well, I will say that my miracle vet agrees with you. She and her vet assistant (who is my best friend) have both had interesting discussions I have been lucky to be involved in, and both strongly feel that the horses that are big movers (IE horses that “fling” their front legs forward and have almost-over-extension of the shoulder and uninhibited movement of the front limbs) have an increased correlation in front limb pathologies.
Actually, the vet even mentioned that she personally thinks what happens is that they are such inefficient movers (face it - no horse that is adapted to surviving in the wild will ever move as well as Valegro) that their limbs, tendons, ligaments become taxed quite quickly. She also thinks there is some correlation between excessively loose movement and neurological issues. She pointed out most “surviving” wild horses, be it brumby, mustang, icelandic horses, etc – they don’t have very lofty ways of going because it is not conducive to efficient movement and survival.
It seems to me, just going off of my experience of being involved in barn work/horses my entire young and adult life, that some of the bigger horses cannot get out of their own way in the paddock. From my own experience, the biggest horses always seemed to get the most severe injuries – while the smaller horses, arabians, TBs, QHs, did not often come in with big fat tendons and career ending injuries.
Of course, my horse is both TB, nice moving, AND big – and won the freak-accident-lottery last fall… :lol:
