondered about PSSM so had her tested and she was negative. Meantime I noticed a small amount of swelling in the backs of her fetlocks. All four of them. I had my vet again to look but she just didn’t know. And she grew worse. She didn’t want her pasture mates near her so she stayed away. She didn’t want them to push her around at all. She walked slow and cautiously at all times and had much trepidation about stepping over the little ledge in her stall doorway that keeps her sawdust in that’s about 5" high.

Then she started to be mostly lame on the right hind so had my vet X-ray from stifle to hoof and could find nothing wrong. That was a few weeks ago. Now today she is beyond lame on the left hind. Like she literally cannot walk anywhere. I’ve called my vet of course so I have her foot wrapped in case it’s an abscess in her hoof (but I really don’t think so) and have poulticed both hinds and wrapped and gave her bute.

I feel so badly for this sweet pony and hoping for some ideas to be pointed to. The fact that all four fetlocks have hard swelling makes me think this is something systemic possibly. You cannot put a dent in it even if you push hard with fingertips and she doesn’t seem to mind pressure on it much. I really appreciate your advice everyone. Thank you.

[candyappy]

I am sorry your poor girl is going through this. No ideas except maybe a new vet so you can get another opinion and maybe an answer.

[China_Doll]

all 4 swelling seems normal for a horse that isn’t walking much. You didn’t mention any flexion tests to narrow down the one leg or ultrasound which normally comes before xrays. Have you tried a good chiro?

[About_Time1]

We didn’t do flexions because it was obvious for a long time it was her right hind. There was no question about it. So we X-rayed the entire leg. And now it is the left hind (however I am certain the RH still really bothers her).

I agree one would think the swelling could be from not moving around much but I actually don’t think this is the case because it’s very hard swelling. This is not edema. And it is only in the back bulbous part of the fetlock. Not the actual joint itself. There is no fill above the fetlock.

[Angela_Freda]

So you wouldn’t describe it as coonfooted or potato fetlocks?
interesting. Jingles.

[hunterjumper98]

The first thing that comes to my mind is the neuromuscular disease called shivers. The spasms or trembling of the hind legs when raised is one of the main signs of it. It can also present in the hamstrings and tail. It also can cause the horse to experience severe stiffness or tension in the hind legs, which could explain her reluctance to move around. Another red flag for me is when you said that it has progressively gotten worse. Shivers gets progressively worse over time. How does her gait look when she is backed? Horses with shivers have gait abnormalities when asked to back and have a lot of difficulty doing so.

The swelling in the fetlocks is typical in horses that have mobility issues. It is just her body’s response to the lack of movement it needs.

I am betting that this horse has shivers. However, I am not a vet, so I would ask your vet’s opinion on this possibly being a case of shivers.

[PeteyPie]

Did you do a muscle biopsy to rule out PSSM or just the blood test? The blood test only tests for one type.

Another thought: what about equine systemic proteoglycan accumulation (ESPA)/DSLD? It can cause all sorts of weird symptoms.

[About_Time1]

My vet does not think this is shivers because she has not once picked her legs up and had a shivers like response not once. She can back up ok. Well till now. She is hardly moving at all right now. She did have muscle spasm in the hamstring a couple times but that was the extent of it. And she has not had that happen for many months now so I’m thinking that would not just go away.

My vet has been called. And we are going to look into DSLD as a possibility. She has very normal hind end conformation but I read there’s an upright version of this disease so we will look into that next. Scary to think she could have that at 8 years old!

[neversaynever]

I was going to suggest a suspensory problem. We have one that presented first with swollen fetlocks in the rear. The rear fetlocks have gradually dropped; the fronts are fine. We don’t know if it was an acute injury (swelling occurred almost overnight), a result of a long term issue that caused the horse to shift a lot of its weight to the rear, or DSLD. The horse was older and is a pasture pet.

[IPEsq]

Yeah unfortunately it sounds like DSLD is a possibility. Because it’s a systemic disease, it’s been discovered recently to be able to affect younger horses as far as lameness and pain, although you may not get the dropping until later.

[Angela_Freda]

My horse, when he started with the DSLD/ESPA, had a wide variety of issues as well, and he also had ulcers which preceded the DSLD/ESPA expression.
He lost weight really fast [ulcers], and was really sensitive, itchy. It was actually quite a while until his fetlocks really dropped and his hocks were straight.

DSLD/ESPA isn’t, as it seems you’re aware, just about fetlocks/suspensories.

There’s some good info. about diagnosis and prognosis online, look for Dr Kellon and Halpern.
I personally take with a grain of salt anything by the group [previously a Yahoo group] run by a lady who goes by ‘Bunny’ because she also sells an herbal concoction she insists helps, and she has a grasp of science and studies that is wishy-washy and tends to assign causation from correlation…

[About_Time1]

Thank you all. I fear that this is DSLD. I’ve been reading about it all morning and she just has so many of the symptoms. I can’t believe this can happen to her so young. Looking back the warning signs most likely started a year ago and possibly before. She has always been a saintly pony from the start and I wonder now if that isn’t somewhat due to the fact that she was already starting to become slightly uncomfortable although not lame so she didn’t really feel up to misbehavior the way a green pony might. I feel so badly. My vet will come tomorrow and ultrasound the suspensories and see what those look like. I bet not good.

[findeight]

Have you run a blood panel? Are you tracking her temperature? Blood tests aren’t that expensive neither is a thermometer even if all they do is rule things out.

Just a thought, there’s a whole bunch of things involving the stifles that get lumped together as stringhalt, might want to look into that and might want to look higher up in the back end for a fracture in the pelvis or hip. Those can present as all sorts of things except what and where they really are plus it’s not an easy area to image.

No idea on the firm “swelling”. But it’s best to keep an open mind and look at a variety of causes and not assume based on guesses, even educated ones. It gets really expensive treating what isn’t wrong. Plus that, there could be more then one thing going on, like something systemic and an injury.

If the next appointment doesn’t reveal a confirmed answer, might consider a clinic visit where there’s access to better diagnostics then are on the vets truck. Second opinion never hurts and can often be done as a consult with exsisting diagnostic review. Competent General Practioner working on location should not object to having a specialist take a look…if they did they’d be my ex Vet.