Nerve Paralysis & Neurological Symptoms

[Jealoushe]

Hey everyone.

A week ago my event horse came in severely three legged lame, on the left hind. It presented as almost an abscess or break, dragging the toe and not able to control where the leg went. I did the usual, cold hose, poultice, wrap legs etc. He took off his front shoe and twisted it all to hell. My guess is he was running around having fun, over reached, and fell.

After a few days the mild swelling in his fetlock was gone and he was no longer three legged lame but still not right. He was having trouble getting up and down and tripping a lot behind.

The vet has been out twice, and he is a bit neurological in the hind end, where he doesn’t know where his hind legs are (theres a term I just cant think of it). At this point, he is on DEX for 10 days. He has improved, then seemed unhappy and really stiff and miserable for two days, but now again looking happy and moving around the paddock somewhat, albeit slowly and carefully. You can tell he has to really think where to put his legs.

Nerve paralysis is considered as the culprit. He is currently comfortable and seems ok to be pasture sound. He has not tired to trot or canter from my knowledge. Rest and acupuncture is recommended treatment.

If he can’t be ridden again thats OK. He is a war horse with 77 starts and is one in a million and deserves a nice retirement. My concern is his own safety and whether he gets worse, not better with time.

Does anyone have experience with this kind of injury? Advise, good or bad stories? It seems to be a case specific type thing when talking terms of recovery.

[Simkie]

Did you take a look at the neck? Several of us here have horses with neck issues. Mine is stable in retirement but doesn’t move normally. I think it was @Peggy who had a tough one that needed to be euthanised. (Peggy, I’m sorry if I’m misremembering and it was someone else!) @IPEsq has been through a lot with her neck horse.

Steroid injections can be helpful. I find extra vitamin E useful. Presenting so suddenly is a little curious, but perhaps he tweaked himself rolling or rising?

[Jealoushe]

Thanks for the thoughts. His neck was checked - all OK. It is definitely in the hind end/back legs.

He fell in the field, over reached and came down is the guess.

What do you do with the vitamin E? Inject? Apply to the area?

[IPEsq]

Just feed a high dose (10,000 IU+) of a natural Vitamin E supplement.

Did you image the pelvis?

[Jealoushe]

ok thank you. What does that do?

We were not able to image it with the equipment the vet has here. She did do an internal exam and did not feel anything broken in there.

[beowulf]

the term being ‘ataxic’?

jingles to your boy. :no:

the high dose of vit-E would help if it was suspected to be cervical / neurological - would also help with inflammation - when you say the neck was ok, was it x-rayed/ultrasounded?

my wizard of a vet was able to do a scan of the pelvis with regular equipment when my guy had his catastrophic injury and found multiple fractures. the rads were not easily read but told enough of a story we had an idea what we were dealing with. he was in so much pain we couldn’t get him out of the stall, and the ramp-up to the trailer was out of the question. for a few days he was definitely wobbly on his body; the DMSO helped a lot.

but… after he was healed enough for real diagnostics to roll in, we x-rayed his neck and found CA, which was, imho, evidence enough that his fall might have been related to the cervical arthritis. we injected multiple sites once he was completely healed from the pelvis fractures and he was a different horse.

now, that was for a horse that had multiple pelvic fractures…

you may remember my thread about my old man/retired eventer (and first OTTB) who suddenly went ataxic in the field too, a few years ago. he started losing coordination and being weak behind, but blood tests, titers pulled, and a whole host of diagnostics didn’t turn up anything - we thought maybe EPM, or PSSM, tried high-fat/high vit E diet and it helped a little but his EPM titer came back fine… it kept getting worse - i think when it started he was 20. unfortunately his was really extreme in how quickly it came on - we are not sure if he might have bumped himself or had something happen in the paddock that might have triggered what was already brewing, but he had no external marks. it wouldn’t surprise me if he had some serious impingement/channel narrowing given his pedigree (his sire and grandsire both were wobblers cases). his came out of nowhere with quite a vengeance; we managed it for about a year before we decided it would be kinder to put him to sleep, as he had a high opinion of himself and had been a long-standing patriarch for the herd and our family.

he is not running a fever, correct?

no facial or ear paralysis, just hind end uncoordination?

i might ask the vet about some prednisolone in the mean-time; steroids significantly helped my old man while we were looking for causes for his neurological issues.

