Am i doing the right thing? What do you think?

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Kal

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I'm a bit in a quandary about what to do. I think i'm doing the right thing, just don't want to make it worse.

The weekend before last i went to a dressage show with my boy. He was very excitable so it took me ages in the warm up doing lots of cantering and troting to calm him down. He seem fine all day heath wise.

Then 2 days later i stuck him on the lunge and he seemed a bit stiff in his hind legs, but he was still bucking and playing about on the lunge so i thought i would bung him in the field for a couple of days to see if he could walk it off and i was away working too so seemed senseable. While i was away he did his usual loonying around in his field.

I put him back on the lunge Monday night and he was worse, quite lame now. Luckly the vet came out yesterday to do his injections so got him to have a look. He said there was fluid in both his hocks and knocks to the inside. He wanted him nerve blocked and x-rayed.

Now i can't see anything wrong with his hocks, no fluid, swelling, heat, knocks, nothing and niether can the instructor down the yard. I asked what i could do instead of x-raying etc and he told me to put him on painkillers for a couple of weeks and see what he's like.

Now i can't see anything out of the ordinary (unless he needs physio) and the vet went from loads of tests to just painkillers. My boy has still been bucking etc so is it really that bad and much wrong with him? I think he might have just pulled or twisted something.

and am i doing the right thing?

Sorry that was really long, but i'm worrried.
 
amymay said:
But the vet could - but you don't believe him.......
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It's not that i don't believe him, it's just that we couldn't see what he thought he could see. I couldn't get out of work when the vet was there so i wasn't there when he was looking at him.

It was just that he wanted all these tests done etc and it sounded bad and when i said i wasn't insured he said 'oh the fliud might not cause a problem, just put him on painkillers'

I guess i'm worried over nothing, it's just i wish i could see whats wrong. I just wanted to know if anyone else had something similar happen to their horse.
 
It's not that i don't believe him, it's just that we couldn't see what he thought he could see. I couldn't get out of work when the vet was there so i wasn't there when he was looking at him.
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So have you spoken to the person who was with him when the horse was examined?
 
Hi I had a simular problem with vet she wanted to do xrays and nerve blocks but after i said i wernt insured she also said see how he goes after 2 weeks painkillers. And wanted paying up front . but the problem was after shoeing and had symptoms of nail bind . i have finished the painkillers and he is now sound and back to him self , how old is your horse mine is 21 and he is sometimes stiff after dressage comps and i started him on naf superflex for this and it worked wonders :) hope this helps
 
looby loo said:
Hi I had a simular problem with vet she wanted to do xrays and nerve blocks but after i said i wernt insured she also said see how he goes after 2 weeks painkillers. And wanted paying up front . but the problem was after shoeing and had symptoms of nail bind . i have finished the painkillers and he is now sound and back to him self , how old is your horse mine is 21 and he is sometimes stiff after dressage comps and i started him on naf superflex for this and it worked wonders :) hope this helps
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Thank you, it's good to know that it's happened to someone else. He's 12, i did have him on joint supplements then stop it cos we moved and i was changing job etc so he was roughed off a bit but i've recently put him on rosehip. Just have to hope that he comes good like yours :)
 
If you don't trust your vet get another vet to give you an opinion, but to be honest if my vet recommended tests I would do the tests I wouldn't just put the horse on pain killers and hope for the best.
 
Sounds as if he is in pain whatever the cause so I would think that he needs investigating. Horses can have ligament and cartilage problems as well as other things, they often do not have heat or swelling or anything detectable. Hopefully your vet is trained to make an educated view as to where to start. It sounds as if something is definitely wrong.
 
Booboos said:
If you don't trust your vet get another vet to give you an opinion, but to be honest if my vet recommended tests I would do the tests I wouldn't just put the horse on pain killers and hope for the best.
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I honestly believe we interfere too much these days. Before the days of massive insurance payouts, a lame horse would be turned away for a month and brought slowly back into work and the vast majority of them would be perfectly fine. These things do normally cure themselves (it's why homeopathy in horses works when all the science says that it doesn't!).

A couple of weeks in the field is very unlikely to do your horse any harm, given that he is not hopping lame and it came on gradually. If I were you, I'd give him a couple of weeks in the field and then have another look, just like your vet told you to do when he realised that he couldn't claim on your insurance for his work.

