Without the horse doing the job, I’d pass.
There are others.
But if you really really really want this one, go for it! All horses are a risk. I just prefer the “unknown risk”, with a known one on a horse this young, it would be a no from me.
13 Likes
I would like to add that I bought one with KS findings on PPE. But they were much much more mild than what’s seen in these xrays. She’s had her share of health troubles, but to my knowledge her KS is not the cause. In fact, I had her re xrayed last year and we couldn’t even find where the impingement originally was.
10 Likes
I think you’re taking a very rosy view of what’s adding up to multiple red flags now. Only 4 starts in 2 years despite bringing in some money suggests to me that there was likely something else going on. The fact that he’s owned by the breeders is a nice story but not really relevelant, just like the fact that he raced successfully is not relevant to whether he’ll hold up as a jumper. If you can honestly say that the risks here are manageable for you then buy the horse, buy don’t make a decision based on only the most generous interpretation of the facts.
The more information you provide the more sure I am that I would pass. There are so many other nice OTTBs out there without these issues. If you decide to move forward I would do so with the assumption that the horse will require extra maintenance at minimum with persistent soundness issues or early retirement as very real possibilities. If you can handle that without completely derailing your financial or riding goals then go for it. If not, keep looking.
25 Likes
Mine was diagnosed with stifle arthritis, so I was hopeful when I got his stifles injected around this time last year we would not have as much tripping. No such luck. He also has pedal osteitis - for everyone who believes KS originates in the feet 
I’m confused. This looks like “touching” to me?
4 Likes
This just isn’t necessarily true, especially for a “backyard-type” horse that is breeder owned. I ended up with one last year who was running in $70k claimers—he could’ve torn up the track in $25k company, but they just didn’t want to let him out of their hands. There’s a lot more nuance to it than just “ran X time in X time period.”
9 Likes
How many problems are you willing to work with, versus turning down the horses?
Here’s the short list:
Kissing Spine
Navicular changes
DJD
Eye issues
OA in any joint that affects your discipline
Pedal Osteitis
OA in the Cervical Spine
Club foot/feet
Healed fractures
Screws
Healed and rehabbed soft tissue issues
And the list goes on and weird things get added over and over.
Here’s the thing… we all know that you can find a horse that has a more clean vetting than others, but it doesn’t hold that the horse in question will have the brain, desire and dedication to doing the job you want to do. Secondary to that… people who “MUST” have the perfectly vetted horse are not themselves vetted for competency as a trainer/rider. So they can (and have historically) create problems where there were not any before.
If you have the rads that show KS, you have to disclose that. If you choose not to take rads on resale prospects just so you’re in the gray area of “Plausible deniability” that only works so well. Either the horse has KS and things start to unravel, or the horse doesn’t have KS and things start to unravel, or it does have KS and it goes well, or it doesn’t have KS and things are fine. If you’re a fan of 'The Big Bang Theory" this is essentially the Schrödinger’s Cat situation.
More often than not I would recommend neck and back rads in every PPE. Not to kill a sale, but to disclose what you know and let the buyers work with their team to decide what works for them. Ideally you’re taking the rads at a point in time when you also can decide what works for you and pass on anything that you cannot live with.
But I think the trend forward is going to be that the folks that pass on imperfect horses are likely to run into things not current found on PPE’s… as they own the perfect horse but are overall less knowledgeable horsemen who can prevent some of these.
Chips
Stress fractures
DJD
OA
Soft tissues strains, tears.
Navicular changes
Laminitis/founder
and my least favorite thing ever… EDM.
There’s no such thing as a perfect horse and I don’t know how to tell people that enough. I believe you should want to know what’s there and what you can live with, but heart and competency of the horse for the job isn’t measured in a PPE.
My best vetted horse ever died, being hit by lightning in a field after 5 years of ownership having competed at Prelim for 4.5 years, with 2 long format 3 days, and ran point to points (with me) after a bowed tendon (I caused) and had a tooth need to be surgically removed, and had a 12" hole in her inner thigh from being impaled by a deer. She recovered fine.