[Jealoushe]

No fever. Big normal appetite. No facial or ear paralysis. They put him on Dex instead of prednisolone for now. Interesting about the x rays.

That will probably be the next step, if we can figure out a way to x ray him without having to transport him 5+ hours to one of the vet hospitals.

[Peggy]

@Simkie

Did you take a look at the neck? Several of us here have horses with neck issues. Mine is stable in retirement but doesn’t move normally. I think it was @Peggy who had a tough one that needed to be euthanised. (Peggy, I’m sorry if I’m misremembering and it was someone else!) @IPEsq has been through a lot with her neck horse.

Steroid injections can be helpful. I find extra vitamin E useful. Presenting so suddenly is a little curious, but perhaps he tweaked himself rolling or rising?

Yes. That was me. And I just found out about yet another horse from the same breeding program that was euthanized for neuro/cervical issues. That’s now three that I know of.

@OP. By checked you mean radiographs?

[IPEsq]

@Peggy was that other horse related to yours or just same breed? Do you mind PMing me some details? (I’m doing a little shopping for a second horse as a potential resale project right now and you know I am trying NOT to wind up with another horse with the same problems, resale or not).

[Simkie]

It’s not unusual for neck problems to show up as hind limb lameness. Was the neck radiographed?

You feed the vitamin e. It helps with neurological function.

[Jealoushe]

@Peggy

Yes. That was me. And I just found out about yet another horse from the same breeding program that was euthanized for neuro/cervical issues. That’s now three that I know of.

@OP. By checked you mean radiographs?

Yes.

It was not radiographed. The vet didn’t think it was necessary after her function tests she did. If it consensus this should be done by all means we will have it done.

Is there a supplement I can get for vitamin E or would I be looking grain specific?

[Simkie]

@Jealoushe

Is there a supplement I can get for vitamin E or would I be looking grain specific?

For vitamin E:

Powder: https://www.scahealth.com/scah/produ…rse-supplement

Pellets: https://www.scahealth.com/scah/produ…rse-supplement

(Price is roughly the same per 1000IU, go with whatever is most convenient for you :))

Personally, having gone through neck issues, I would spend the couple hundred bucks to clear the neck. It can often be done with portable equipment. If your vet is unfamiliar reading neck rads, send them out to be read–it can be a little tricky to interpret.

[Jealoushe]

Great thanks, I think they can do the neck rads, they are a great practice whom I trust.

Thanks so much for the links on the Vit E!

[IPEsq]

Neck rads are easier to do in the field than pelvis at least! I would also just go ahead and Xray. FWIW, my horse has a few arthritic sites in the neck and other than having less than wonderful range of motion for carrot stretches, you’d never know his neck bothered him through any standard field exams, including chiropractic. But his overall symptoms and response to joint injections in the neck say otherwise.

It would not be unheard of that your horse injured his neck in whatever fall happened. Possibly even a fracture there. Or tweaked something already brewing. You’d be surprised how many people I’ve met dealing with cervical arthritis and associated lameness and ataxia from past fractures, and only in one case did anyone diagnose the initial fracture to begin with.

[Jealoushe]

That’s really interesting.

I did wonder if there was something off to begin with. Riding wise, he was perfectly sound. Eventing, very fit, well muscles and just great overall health.

But he does this thing where he falls asleep, and he almost falls on his face. Like his legs don’t lock, so he will bend them and do a yoga type pose until he wakes himself up and then rights himself. He does it pretty often. Not daily, but once a week for sure. I did advise the vet and she didn’t think it was related but it is possible he has something in the neck causing this, and now, the hind?

[kiwichick]

Neck issues are common TBH, and sadly.
Sometimes a horse that is stiff one way, or seems to have difficulty flexing into one rein can be indicative of CA (the problem is they can be indicitive of one sidedness too!)
One very promising OTTB that I bought after riding him at the track, had exactly what you describe, he was absolutely magic, until one day he wasnt, it was all hind end coordination issues.
He was diagnosed as a wobbler and there was nothing that could be done, suspicion being that he took a fall in the paddock and compressed his neck.
Hopefully because you have caught it early and getting the anti-inflammatories into him, you get the best outcome possible.

[Simkie]

@Jealoushe

That’s really interesting.

