Anyone have experience with these? Latest issue with my horse is that he’s doing the best he’s been doing in a long while, but he is still tending to be sore and stiff in his epaxial muscles and resistant to working correctly over his topline. When he does work in the correct posture, he’s going really well, looks much more even and correct in his movement. The vets are overall very pleased. However, because his go-to is resistance, stiffening, balking, we are looking at ridden and unridden exercise for him to continue to improve his back in addition to the other maintenance things for this and his many other issues (injections, acupuncture, PEMF, etc.).
He also needs a new saddle for the dressage trainer to use (the only trainer I’ve found who not only is doing a good job with him but he likes her and unlike some of the ones in the past, I don’t think she’s going to quit on him anytime soon). Her saddle is making his back worse, and he has also changed some so that my jump saddle is not 100% either at the moment but at this time, it makes more sense to invest in a dressage saddle and then get the jump saddle refitted later since he may continue to change shape.
Latest round of vet checkups found zero lameness in the hind limb that tends to look NQR sometimes (blocks negative), although we made some tweaks to hoof angles. All issues in his movement appear to point to thoracic spine. Imaging shows an improvement in the spacing where he has had some close but not kissing spinous processes (at least when imaged at rest, there have been signs of bone edema here suggesting times of impingement when he’s inverted). But although the spacing is improved along with his overall posture, there was some edema superficial to the supraspinous ligament and some abnormal fibrous appearance to the mutifidus muscles in the T13-17 area. But unlike a horse with KS, no apparent atrophy in the muscles. While we continue the saddle search, we did some steroid injections between these spinous processes, which he hasn’t had done now for 2 years.
Rx has been certain carrot stretches to activate these muscles, sternal lifts (which we were already doing), and it was suggested that something like the SURE FOOT pads would help strengthen the core, improve his proprioception, and help him move away from the more braced back at rest. They suggested starting with the firm front pads and maybe later using the wedge pads behind.
Anyone have experience with these? I know I’ve had to stand on similar stuff in PT myself but I’m not sure I buy the vast list of benefits the website seems to tout, and they aren’t exactly cheap.