Weird lump on fetlock

[Spiritrider16]

Hey all! I’m wondering if anyone has previous experience with something like this. I do have the vet coming out in a few days, just looking for ideas.

I got to the barn about 2 weeks ago to find my horse’s front right lower leg was mildly swollen. It was a little warm, but I could see no wounds or other reasons for swelling. He looked okay jogging, but I cold hosed and wrapped it just to be safe. The swelling came down after a few days of this, but when I left him unwrapped it came back. I started polticing the leg as well. On Thursday the generalized swelling went away, but a hard lump remained on the back of his fetlock. Not much heat, but he is a little lame. It’s about golf ball sized and central, right at the top of the joint. Anyone have an idea what this could be? I’m fearing a tendon injury.

[Laurierace]

That doesn’t sound like a tendon injury to me but I am having trouble picturing what you are describing so have no idea what it might be. Good thing you are having the vet out, hope it is something simple.

[MontysGal]

Is it right above the annular ligament shown in the below diagram:
http://www.thehorse.com/images/content/0906/leg-anatomy.jpg

If so, it may have been a mild soft tissue tendon injury of one of the underlying tendons, but the swelling causes the annular tendon (which wraps around behind) to stretch and stiffen.
I had something very similar happen in a right hind, except that the original swelling took ~4 weeks, an UT and a lot of stress to go away. A few weeks after this hard lump appeared. No heat and very distinctly a lump. After a mild meltdown thinking he’d reinjured, I snapped a photo to the vet and she told be about this annular tendon thing. Said almost all horses with them are functional and unless the become a problem no one does anything, they’re ugly but hey - so am I.

Fingers crossed for something easy like that!

[Marla_100]

From how you describe it, it sounds like something my horse had and the lameness vet diagnosed it as a “cyst on the annular ligament”.

I saw how he injured it, he was passaging around in soft, deep sand trying to ward off a new gelding from his two mare friends.

The lump stayed for a few years and eventually got smaller and almost disappeared. There really was no treatment suggested for it but I was worried
for a long time about re-injury. My horse does have long pasterns and I suspect this may have contributed to the original injury.

Good Luck with your horse.

[Bluey]

Nothing like you have, but decades ago, we had a horse come up from the pasture dead lame on the LF.
Just a bit of swelling on his ankle, but we could not find anything and he was lame enough to almost look like something was broken.

We hauled him to the vet, that kept poking and scraping around and out came a thin 1 1/2" long mesquite thorn.

Horse was immediately sound.
Never lame again.
We felt kind of silly.

If we had waited to see, we probably would have ended up with a serious abscess in there.

Better get it looked over, even if it ends up not being anything serious.
We are ahead feeling silly than letting time pass if something needs immediate attention.

[Spiritrider16]

The cyst on the annular ligament sounds almost exactly like what he has going on, so hopefully that’s what I’ll find out it is! I was wracking my brain, trying to figure out what would make a lump appear, because when the swelling had gone down previously it wasn’t there. I’m okay with ugly, he’s an older gelding so he’ll just be adding another bump to his collection.

[IPEsq]

You might want to get an ultrasound. My horse has a good lump there too. It is subcutaneous and NBD (still there, started calcifying after a few montbs), BUT, whatever he did to do that to himself caused him to also injure his DDFT in that same area. At first the lump looked like superficial tendon bow. He was not really off either the first few days. Ultrasound showed what the lump was and unfortunately the real injury a couple layers down.

Whatever the swelling is, whether something to worry about or not, the ultrasound should show you where it is and it it’s serious.