I did wonder if there was something off to being with. Riding wise, he was perfectly sound. Eventing, very fit, well muscles and just great overall health.

But he does this thing where he falls asleep, and he almost falls on his face. Like his legs don’t lock, so he will bend them and do a yoga type pose until he wakes himself up and then rights himself. He does it pretty often. Not daily, but once a week for sure. I did advise the vet and she didn’t think it was related but it is possible he has something in the neck causing this, and now, the hind?

Would not be at all surprised if his yoga poses are due to some proprioception problems. Could also be nothing, or something entirely different, but … just wouldn’t surprise me at all if that’s connected. And it could also be related to his wipe out–went running willy nilly in pasture, wasn’t quite sure where he was in space, wound up eating it. And now you’re here

My mare presented like a totally typical hock horse. 100% looked like that was the problem. Injected, didn’t improve, looked harder (bone scan), found the neck. All because my vet had been to a conference about c spine issues the WEEK before. If she hadn’t, we could have been chasing our tails for a long time. Even now, she flexes great through the neck. You’d never guess that she has quite a lot of arthritis and a 4" spur. She doesn’t swing evenly from behind at all, but most vets still wouldn’t identify her as neuro or look at her neck if I did a workup.

Neck stuff = problems is relatively new in the grand scheme of things. It’s often not really on the radar. A lot of vets are not terribly familiar with how it looks, or how to identify the super subtle neuro stuff that hints at issues in the c spine.

[beowulf]

both of my horses with CA passed “field tests” for the neck - especially the one with the pelvic break. my vet thought i was silly to x-ray the neck, to be honest. he didn’t demonstrate any ataxia, wasn’t neurological in any way, flexed his neck fine, and didn’t have muscle wastage…

but… i wasn’t wrong. my vet was surprised by what we found, but i was not.

his only symptom really, was that he was funny about drastic changes in footing. no misbehaviors or anything. every now and then his neck would get “locked” like he was bracing but it was all very normal green-bean behaviors that both my trainer and vet chalked up to green-horseism… something to think about. (all of these went away, btw, when we injected the neck)

i agree with the poster that said neck problems are still relatively new; it really is not on the radar, even with good vets, like mine… even top lameness vets… but it is becoming more and more commonly diagnosed, probably has more to do with our better imaging capabilities than it being more wide-spread in a population.

my personal opinion is there is no reliable way to rule out neck issues without rads. you can’t look at a neck with your naked eye and know with confidence if the bones under all of those layers upon layers of muscle, fat, and tissue are healthily connected. i have seen way too many healthy horses, with healthy necks, flex fine, walk fine, move fine, but had awful neck x-rays and various body malaise and unsoundness issues that were alleviated with either surgery or injections…

how is he today? jingling.

now there is a lot more you can do to manage the comfort of a horse, that wasn’t available even a few years ago - injections, basket surgery, conservative management are all on the table for CA horses – and having CA doesn’t mean it is the end of that horse’s life or even career; my pelvic-break gelding is still enjoying low-level eventing and dressage with management (neck injections).

[Jealoushe]

Wow, you are giving me a lot of hope!

I worked late last night and my boyfriend brought the horses in. When I got him, he was nickering and shaking head rubbing on me excited for his night feed. It was really nice to see him feeling more like himself. He seems relatively comfortable, still dragging and not moving too well behind but managing.

I felt his neck last night, and boy was it tight. The muscle along the crest was so tight and hard, and on the underside/side he had a knot the size of a baseball. I gave him a neck massage and worked out what I could. He stood there moving his upper lip. thoroughly enjoying it to the point he was drooling his dinner bits all over lol He was clearly loving it.

I will give him a good massage tonight. I am trying to sell his tack so we can get full x rays of his neck sooner rather than later. I also have been recommended to try EB therapy so looking into that, and also PEMF.

Any thoughts on those if they would be useful? I will try and get a video tonight to show you how he is moving. Its supposed to be 40 degrees C today so he is not going to be super happy being out in that heat all day.

[TCA_Arabians]

I’ve learned a lot from this thread. You all know what you’re talking about. I just want to add two more thoughts. We had a mare with neck issues. Chiro helped her a lot. We had another mare that came up lame just as yours did. The cause was a melanoma on her neck. Just putting it in the mix as you try to sort things out.