That sort of thing starts happening when the hock bones start loosing cartilage. Next thing is - your horse will stop (as in ridden video) and lift the effected leg and stretch it. (Right rear bone spavin)
The right hind lateral X-ray shows significant erosion of the navicular bone anterior cortex. It almost looks like a cyst. A MRI will show if that is the result of infection or other.
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Just too amped up, spooky and unsettled.
I’ve heard this before; which makes sense since apparently it interacts with serotonin and can cause hallucinations in some people. So far we are 5 days in with no side effects.
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Interesting ok thanks! We haven’t experienced any of that.
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I’m not convinced it isn’t an abscess. He looks foot sore in RH. They can certainly present this way. Might be inclined to treat abscess, wrap RH, limit turn out, cold hose/poultice if necessary and see if he responds. Not sure I’d give bute, either.
Radiographs look good to me.
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My vet told me once that if you think it has a broken leg, it’s usually an abscess. And since you have x-rays showing it is NOT a broken leg, I’m going with abscess!
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I was worried about doing the MRI (we did one under general as opposed to standing, at my vet and the vet hospital’s recommendation) but he handled it great, and it got us the answers I needed and couldn’t get otherwise. You may be able to do a standing MRI to avoid the risk putting him under if you end up needing one.
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Forgive the hijack question, but would a tear like this show up on a bone scan? Friends have a young Appendix hunter with mysterious off and on lameness, which was partially aggravated by Lyme (now treated) but chasing down the last part has cost them more than they paid for the horse at this point, including a bone scan that showed nothing remarkable.
Wondering if MRI would show different. They’re at wits’ end and it’s heartbreaking.
Bone scans have very limited utility for soft tissue problems. And can be hard to interpret for bone and joint problems also. They are potentially useful for scanning the whole horse. If you have a situation where you can block out the lameness to part of a limb, then MRI would be the way to go. Even places where a bone scan lights up will require additional imaging to try to pinpoint what the problem is, if imaging is possible for that body part. The images produced by the gamma camera show fuzzy clusters of isotope where it accumulates.
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An MRI is only useful if you can block the lameness to a distal limb. A standing MRI can only get decent images of the ankle down and a knock down MRI can (usually, there are some exceptions depending on various things) only do the knee or hock down.
The first thing to do, in any case, is block the lameness. That determines what type of imaging is best.
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SAME! We didn’t know if there was a stud where she had come from but she got fatter and fatter. Turns out, she just REALLY likes the extra turnout and grazing!
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Can you expand on this? My horse was started on Thyro-L per the vet’s recommendation a few weeks ago.
Watching the videos I agree with the posters that think it’s a hind lameness. I personally would block there and see what happens. IMHO the lame leg for a suspensory shows when the lame leg is on the outside— to me I see LH. I thought I saw it more on the lunge (subtle). Even in the riding video I’m not entirely sure that it’s not the LH but clearly both LH and RH are sore. I’d block the suspensory on either side and see if that resolves it too and U/S it. Far cheaper than an MRI.
I would be interested to see how he does with 200 pounds off. He needs to be dry loted! Laminitus secondary to obesity?
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I’m not sure, I thankfully haven’t had experience with the bone scan. I would doubt it would show much given this is a soft tissue injury but I couldn’t say for sure. I’d recommend the MRI though, if they can pinpoint where to scan. The report I got from it found the acute injury, some chronic issues we had been dealing with and unable to previously diagnose, and some things we could address before they became a problem.
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Hi Jo - I had tried to use it a few times to kick start a weight loss effort for my horse, but while he is normally pretty chill, easy to handle, and spook-free, on Thyro-L everything became exciting, in ways that didn’t really lend itself to good rides and good manners on the ground.
I instead used Metaboral and along with a modified plan to reduce the amount of hay he was eating each day, found good weight loss over the course of a few months, without any side effects.
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Very unlikely in one hind leg.
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Thyro L worked well for my IR mare for about 6 months then her weight plateaued; vet switched her to Metformin and I’m not sure it’s helping, but worth a try. FWIW she hated the ThyroL powder in her tiny bit of balancer, it was always a struggle to get her to eat it.
UPDATE:
He was still lame at two weeks out, so we scheduled for a (most likely very expensive) vet appointment for more testing.
Well, on a whim I checked him again on the lunge today a few days before the appointment. Completely sound. Acting like nothing was wrong. I think I caught several flies in my mouth from the shock. I lunged him for about 5 minutes to make sure it wasn’t a fluke, but nope he is definitely sound.
Plan moving forward is to give him a few more weeks of rest and then I’ll start hand walking to build up fitness. If he regresses at all then we will do further testing.
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