advise please deep digital flexor tendon injury

[shellely]

hi just wanted to get your opinions on my daughters pony in march last year he injured his hind leg deep digital flexor tendon he is recovered well and is no longer lame he is just very stiff when first comming from his stable he is in at the moment due to muddy fields but is ridden at least 30min a day in walk and trot he does trotting polls and last weekened he did a very small jump for the first time since his injury ,he is on synequin and devils claw these both seem to help and he does lossen up after about 20min work ,he was stiff before the injury so we thought he may have had a weak spot that contributed to his injury, i just wanted to know if anyone has had any similar problems with the tendon or the stiffness and how you handled it. sorry about the long post

 

[Tia]

We have an 8 year old here who injured his. He remained turned out 24/7 on no medication and came sound about 2 months later. He is never stiff at all and you wouldn't know he had injured himself previously.

 

[vicijp]

The stiffness wont be anything to do with the tendon injury. Its likely that the stiffness is due to an imbalance somewhere, and that in turn caused the tendon injury.
Have you had the teeth and back checked? If not I would do so. If no improvement may be time to ask vet for lower leg investigations.

 

[shellely]

his teeth are fine had them done about 4 months ago , the vet did mention bone spavin could be the reason for his stiffness? i dont know much about this or what the symptons are how would i tell ?

 

[aran]

Hello

Bone spavin is probably the cause of the stiffness. symptoms include: dragging the toe, difficult to engage in trot and canter, favours one lead over the other, difficult to cross back legs in leg yield etc.
spavin is the name given to osteoarthritis in the hock. if it is in the lower hock joints then prognosis is fair. if it is in the upper hock joints then prognosis is poor. this is because the lower joints are low range of motion joints and so the horse can happily cope with them fused (ie no joint left to have arthritis). this is not the case with most joints. this is also why people talk about active and non-active spavin. a horse can have an obvious boney lump (spavin) but be sound and non-responsive to flexion test - this is non-active spavin as the joints have fused and so causing the horse no pain - this is what you want!

my horse has in-active spavin in the right hock but active spavin in the left. he ended up giving him surgical arthrodesis to try and fuse the joints but unfortunately it has only semi-worked.

 

[shellely]

hi aran do you give your horse supplements ?
and how long should it be till you see some sort of improvement if it is bone spavin ?

 

[aran]

I don't anymore as once the joint has fused there is no more cartilage to help!?!
For active spavin you really want the joint to fuse so you need to work the horse, keep it turned out as much as possible etc (talk to your vet - you need to xray and nerve block to diagnose bone spavin and then if the joints arent fusing the vet may need to help - steriods/bute/adeqan/chemical or surgical arthrodesis).
For general arthritis then omega 3 oils (linseed and codliver oil) and glucosamine/chondroitin sulphate supplements (cortaflex, senequin etc) are good.
Also devils claw supplements. most supplements take a couple of weeks to take effect - others you can only tell that they work when you stop using them!
Lots of hacking, fittening work, muscling up the hind quarters will help.