The most likely cause of bilateral hind limb lameness if he stays lame is hock spavin. While nerve blocks would point out where it is, you could identify this pretty easily by hock flexions too. It's not so specific but any vet worth his salt can avoid flexing the pasterns and identify a horse with spavins from one with stifle or pelvis issues. Early xrays will normally not show anything as the disease is cartilage destruction to start with and cartilage does not show on xrays. If I were you I'd try and find an "old school" vet who knows common things are common and see what they say.
 
cptrayes said:
I honestly believe we interfere too much these days. Before the days of massive insurance payouts, a lame horse would be turned away for a month and brought slowly back into work and the vast majority of them would be perfectly fine. These things do normally cure themselves (it's why homeopathy in horses works when all the science says that it doesn't!).

A couple of weeks in the field is very unlikely to do your horse any harm, given that he is not hopping lame and it came on gradually. If I were you, I'd give him a couple of weeks in the field and then have another look, just like your vet told you to do when he realised that he couldn't claim on your insurance for his work.

The most likely cause of bilateral hind limb lameness if he stays lame is hock spavin. While nerve blocks would point out where it is, you could identify this pretty easily by hock flexions too. It's not so specific but any vet worth his salt can avoid flexing the pasterns and identify a horse with spavins from one with stifle or pelvis issues. Early xrays will normally not show anything as the disease is cartilage destruction to start with and cartilage does not show on xrays. If I were you I'd try and find an "old school" vet who knows common things are common and see what they say.
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I am sorry but I don't agree. There are many conditions that could seriously deteriorate if the horse is allowed to run around in a paddock especially if he is on pain killers that would mask the body's natural response to the injury.

I also don't think that the majority of horses used to spontaneously recover from their injuries with paddock rest, I find it far more plausible to think that poor diagnostic tools didn't allow us to see many of the injuries we can now detect and also since horses used to be working animals until fairly recently owners expected them to keep on earning through injuries that we would now want to treat.
 
Then we will have to disagree :)

But if you don't know that the overwhelming majority of horses that are lame for a week are sound as a bell in a month and never have a problem again, then I would guess that you haven't kept many horses or been in huge livery yards.

Lameness is very common. Persistent lameness needing veterinary treatment is the minority. Minor knocks & bumps, too tight a shoe, too heavy a trim, abscesses, standard splints all resolve spontaneously in weeks if not days. Many a five* vet failure is turned away for a month and flies through the test clean the next time. I sold one that failed a front flexion the first time on a strained shoulder and after a month's rest he was fine and never had a problem again.

I am fed up with reading on this forum about vets rushing for expensive diagnostics. One case recently was a horse with a hole in its sole from a very recent abscess given a full lameness workup and xrays when it still only had one front shoe on! Another was a vet diagnosing kissing spines and requiring xrays in a horse with hind limb stiffness when he had not even done flexion tests. It is getting the the stage where insurance is now so expensive that people can't afford to insure at all and that can't be right.

The OP's vet would not be recommending turnout if he thought there was the slightest possibility that he would be sued if the horse exacerbated an existing injury. It begs the question why he rushed to demand xrays in the first place that he is happy to see it turned away now, doesn't it? Personally, if neither the yard owner nor the horse owner can see any signs of the horse having knocked itself, then I believe that there are no signs of the horse having knocked itself, it was just a good way of justifying suggesting expensive diagnostics too early.
 
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There is no right answer to the question of whether to immediately work up all lameness immediately - it entirely depends on both the horse and owner.

I would say around 50% of lameness of unknown origin (no external changes found) will return to soundness with a few weeks of rest, maybe some bute as well. The other 50% will require some form of specific treatment, which obviously requires a specific diagnosis.

I think in all honesty it is a very small minority of cases that will become worse due to a few weeks rest, although there are some that will. Equally, in the case of competition horses, 4 weeks out of work is not something desirable - the earlier a diagnosis is made and treatment started, the sooner the horse will be working again.

Equally some horse owners are very keen to know exactly what is going on with their horse, whereas others are entirely happy with a wait and see approach. Not a question of right and wrong, just personal preference.

Money is always an issue is well. If your horse is not insured, then there is a 50% chance you are spending a lot of money on a self-correcting issue. Equally, if your horse is insured, there is a 50% chance that waiting 4 weeks will delay treatment, and potentially make it less likely to work, when it would essentially cost nothing to have done it sooner.

Both approaches are entirely valid, it comes down to each individual horse and owner to make the right decision for them.
 
If SOME horse owners weren't so quick to criticise, sue and bad mouth vets that do not diagnose a subtle lameness correctly without umpteen tests, maybe more vets would be willing to take the conservative approach and save us all money...

a lot of these tests are for covering a vet's proverbial ass.
 
