Does anyone have any experience in horses with osselets on both front fetlocks? My new mare has quite large osselets on both front fetlocks that are rather large. I had my vet do xrays of all angles, at first before reviewing the radiographs his outlook was pretty conservative in regards to riding. However, after reviewing the radiographs he said they weren’t nearly bad as he imagined on his initial thoughts. He said jumping was probably out of the picture for her, but to proceed training her like any other horse. If we run into issues down the road we do have injections as an option. She does have a little loss of flexion in them, which concerns me, but it doesn’t currently affect her performance but she is not yet in a regular training program. My plans for her are to do lower level dressage. Just curious if anyone has experience or opinions on the long term soundness of a horse with osselets. I do not want to do anything that will jeopardize her soundness. Thanks in advance!
My OTTB mare had big, slightly warm ones when I got her fairly fresh OT. With rest, they became cold, and their size reduced significantly.
Not once have they bothered her. They don’t affect fetlock extension at all, just flexion. She’s a high energy horse, regularly galloping full speed around the pasture, whether it’s wet or rock hard (red clay). She never comes up lame.
I can’t imagine they will prevent her from doing what you want to do. You don’t need full flexion to be sound and work properly. If she’s sound, and extension isn’t limited you’re good.
is this that nice pretty mare you posted about?
I’m with JB. Don’t worry about them. IME once they set and are cold they rarely ever present an issue again.
I had a mare with them in both front fetlocks. After racing, she flunked out of broodmare duties, then flunked out of a lesson program before I got her. She did every Pony Club activity under the sun, evented through prelim, and jumped around the B/C rated shows at 3’6". In her twenties, she did some 2’6" hunter stuff. I lost her at 29 and they were never an issue. She had plenty of health issues, so she wasn’t one of these iron horses either, although the only one I attribute to her racing days was her SI.
Nice mare. Once they are cold and set horses don’t usually have issues with them. My kid has ridden older lesson horses with them and most are older hard working souls jumping 2’ and 2’6". I think you would be fine.
Thank you everyone for your experiences! I trust my vet in saying she should be fine, but I have no experience with osselets so wanted other people’s real life experiences with them as well
I had an OTTB mare. She had a fairly long and hard race career (I think 76 starts). She had them and we never had a problem. She was a gorgeous mover.