It’s all a crap shoot.
Em
16 Likes
As one of the old folks who wouldn’t automatically run from the rads, I’d like to add hunters is a better career path than dressage or eventing for a horse that may have back issues. Ideally the horses go softly round and jump from medium spots in a flat ring. They are not asked for collection or drop fences or tight spots or alot of conditioning. Kissing spine was no doubt around in the 70’s and 80’s but the xray equipment couldn’t image that area well. Horsemen had to look at the horse. It’s the glass half full/ half empty question and it is yours to answer.
15 Likes
I vetted one that sounds similar. 5 y/o OTTB lightly restarted, similar back x-rays but less severe. Lovely canter, lovely jump. I had taken the horse on trial, enjoyed him immensely, and vetted at the end. I really struggled what to do after the back x-rays.
You’ve gotten a lot of good advice, but at the end of the day it comes down to what kind of risk you’re willing to take. My vet told me all the same things people are saying here: on a horse doing the job, this could be an incidental finding; the horse could never have a problem; but also the horse could struggle to do the job I wanted to do as the workload increased. There is no crystal ball, but the x-rays that day created enough uncertainty for me to decide to walk.
I ended up vetting another one a few weeks later whose radiographs came back great, but had two other minor things pop up - because no PPE will be perfect. But they were things both my vet and I felt were very low risk and didn’t make me hesitate.
If I had the ability to retire a horse in my backyard and buy a second one, I would have bought the first one. But I don’t - so it makes my overall risk tolerance for issues on a PPE very low. YMMV.
12 Likes
I’ll just add one more thought onto all of the ones already discussed.
It sounds like you want the opportunity this horse presents. That’s not a bad thing. I got mine with known physical issues and he was not yet doing the job I wanted. Many probably would have passed on him as his “own paper” wasn’t great for a long term career. It worked out for us, so I get not walking away. I don’t know if I would in this case either. I almost prefer a known problem to manage than a surprise later on just because I didn’t check everything ahead of time.
I encourage you to think though about what would you do if the horse gets to a point where they can’t do the job you want them to do with their physical issues. Are you okay not progressing up the levels? Switching disciplines? Not competing at all? Not riding at all? What are you okay with and what aren’t you okay with?
Because IF the horse does develop issues related ot the KS (or anything else) and isn’t able to do the job anymore, resale is going to become much harder. Are you willing to do the legwork to change his own career path to something more comfortable? Will you need to sell him? Can you afford to retire him, or make the choice to put him down? How much money per year are you willing (or able) to put into keeping him comfortable?
If you want more than anything to get to the upper levels and will never be happy just hacking around but this horse can’d do the job past Training, where does that leave you? Where does that leave the horse?
5 Likes
Seconding this. I’ve always prized training for people who race homebreds for precisely this reason.
1 Like
So here’s the thing about a horse with rads like that, whether he’s asymptomatic now, becomes symptomatic, or never becomes symptomatic: you’ve already complicated your horse ownership journey x10 before he ever walks in the barn. A horse with close/touching spinous processes with evidence of remodeling needs consistent/correct work more than anything to stay sound and comfortable. Young horse pops a splint and needs 8 weeks off? Fine, no big deal - but what will those 8 weeks off do to his back? You get hurt and need some time out of the saddle? You better be paying for training rides to keep him in CORRECT work, else his back reach a tipping point.
My KS horse probably could be a low-level hunter if I continued to pour every cent into him. But even if he was my only horse, the amount of time and energy it takes to keep him going is just not worth it to me. It’s exhausting. And simply not feasible for an amateur with a farm, no help, and other obligations.
Horses are hard enough. KS horses - even the aysmyptomatic ones - can take a heroic level of management that I personally find soul-sucking. YMMV.
19 Likes
I might be misunderstanding, but that’s a false dichotomy. It’s not like every horse can only have one shortcoming and just because you know the horse has KS, something else can’t also rear its ugly head later. A horse with KS still has all the other latent risks of being a horse. You’re just adding a known risk on top of all those latent risks inherent to every horse. Might turn out in your favor, might not.
14 Likes
Great points. I deal with this often in my work- you have to compare two real options, not one real option and one you wish was real. In the pool of 5000 dollar OTTBs I’m not as convinced as some other posters that there are many options without some kind of risk, whether that’s a physical issue, temperament, future aptitude for the job, whatever. Comparing experiences of people who had a major issue in a horse that caused them to do diagnostic films years after the fact to the control group of all the people who have no idea what their horses backs look like is probably less useful in this horse population than one where people routinely are doing more imaging.
12 Likes
You realize your logic here fails because how do you know symptomatic KS horses need management? One cannot prove a negative. It is like saying that everybody with high blood pressure needs heroic management, except we don’t know that. We only know that there is a fractional risk to other diseases IF and ONLY IF the high blood pressure is detected.
The reality is ALL disease is multifactorial, including equine lameness. Too many are equating the presence of KS as some absolute. It’s no different than saying I saw a blue car at a head on collision and therefore when driving a blue car you should never drive on an undivided highway.
7 Likes
Sure, which is why I originally said it COULD be a red flag. But for a horse with questionable scans and no proven ability to stay sound in work it all starts to add up in a not very positive way. Any one of these things on their own wouldn’t necessarily be a deal breaker, but how many red flags is too many? That’s something OP has to decide based on her own risk tolerance.
8 Likes
This horse is 5 with only 4 starts, what has he been doing since he stopped racing? I would expect a horse with only 4 starts to be much younger. Have you been able to look at his race record or view any of his race videos? Do you have any contacts at the track that could tell you more about why he was done racing? Sometimes trainers will say the job isn’t right for them, but in reality this is the first sign of something brewing - discomfort.
I’m not telling you don’t buy the horse, but with the ones off the track sometimes you can get more information from their race records and track contacts.
8 Likes
Horse ran 2x as a two year old, owner changed trainers and brought all of his horses with him to the new trainer. Horse didn’t race for the next year, presumably at the new trainer’s direction. Brought the horse out again as a 4yo, raced twice, a 4th and a 1st, and they didn’t level him up in Feb of 2023. He was turned out for a few months and found his first restarter, was with that person for a few month whose husband then needed open heart surgery, so he wound up with the gal I’m purchasing him from in November of 2023. She gave him some time to settle in the new digs after all of the transition and he’s been back in work since late December, she listed him in mid January.
I’ve watched his races/read the reports and nothing strange or dire happened in them. Raced 1x on the dirt, next 3 times on turf.
1 Like
from a different perspective entirely: human brains don’t like uncertainty. very uncomfortable. so what do we do- search for an answer. go on google, talk to vets, talk to coth. every expert will tell you something different. The only way to answer your question is to buy the horse and see what happens. You have to assess your risk and uncertainty tolerance and make a decision.
11 Likes
Huh? Do you mean asymptomatic KS horses? Nowhere am I trying to prove a negative. OP could buy the horse tomorrow, do nothing out of the ordinary to manage his back, be champion every time out in the adult hunters, and have the horse peacefully pass in a field of daisies 25 years from now. That’s a thing that could happen.
My point is that a finding like this is different from a chip or spur or any other 100 things horses can have on a PPE that there’s really nothing you can do about until they become a problem. Sure, you can always choose not to do anything about it, and you might get lucky. But we know that there are things that we can do to manage the horse’s back to help prevent an incidental finding like this from turning into something.
Like high blood pressure in humans, as you pointed out. Hypothetically, one day I was wasting time at CVS waiting for an unrelated prescription to be filled and took my blood pressure. It was through the roof! Oh no, what to do?! Maybe I’ll ignore it and hope it goes away and I don’t stroke out. Valid. Or maybe I’ll get it checked and do things to manage it, like exercise more and stop smoking. And if I want to be heroic about it I’ll cut out Friday night margaritas with the girls with extra salt while we gossip and slam basket after basket of chips and salsa. Like I said, YMMV.
8 Likes