I have been in a similar situation recently. I am insured. I decided to keep him in for 10 days to see if it was a twist, or knock. It improved, but not as much as I would expect. I then got the vet and he was ultrasounded. No tendon damage. 2 weeks further box rest, further improvement, but again not as much as I would hope. Back to the vets, and he was blocked and xrayed. £1500 later, he is becoming sound, and the Vets found nothing seriously wrong.

I wouldnt turn your horse out. The ultrasound gave me the reassurance that there wasnt any ligament, tendon damage. You dont know. If your horse has a hole in his tendon, and he isturned out. It may rupture.

Give him a week or so rest, then call the vet if there is no improvement. Then listen to his advice. Pay the very large bill. Then get yourself Insured for next time!
 
cptrayes said:
But if you don't know that the overwhelming majority of horses that are lame for a week are sound as a bell in a month and never have a problem again, then I would guess that you haven't kept many horses or been in huge livery yards.
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The "if you don't agree with me it's because you know nothing about horses" argument is a pretty brilliantly devastating argument against your opponent that has only one weakness...it easily applies the other way round :D
 
i would just like to say that if i had not had all the EXPENSIVE tests done on my mare we would never of really found out what was going on ---my vet did all the ususal tests at home then we were referred to leahurst---we are insured though but i still would of paid out if i wasn't

her outcome was kissing spine and the proximal suspensory ligament on right hind and some more issues of the sacrioliac left side and although boney changes showed up on xrays of hocks this was not her main cause of the pain she was in

so i would personally go down the route of investigating all the possibilties of what could be causing the lameness as said by others you may end up causing more damage in the long run
 
Lameness is very common. Persistent lameness needing veterinary treatment is the minority.
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I agree with you to a point, cptrayes.

However, I do think in cases like this where it appears to be a less than experienced owner then professional support should always be sought.

More experienced owners can usually tell the difference between something and nothing - and you clearly fall in to that camp. I don't think this poster does though.
 
amymay said:
I agree with you to a point, cptrayes.

However, I do think in cases like this where it appears to be a less than experienced owner then professional support should always be sought.

More experienced owners can usually tell the difference between something and nothing - and you clearly fall in to that camp. I don't think this poster does though.
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I'm sorry but i am an experienced owner. My family have owned horses for over 50 years. I'm sorry it came across that i wasn't.

I spoke to the women who trotted him up for the vet for me and she said he didn't even do any flexsion tests and only saw him trot for a few strides. I lifted his back legs up high last night and not even a flinch.

So i'm going to keep him on box rest for a week or so and if still lame then get the tests done. Again i'm the kind of person who does it the old fashioned way, i only posted this thread because i feel more and more pressure to have tests done all the time and just wondered what other peoples experiances were.

I was also asking because of all the horses we have owned, we've had front lameness, wounds, punctures, all sorts of problems but never hind leg problems.
 
Booboos said:
The "if you don't agree with me it's because you know nothing about horses" argument is a pretty brilliantly devastating argument against your opponent that has only one weakness...it easily applies the other way round :D
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Well it's just as well I didn't say that then, isn't it :) ?

Just out of interest, have you ever stabled in a 60+ horse livery yard and seen what proportion of them are lame for a few days in any one year?

Alsiola the problem with your 50/50 statistic is that you only see the ones you are called to. Owners like me make a judgement and rest the horse before calling the vet for abscesses, splints, bruises in the foot so all those are missing from your stats. The true figure, I reckon is no more than 10/100, probably less if you include the people who never even realise that their horse is not sound (you see them in every competition warm-up if you look closely!).
 
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Kal said:
I'm sorry but i am an experienced owner. My family have owned horses for over 50 years. I'm sorry it came across that i wasn't.

I spoke to the women who trotted him up for the vet for me and she said he didn't even do any flexsion tests and only saw him trot for a few strides.
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My point entirely.

To fail to do flexion tests on a horse with slow onset bilateral hind limb lameness and recommend going straight for a full lameness workup is ridiculous. To then recommend turning the horse out without having done them is nothing short of negligent, in my opinion. If stressing the joint made the horse 8/10 (very severe) lame then turning out begins to look very risky. But they haven't been done, so that simple, and free, piece of diagnosis is missing.

OP in view of your further information I think that you need a new vet!!
 
Kal said:
It's not that i don't believe him, it's just that we couldn't see what he thought he could see. I couldn't get out of work when the vet was there so i wasn't there when he was looking at him.

