It’ll come. You’ve made a lot of changes that affect his body. He’ll have to work through it all and learn to trust it again.
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I haven’t read the whole thread but wanted to chime in that I have had great success recently with an equine osteopath (EDO). My upper level horse had some unexplained hind end/back weakness/loss of power in the canter that stopped responding to injections and literally everything else my vets tried.
I was lucky enough to be connected with an osteopath who found a few issues with his internal organs as well as skeletal structure, all of which were able to be manipulated/adjusted and he is like a different horse now. I truly can’t believe it as it was starting to feel hopeless and I thought he would need a lower level job. Just wanted to share in case this is something you hadn’t heard of or considered.
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How were you connected with one? I’m not sure where to go to even find that - although I’ll start with google of course lol
Through a friend who uses one on the east coast, she referred me to one closer to me. Here is a website directory: https://www.equineosteopathy.org/members
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I would recommend an osteopath that is also a vet. A regular osteopath found a bunch of stuff in my horse’s hind end and crippled him in one session. She then ghosted me and I had a few vet bills to get him semi back to normal.
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Agreed - or at least one who works in conjunction with a vet.
I’ll have to look into that.
He is still pretty lame rf, but only intermittently. It’s almost as if he’s stepping on a rock or something but he does it just walking down the barn aisle and trotting on straightaways with footing that isn’t hard at all. He’ll look ok, then limp pretty bad, then look ok again…I don’t know.
I’ve been trying posture prepping him and super, super light stretches-he curls his hind legs all the way underneath him and threatens to kick for a while before I can even touch his back legs to stretch (I’m talking literally maybe 4 inches, if that, of moving his hoof back behind himself when I ask for a stretch).
Instead of asking him for that, can you instead ask him to step up on a platform with his front legs and just stand there? Then keep messing with that. One front leg up. Two front legs. Two back legs. One back leg. etc etc.
I can’t think of a good spot at my barn off the top of my head to do that, but I’ll scout around for places when I’m there this evening! I’m not sure how he will react-while generally he’s level headed, he’s so protective of everything right now that he may freak out.
I am also considering something like those sure foot pads…I might see if I can find something similar for cheap. He was impossible to get to stand on blocks for xrays so he may have the same issue standing on the pads, and I don’t want to dole out that money if I won’t even be able to use them with him.
I tried to PM you but I don’t think your profile is set up to allow it. Very generally, where are you located?
You can get perfectly fine balance pads from Amazon for $20 each, but I very much would not try to put him on those right now. An easier option (for him) would be a children’s gymnastics mat (the kind that fold up like a pamphlet. I got mine on FB marketplace 4 years ago and it’s somehow held up to many horses trying to destroy it). This won’t require as much balancing from him and can be folded up to make more of a pedestal squish mat to use like endlessclimb suggests.
Anyone with a step up trailer? Or a solid top pallet or two? Or is there any terrain on the property that can be used? I saw a picture of someone here, who was using a railroad tie.
I could build something that would hold a horse and be roughly 6-8" high for about $20, if you’re into DIY stuff or have a friend who is.
I’m in New England!
No on the step up trailer (I don’t think, at least) or a pallet, but there might be some terrain or something else I could use. Now that I’m thinking about it, we have a bank in our derby field that has varying heights - one side might be short enough, but it may be difficult to get him not to just walk all the way up it lol. He knows they are meant to be jumped!
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Good thing to work on, while he’s unable to do much else. Control each foot alone, lots of praise.
Dang, I was hoping you’d be somewhere where my PT will be hosting a clinic or otherwise teaching this fall so you could have him seen by her. But she goes more west and south than east.
I guess I’ll just say that I know how exhausting it is to pour everything (time, money, and emotional/mental bandwidth) into a horse and have them still not feel good. There are endless things people (including me) can offer that MIGHT help. You’re not a bad person if you don’t try them all. Even with my horse who is successfully (so far, knocking on wood) coming back from hind end soreness and NPA, I have had to accept that I cannot do everything that I know is good for him 5x a week, let alone everything that MIGHT be good for him, and still maintain a life outside of horses. Even when each individual thing only takes 5 mins and doesn’t require any special equipment.
