I have a 3yr old home bred filly that is somewhat back at the knee. She had check ligament surgery as a weanling and this is a side effect. She was born very correct. She is absolutely gorgeous and very well bred and I am looking for encouragement here. Does anyone have any success stories of a horse that is/was BATK? Does anyone have any ideas for helping her? I have not started her yet because I want to give her as much time as possible to mature. She was bred to be a jumper but I fear I will have to reconsider my plans for her
Back at the knee conformation doesn’t go hand in hand with a long term/heavy jumping career, but horses don’t read textbooks. I’ve seen some funky built horses do quite well, but I have seen far more over-at-the-knee horses going around than back at the knee. That may simply be due to one being more common that the other, though.
I would imagine that proper farrier work is going to be priority one for her, and she won’t be an easy sell as a prospect to a jumping home. If she’s one you were planning to keep, I’d talk to a good sporthorse vet about long term prognosis and risks. Depending on the severity of the fault she may be just fine, or may need to be limited to a lower level career to preserve her long term soundness. Only a vet can speculate on that with any real basis.
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You may want aim her towards a different career than any kind of jumping. This will slightly reduce the wear and tear, STRESS on her knee, to give her a longer, SOUND working life.
What would you do with her if you suddenly lost your nerve about jumping? Dressage seems to cover a large range of skills for development in the rider and horse. I see older riders transitioning from jumping to dressage. They are playing at all levels, enjoying their experiences.
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My Rez Mustang is very BATK, but looks okay to the naked eye. Per the vet, she wouldn’t hold up long in a performance career. We found out via rads around 2 and a half years old, when we were looking for an OCD lesion. She just turned 6, and she is super sound on the flat, schooling the fundamentals for reining maneuvers, being shown open level, high school EQ team, and was used several times a week in lessons as a 4-5 year old, on top of training rides.
We didn’t find an OCD, we did however find a well healed fracture! I’ll see if I can find her rads.
She is well managed by corrective trimming*, conditioning work, and an HA joint supplement.
*edited from “shoeing” to trimming. See reply below.
That’s encouraging. I’m glad she’s holding up. I suspect that lots of horses with conformational flaws do just fine. I suppose only time will tell. What kind of corrective shoes are used?
Nothing incredible. It’s more maintaining the foot, balance (she can get high/low), mustang rolled toe, and proper heel height and placement, with a steel shoe to keep it balanced. I don’t need pads or wedges yet. I guess it’s more “corrective trimming” than shoeing lol
Got a picture, including a conformation-type pic? More subtle BATK can be fine IF the rest of the functional conformation is at least pretty good. I’ve also seen some BATK resolve when hoof imbalances were corrected
I don’t have pics but will take some tmo and post.
A mustang I adopted was a bit back at the knee. It never slowed her down and she’s sound as a dollar. The girl I sold her to showed her at an AA show and cleaned up in the jumper division, granted they were low jumps - 3’ but never had a problem. The girl’s mother now rides her and is still jumping, she must be 13 or 14 by now.
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