5 stage vetting fine until.............

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louisewarner

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Guys
Any suggestions?
had 11 year old warmblood vetted last week and all was well until the final trot up after excercise when noticed he was 1/5 lame on foreleg...........he was fine on the dreaded flexion tests and on small circles but - vet checked foot for stone etc and all the likley causes but nothing found.

I am really annoyed as he was ticking all my boxes and whilst I know I should walk away, I am struggling.

Current owners have had him 2 years with no problems and have offerred to scan the leg and foot to see whats going on (if anything)

Any suggestions??

Grateful as always.

Lu
 
louisewarner said:
Guys
Any suggestions?
had 11 year old warmblood vetted last week and all was well until the final trot up after excercise when noticed he was 1/5 lame on foreleg...........he was fine on the dreaded flexion tests and on small circles but - vet checked foot for stone etc and all the likley causes but nothing found.

I am really annoyed as he was ticking all my boxes and whilst I know I should walk away, I am struggling.

Current owners have had him 2 years with no problems and have offerred to scan the leg and foot to see whats going on (if anything)

Any suggestions??

Grateful as always.

Lu
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I suppose he could have tweaked it during the vetting. What a nightmare. Maybe the owner would let you have him on trial for a week to see if anything comes of this lameness.
 
If the owners are willing to have him scanned, then I would wait until you can see those results.

He may well have just tweaked something and it would be a shame to miss out on a horse you really like if there is nothing of consequence going on in the leg.

The only problem with this, as far as I can see, is that if the scans are inconclusive, you then have to decide how to proceed.

You never know, he might trot out fine now!
 
A similar thing happened to me, when I was having a vetting last week.

My vet suggested that I wait 2 weeks and give it another go. If the lameness is there in 2 weeks then it would be unwise to proceed with the purchase of the horse. The owners should be prepared to give you this 2 weeks allowance if they are genuine. They can't sell an unsound horse!
 
I vet a lot of horses and to be honest I can count on one hand (probably if I used thumbs only) the amount of horses that fail at stage 5!! That's very unfortunate. :rolleyes:

If the vet had not spotted anything else at all throughout and the horse fits the bill, I generally would issue the following advice.

Keep the horse ticking over in work, if you take it out of work and the lameness resolves, that's great but you may get him through the vetting, but once you start work again will it come back again and now it's all your issue!
The horse should then be re-examined by their own vet in a similar manner, i.e. exercise strenously, put away for 30 mins or so and then the vet looks at the horse trot up etc. If this horse is showing as sound at this time, the represent the horse for a vetting.

Your vet WILL have to do the whole thing all over again as a vetting is only good for the day - which is a shame because it's another 5 stage fee. If you don't get a full vetting you really must repeat the strenous exercise and rest and re-trot up. BUT be aware that if the insurers ask for proof of vetting and you produce a fail cert the exclusions will be horrid. :( You can avoid this by getting the second clean vetting - expensive, but less so.

I'd strongly advice a couple of things:
DON'T buy the horse without a re-vet/re-examine at least
DON'T take the vendor's word for it...I'm sure they're lovely but just don't.
And finally, if you will honestly sit at home and worry about why the lameness occurred in the first place, despite resolve subsequently and this means you will worry every time he's ridden/competes or goes out, then walk away from the purchase.

I wouldn't randomly scan the horse....may throw something up, but that's not necessarily the cause. - Can give you even more to exclude/worry about. ;)

Oh and get a warranty for maybe three months for return if he goes lame in the same way again.
This sounds very much like bad luck, he maybe fine, and TBH sounds like he's worth looking at again. I'd say though out of all the re-:(vets I do - about 95% will fail again. At least you know though.

Best of luck,
Imogen
 
Many thanks for all of your responses.

Imogen, thanks for the Vetty bit, interesting!

The owners are having both forelegs scanned with a trot up after work.......if OK then will have another vetting - a case of head v heart here, but the misery of a dormant problem about to emerge every time hes ridden (with the handbrake on!) not to mention the cost and dissapointment if it goes wrong, will urge me to use the head - for a change!

I will post again following and again, many thanks to you all for opinions.

Lu x
 
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