You’re doing a heck of a lot for him. It’s up to you where to draw the line and no one will have grounds to say you haven’t tried hard enough.
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I’m late to this thread, but it sounds very much like ECVM. I know you did X-rays, but there is a specific protocol for them, and not all vets will see it.
I’ve got a young horse who started doing a lot of the same things. I had xrayed neck before purchase. I then had it ultrasounded. On the third time doing imaging, 3 vets said he was totally normal. I specifically asked about C6-7 with X-rays in hand, and was told he did not have ECVM. They finally consulted a radiologist after taking even more X-rays, who said ECVM. Vet doubled down and said, oh, well, that’s common so it can’t be his problem. I just about lost it.
I got a second opinion and a neuro consult to confirm neck pain and neuro abnormalities. The radiologist also did some injections in the neck and at the nerve roots. He’s not normal, but he is now sound as far as the secondary lamenesses and on the right track.
He had propensity for high-low feet, weird on one rein (mostly manifesting of refusing to take contact at all on one rein), had trouble with alignment in turns. Interfered a lot behind. Anxious jumping and hard drift to one side, after previously being super brave and easy (for a young, wiggly horse). Then mystery lameness on the high foot. Then compensatory sore hind suspensory on the other side. Then tripping on the high foot a lot. Went from easy to longe to explosive. Used to like hacking out. Became spooky and refused to go on hills. Completely stopped cantering one lead. Eventually would not canter at all.
The high-low foot thing comes from the abnormality in how the muscles attach to the lower neck and that they will have a pronounced favorite leg to hold back when grazing (the foot that becomes the high foot). Usually the canter is hard to the direction of the high foot. They are much more “handed” on the low foot side/diagonal.
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I appreciate this sentiment - I have never gotten to this point before with a horse. My previous mare was diagnosed with severe kissing spine and I decided to retire her, but she was SO friendly and snuggly, so easy to handle, so quick to adjust to going barefoot, that it was easy to find a really loving home for her and know she would be taken care of.
This guy is a different story. He really genuinely tries to be kind and in general is a well-mannered guy, but he is so anxious now that he is not easy to handle. To turn him in and out he’s fine, but if he ever needs to be left in he screams and loses his mind. If he goes outside but the horse in the paddock next to him isn’t there, he does the same thing. Any other paddock but the dirt round pen he will run endlessly every time another horse goes by. His round pen is next to the barn and the staff is genuinely great about bringing him in or putting him out when need be throughout the day, but I can’t trust someone else, or another barn, to be able to do that for him. That along with him biting when you blanket him, kicking the farrier…it’s not safe to find another home for him, or even move him to a less expensive barn. I feel like the only option if I can’t get him more comfortable is to either keep him and continue paying expensive (expensive for a retired horse, totally a fair board cost for a show horse don’t get me wrong) board for the rest of his life and be very diligent about being there to sedate for the farrier which is very difficult schedule-wise, or euth. It just seems so insane to euthanize an 11 year old.
But, at this rate, I work 8 to between 4 and 5, then I drive the 25 mins to the barn, ride my other older guy and/or friend’s horses, do my long list of massage/stretches/exercises for this guy, give him his meds etc and then drive the 45 mins home. I usually get home somewhere between 8 and 9 every night. I really do not mind getting home that late or being busy straight through the whole day, but it’s much harder to justify all of that when it isn’t for a horse I can do basically anything with. When he was rideable still but very difficult, I was doing all those stretches and massage on top of trying to work him through it under saddle or on the lunge, so I was taking probably an hour and a half to two hours to do all this to try and help him. It’s just tiring, and expensive, and really really saddening, to do this every single day and see no improvement whatsoever.
It feels so sudden, but on the other hand he’s been difficult since I bought him a year and a half ago, he’s just exponentially gotten worse since spring.
