Mare goes out of her way to shift her weight away from right front leg only while standing. Literally hanging on the crossties and today looked like in a fair bit of pain. Vet has been called but it’s a head scratcher for me.
No classic laminitis posture, nice, clean hooves. She could do with some extra weight so I wouldn’t call her high risk. In fact farrier saw her on Tuesday and didn’t notice anything off which was the first day I noticed the funny posture. Rode her that day, she wasn’t off (had others watch me) but felt unusually stiff. I thought maybe I put her into too much work and then went away for a week so she was just feeling like we all do after a pause…
Yesterday funny posture (tilting her neck to the left) was still there so I checked her at liberty and then lunged her to specifically check for lameness. Looked pretty good to me and her stiffness improved a lot over the session. Felt quite even on the lunge in the end.
Today the posture was still there so decided to have a very, very hard look and noticed the sinking on one side of her chest. It finally clicked to me that it wasn’t stiffness as much as it was her shifting her weight away from that foot! Made me feel really really stupid! But still no heat or swelling anywhere, specifically checked the hoof. Today she came up mildly lame 1/5, which turned quite obvious when lunged on hard ground I’d say 3/5 and reluctance to trot. Then more lame when back on soft ground than prior to lunging on hard ground but not head bobbing and no reluctance, maybe 2 out of 5.
Could this be an abscess? A strange case of founder? I just haven’t seen a horse with either that seems to be pretty ok to move but not to stand on hard ground?
Anyone ever seen this before?