I’ve mulled over posting this because I’m worried everyone is going to tell me my horse has some sort of catastrophic injury or disease (torn ligament, EPM, etc.) but I’m at a loss.
My horse is a 19 year old Dutch Warmblood gelding who campaigned in the 3’-3’6 for over ten years very successfully and soundly. We always did any maintenance he needed in terms of joint injections and he seemed to stay very comfortable. From the day we bought him (10 years ago) he had always had a slight “catch” behind on occasion- kind of felt like a flat tire for a second. It was very subtle and only happened occasionally. We always chalked it up to being “him.” Recently though, he feels as though his whole back end is falling out from underneath of him. This happens most frequently at the trot. Sometimes it’s so bad that he recovers from it shaking his head and going into the canter. Picking up speed is not common for this horse- he is a very lazy hunter type. We’ve also noticed that when he jumps he lands from the jumps very short, shallow, and “stabby” which is uncharacteristic for this horse. He’s a big stridey horse that typically lopes over the jumps.
We’ve had the vet out and did a full lameness exam. She saw him do it on the lunge line but I feel as though he’s worse under saddle. In the past three months he has had his hocks and coffin joints injected, which seemed to make no difference with the tripping. According to the vet he travels well behind and did not flex positive enough to have his stifles done. He’s also a cushings horse so we have to be careful with steroid injections. Our most recent experiment was a 5 day bute trial. I gave him off for a over a week before starting the bute. On Day 4 of the bute trial I hacked him. The tripping had not improved and was even worse/more frequent in my opinion, which leads me to believe it could be related to his fitness or conditioning. However, he was doing the 3’ earlier this summer, so he’s really not “out of shape” per se. I asked about him being neurologic, but she said since he rarely does it at the canter, that seems unlikely.
I’m at a loss. I’m staying off of him until the vet come next week to reevaluate. I don’t want to keep riding him if he has some sort of injury or is uncomfortable. In July I showed him in the 3’ and he felt wonderful and now he feels awful. We moved barns in March and switched farriers so a part of me wonders if it could be related to that, but he was going well in July. The farriers at this barn are also very good and well respected. My main priority is keeping the horse happy. He certainly doesn’t need to do 3’ anymore; I just want him to retire comfortably.
