"Back Men"

[Olivia16]

So the question is do you believe in Quacks or "back men" that can diagnose injuries using just a rod and then presses on the horses back saying that they have put in a disc 6 inches down in a horses back?
The reason I ask this is that I was advised to attend a Quack as horse was lame on left hind so I went down, man said 2 discs out in horses back, he put them in and told me to rest him for 9 days and leave him in stable. In actual fact horse got 3 weeks rest as I was on holiday, 1 of these weeks horse was outside. Came home from holiday, rode horse, same problem. Brought horse back down to Quack. He told me that horse now has 3 discs out in back instead of 2. Same thing was carried out again and told to rest for another 9-10 days.
In the meanwhile I have consulted a vet. Vet thinks "Back man is a load of rubbish". Vet diagnoses problem as an inflamed joint and muscle problem in the croup. Told by vet to rest for a month and then if problem not sorted, injections will be given into the joint. Vet says injury very common.
I have now been told by very experienced people who swear by this back man to go down to him one last time and that to wait for the month like the vet advised is to long.
So now I really don't know what to do with horse and don't know who is right or who is wrong.

Any advise as to what to do greatly appreciated.
Thank you for reading

Olivia

 

[chestnut cob]

Trust your vet. I can't understand what you are saying the back man did, put a rod into your horse's back 6in deep, or just did something on the surface? either way, I wouldn't let anyone but the vet do any sort of invasive procedure to my horse.

If your horse has sore muscles then get a physio, a proper qualified, chartered physiotherapist. Not a "back man". In this case, the horse doesn't have sore muscles, it is LAME and has now been diagnosed by a qualified vet as having an inflamed joint. Don't mess about with it, do as your vet tells you. There is rarely any such thing as a quick fix, most vets will tell you to rest to begin with to see how or if the lameness changes. Are you sure the back man hasn't made the injury worse? What I would say though is that the horse has already had several weeks rest without improvement so I think I would be pushing your vet to inject now. Have you done a bute trial to see if that improves it? Maybe the horse simply does just need a bit of a break for a few weeks out in the field?

 

[MotherOfChickens]

are you insured? because apart from anything else, your insurance will expect you to do as vet recommends or they will not pay.

legally, noone can diagnose anything if they aren't a vet.

if your horse has an inflamed joint then an anti-inflammatory such as bute, is a good thing. If you had a sore SI joint, you would want rest and painkillers would you not?

 

[Fun Times]

I do use physios and a back man, but for general day to day stuff, not major lameness issues. The alarm bells are ringing for me because I personally have suffered a disc prolapse in my back and I know for sure that they can not just be "put back in" again. At best, they resolve themselves, and I have known people being sort of stretched on a rack to increase the gap in the vertebrae to encourage them to go back to their correct position, but this is rare. Mine required an operation to fix. I seriously doubt that with a horse you can "push" them back in. In addition, with people at least there is no way you could diagnose a disc prolapse without an MRI scan. Prior to that, people are just guessing at what may be going on. In this instance I think I would be going with your vet rather than the back man.