Catching up on all posts here. Apologies for going awol.
A little update for anyone in future looking through threads.
I ended up deciding to retire this guy. He’s oddly been very sound since my last post. Clearly the hock injections made a difference however it was quite delayed from what vet mentioned for effectiveness.
Since the above ride, he was on 3 day a week schedule, light riding and mostly bridleless and saddleless. He truly loved the change and was extremely happy.
We noticed some odd coincidences though from watching videos from past rides. He seemed to get sore when he raised his neck, long and low didn’t seem to be affected.
A vet specialist mentioned sending him to have a procedure where they inject a dye to see the whole body and then decide how to proceed. The procedure is mid four figures not even starting with any treatments.
It was a super tough decision, seeing as I’m already a small fortune into trying to make him fully riding sound yet he is perfectly happy as a normal horse I opted to allow him to retire and step down.
While I’m very discouraged I felt in my gut that this is the right decision. After all horses allow us to ride them by choice, it’s not a requirement.
He will now spend the rest of his days being loved on, playing games (he loves his soccer ball) and some light riding every now and then.
Can’t say I didn’t shed a tear for what could have been a really cool future experience for me, but he’s already done that for others. 
Not to mention he absolutely loves to do some liberty type work without tack, yet my poor butt definitely prefers a saddle 
A big part of what I have learned here, we must adjust our expectations in not only our horses but life, sometimes we are given exactly what we need even if we don’t know it yet. This guy teaches me every day that horses are seriously fun friends that like to play with us, it isn’t just about training big sticks. 