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@Ottbaxel as I have been going through our neck/EPM issues, I am now hooked on Jec Ballou. I picked up her new book (33) last week, and audited her clinic this past weekend and picked up her 55 book.
If you still have the wherewithal, check them out. There is a TON to do, groundwork routines, bodywork exercises. All define the purpose and are very prescriptive which I appreciate. Do this X times or do this for X minutes. My guy has been really receptive to everything and its helping him with balance, proprioception, and fitness after building up a little more stamina after a month of increasing intensity free lunging.
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I think “what you do from here” is a wildly personal decision. You know him, can see his expression, compare good days to bad, and monitor your own mental health as well.
I euthanized my then 11 yr TB mare ~7 years ago. She had had NQR-level soundness issues for many years that caused her to be fully retired from jumping and mostly retired in general other than tooling around on easy trails, but she tripped and skinned herself so badly at liberty one day that the vet who came out suggested taking her to the local university hospital. At the time I didn’t have the resources to do that without putting myself into a deep hole, so we treated as best we could at the boarding barn. Her knee wounds were healing very well, but other things started to go wrong in her hind end while on stall rest. She was miserable and clearly in a lot of pain, unable to get comfortable on any of her legs eventually. I asked the vet if it was time to call it, and she said that that would be a very reasonable decision, so it was scheduled. Naturally on the day of, she was bright and interested and enjoyed her bucket of carrots before her long sleep. It was difficult. If I had the knowledge and resources I have now, the whole thing might have gone differently, but I was doing my best with what I had at the time and the self-imposed limits so I didn’t get myself into a bad situation.
I have a really hard time seeing animals in chronic pain with no timeline for improvement. They don’t understand and the hurt and worry feed off each other and can make them dangerous to handle. It makes a big difference to me whether horses are comfortable but unrideable vs uncomfortable and unhappy all the time.
As with all internet commentary- Take what you want from this, leave what you don’t
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It’s so hard! I also feel horrible saying this, but I don’t have as much of an emotional attachment to this horse as I do my other guy. He’s very sweet sometimes (he’ll nuzzle you with his nose when you scratch him and it’s so adorable!) but he also is very hard to “click” with mentally. While being so reactive to things, he is simultaneously really unresponsive sometimes. For example I’ve worked a decent amount lately with him to just get him to put his head down when I pull the lead rope down - he just completely ignores any and all pressure and you could hang your whole body off the lead rope without him lowering his neck at all. It feels like no matter how many times I finally get him to put his head down and I release the pressure and give him so many heaps of praise, he never reacts. He doesn’t learn from it, he doesn’t even blink. It’s like he’s completely shut down mentally-so, over a year and a half I haven’t really bonded with him despite spending so much time on the ground with him.
The other thing is if I do try to pull his shoes and really retire him, I don’t know if he’ll be able to handle it mentally or physically. It will take him a long while to get his feet strong enough to be barefoot, which is fine (I’d buy scoot boots or similar) but it seems like his body has such a tendency to immediately tense up at any and every inconvenience that it won’t just be his feet that will be sore, it will be all his muscles. And that will just spiral into him mentally losing it. Ugh
Equitopia Center did a webinar on neck issues and ECVM specifically this summer. The vet doing the presentation basically said you can’t just chuck these horses in a field. They will get worse. Instead, it’s kind of a life long rehab type lifestyle to help them cope and not spiral.
The nerve root injections helped my guy to the point where I am starting over with training. But I can tell he is not going to be able to perform the way his talent suggested a few years ago. He might never jump again. But if the treatments hadn’t helped, he would be going in for a CT now (CSU has a new machine that can see up to the 4th rib) for a study they are doing on ECVM, with the real possibility that he would not come home because he was just not himself and really not enjoying his life there for a while. We’ll see whether we can maintain something manageable or not. He’s only 7.
It is very hard when it’s not a clear disease or injury. We can’t tell you what options are right or wrong here, but a lot of us have been through difficult cases and are here for support.
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