It would be worth a try I think! My friend has an older horse with KS (under the saddle area) who has always been a worker bee kind of a horse. But as he’s gotten older, he became more symptomatic. Hard for him to keep any topline. But it started out as stifles and SI. Treating those eventually stopped working. Recently did surgery and is struggling through the rehab. Horse has always had a weird tail posture, but crooked, not stuck out like these other horses.
I suspect that towards the end, it might have been just too many body parts failing for my horse, because we did get some good progress at times treating the spine issues. Although I did try riding with feet blocked at one point to test behavior without a lot of change, and you’d better believe we went through a lot of saddle search nightmares, I think that he learned that I would be one who listens to him, and so most of his complaints about work were directed at me. He would go for other people. But of course he was not rehome-able. Based on how he had extremely subtle and intermittent lameness in one front foot at the end but the MRI (and dissection) showed a LOT of problems in both front feet, I think he had a lot of pain that just stayed mostly sub-clinical except for behavior. Taking all that into consideration, I think it was somewhat possible to keep his back pain under control. Although we toyed with the idea of putting stem cells in the SIs—had some banked from the first soft tissue injury.
For his back, it helped to keep him warm. I used a BOT back pad when grooming. Always a quarter sheet in any kind of cold weather (his lungs were so big and fit he didn’t sweat much in winter). Helped to have a heated area to tack up. He got very regular bodywork of all kinds and loved it all. It did help to try to keep him moving in some form pretty much every day.
I hope you can get her feeling better!
Thank you. I’m wondering if my horse is seeming extra symptomatic now that she lives outside in Canada winter and I’ve been actively trying not to blanket her much compared to prior years. Going to try and make some small changes to her management and warm up routine and talk to my vet about trying the injection!