It was just that he wanted all these tests done etc and it sounded bad and when i said i wasn't insured he said 'oh the fliud might not cause a problem, just put him on painkillers'
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That says an awful lot about your vet to me I'm afraid and I would be looking for another one. It sounds to me he was rubbing his hands at the thought of all the insurance money he could needlessly waste but as soon as he hears the magic words 'not insured' he doesn't want to know.
I'm all for using the right equipment when necessary but if a vet turns around and just says use painkillers because they will do the job just as well then he's a mercenary swine who is just interested in making money out of you because otherwise he would have said to use them beforehand.
 
Yep, i intend to.

I moved into the Bedfordshire area last July, i was living in Lambourn, so i did have excellent vets.

This is the first time i have called them out, i am not impressed and i'm now looking around.
 
Maesfen said:
then he's a mercenary swine who is just interested in making money out of you because otherwise he would have said to use them beforehand.
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I think this is somewhat unfair. The very best outcome for a lame horse will be from rapid diagnosis and treatment, not by delaying a week or two of rest. However, as I said above, this is not appropriate for every horse or every owner. The vet has a duty to recommend the best course of action, even if its not necessarily what the owner wants. Just because this happens to be expensive, doesn't mean it shouldn't be the advised course of action.

Imagine a horse with a hairline fracture of its cannon bone, say 2/10 lame behind and negative to flexion. No external signs visible. Vet recommends 2 weeks of bute and field rest. Horse careers round and hairline fracture smashes to pieces and the horse has to be killed. I can imagine the comments being made if the vet hadn't mentioned the possibility of a lameness workup from the outset.
I had an experience just like this - horse thrashing around with colic, treated the colic no problems but horse comes up 2/10 LF lame. 2 days later I saw the horse again with a complete fracture of its humerus - you can imagine the outcome. Fortunately I had warned about fractures and suggested investigating, although if it had been my horse I wouldn't have bothered either. If I had mentioned nothing then the owner would have been rightly furious with me.
 
The big problem Alsiola is that the vet concerned has walked away without even doing flexion tests, that's what makes him seem so untrustworthy. Obviously you need to offer immediate further investigation to safeguard yourself from people who might rush to sue you if something goes wrong, but not before doing the most basic test with a hind limb lame horse, surely???
 
cptrayes said:
The big problem Alsiola is that the vet concerned has walked away without even doing flexion tests, that's what makes him seem so untrustworthy. Obviously you need to offer immediate further investigation to safeguard yourself from people who might rush to sue you if something goes wrong, but not before doing the most basic test with a hind limb lame horse, surely???
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I could argue about the usefulness of flexion tests (i'm not convinced they are really overly useful in determining course of action to be taken) but I would agree that 99% of the time I would perform them for a hind limb lameness of indeterminate cause.

I think the biggest problem in this case is one of communication. Clearly the OPs vet has not adequately communicated his findings, his reasoning and why he wishes to take a particular course of action. Maybe flexion tests were performed, maybe not. Maybe a proper trot up was done, maybe not. In the end the OP cannot know for sure, having not been there, and neither can I. I think the most productive action at this stage would be to ring and discuss things with the vet and put any concerns across to them. Hopefully this can address any queries, and if answers are still not satisfactory then it is every owner's prerogative to get a second opinion.
 
Just to put in my two pennies worth, I am not a lameness expert nor a vet so I will not comment on what it could be but will say what will you feel happiest doing? Will you get a better piece of mind if you discuss the findings with your vet or getting a second opinion? Or perhaps box/field rest for a week and then if still lame get a vet out again?

In my experience I have a semi- wait and see approach if the lameness or injury doesn't look dire then I will leave for a few days and if still not happy then will call a vet.

Either way I wish you luck and I hope you keep us updated!
 
cptrayes said:
Just out of interest, have you ever stabled in a 60+ horse livery yard and seen what proportion of them are lame for a few days in any one year?
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I haven't. I think the biggest yard I've been at has been about 40 horses, but then again whether it's 40 or 60 horses over a year is entirely statistically insignificant number either way.

To have personal experience of whether diagnostic tools are able to uncover more lamenesses than previously you would have to be about 200 years old and have followed a few hundred thousand horses over those years. I am neither 200 years old nor have met that many horses but it is reasonable to assume that neither are you. What is also reasonable to assume though is that massive diagnostic technical advances ranging from x-rays to scintigraphy and MRIs have given us a vastly different insight into horse injuries simply because of the advanced capabilities of these diagnostic tools. That was my point.
 
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