Bad farriery causing kissing spine??

HannahPatsy

HannahPatsy

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This may have already been discussed, but just very intrigued to hear of anyone's experiences/thoughts of bad farriery causing kissing spine?
My mare has had a series of problems since Oct 2009 with annular ligament desmitis in hind leg, then kissing spine (spinal processes very close, but not actually touching), now navicular syndrome in front foot.
I am just curious as she had x-rays of her spine taken in 2007 and even though there was slight ligament damage (which was treated), the spinal processes were not as close as they are now?
 
Hi Hannah

My horse has had some issues with soreness across his back recently and my vet advised me, when I asked him about KS and x-rays, that he had read some recent research that suggested that as many as 80% of horses may suffer from KS to some extent and it does not affect most of them. I am paraphrasing, but he said it was unclear to what extent it was a chicken/egg situation and he believed some horses were having surgery for KS unnecessarily when the problem lay elsewhere.

I am obviously not saying this is the case with your horse, as I am not a vet, but funnily enough since I changed farriers (at vet and physio's recommendation) and had my horse's shoes taken off (his feet turned out to be very misshapen, and this had been masked by his shoes) he has improved in terms of his movement and general stance. It might well be an angle worth discussing with your vet.
 
fadedv said:
Hi Hannah

My horse has had some issues with soreness across his back recently and my vet advised me, when I asked him about KS and x-rays, that he had read some recent research that suggested that as many as 80% of horses may suffer from KS to some extent and it does not affect most of them. I am paraphrasing, but he said it was unclear to what extent it was a chicken/egg situation and he believed some horses were having surgery for KS unnecessarily when the problem lay elsewhere.

I am obviously not saying this is the case with your horse, as I am not a vet, but funnily enough since I changed farriers (at vet and physio's recommendation) and had my horse's shoes taken off (his feet turned out to be very misshapen, and this had been masked by his shoes) he has improved in terms of his movement and general stance. It might well be an angle worth discussing with your vet.
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Thanks for that. Yeah my vet had said the kissing spine doesn't concern him too much with my horse, as if he were to xray several other horses they would have the same spinal confirmation and they wouldn't grumble. He's always convinced the problem came from her hind ligament injuries - but now I think we're starting to realise it is her feet in general. I have had her shoes taken off and it is amazing what can be hidden behind shoes!! Fingers crossed we're now on the road to recovery!
 
Seems perfectly logical to me, but I don't suppose it had to be bad farriery pe se, some barefoot horses that had lameness issues grow odd shaped feet that function perfectly for them, so it makes sense that if their feet are put in shoes and fixed into a shape thats not perfect for them they'll move differently to accommodate this therefore causing problems elsewhere.
 
With my horse, the farrier let his heels get very high and underrun and the toes were quite long on his hinds, as well as some quite bad medio/lateral imbalance issues. Imagine if you will, wearing high heels that were also wedges, but only on one side! That is how the new farrier described it anyway. So it wasn't so much that he had odd-shaped feet naturally, but that they had been so badly maintained that it affected the way he held himself and, ultimately, his back. Given that he has always been seen regularly (usually every 6 weeks, but occasionally even as low as 4) I was not too pleased about this, as you can imagine!
 
i think farriery is an important factor as it affects the way your horse move and how they carry themselves. how they carry themselves can be a factor with KS. Its only now that my horse isnt shod that i realise how much farriers manipulate the horses feet to balance them but its not natural for the horse. my horses feet land from the inside out, this is how he was comfortable, but he would be shod to stop this. Mine had injections in his spine as his was only mild. his is just due to confirmation and how he carried himself. he never worked through his back.
 
Could be that the hindlimb lameness is causing secondary back pain, which is vey common, but it is important to find out which is the primary problem. Backpain can also be caused by bad posture, ie when there is an imbalance in the feet, horse adopts a posture (compensation) hence will get back pain. - really common with horses with long toe/low heels.

Prime example where vet, farrier and physio can all work together for the best interst for the horse.
 
IMO, I think so.

There should be a lot of skill and a very good eye used to shoe a horse well. Nowadays though, it's rare for a farrier to even ask the owner to trot up their horse and lets face it, it's usually because they need to chuck the tools back into the van and race to the next job!

My mare is a SFx whose working barefoot. I initialy removed her shoes after I'd owned her a couple of months, her hoof quality was terrible, plus she used to deliberatly pull them herself!
On the plus side her behaviour has improved hugely to how she was then and I believe now, that she had possibly been uncomfortable for quite some time, although I don't think from KS, just all over.

I have been very lucky to find a great farrier who she loves and he is quite happy to watch her trot up, though I did have to kiss a lot of frogs before I found him.
 
fadedv said:
With my horse, the farrier let his heels get very high and underrun and the toes were quite long on his hinds, as well as some quite bad medio/lateral imbalance issues. Imagine if you will, wearing high heels that were also wedges, but only on one side! That is how the new farrier described it anyway. So it wasn't so much that he had odd-shaped feet naturally, but that they had been so badly maintained that it affected the way he held himself and, ultimately, his back. Given that he has always been seen regularly (usually every 6 weeks, but occasionally even as low as 4) I was not too pleased about this, as you can imagine!
Click to expand...

This is so true. I had the same problem with my horse. After vet investigations, arthroscopy and IRAP treatment to his stifles and spinous process lesion injected with steroids (£6000 cost not including all the extra physio treatments, saddles fittings and new saddles thinking it was saddles!!)

The vets couldn't find anything wrong with the stifles other than inflammation and his back was secondary to his altering his gait for the sore stifles. After all the treatments and the problems continued and the vets just said reinvestigations again.... I decided enough was enough and looked into his foot balance.

He was so unbalanced through the medial/lateral on his hinds that no wonder he was sore as he was being forced to walk like that for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week! He had imbalances on front feet too and long toes on all 4.

I changed to a fantastic farrier and my lad had a craniosacral treatment to realign and rebalance his whole body and he is now a different horse and not had a problem since.

I could have saved him having uneccessary vet treatments and operations if only I had looked at his foot balance closely. The farrier I had been using I had used for 15 years with my old horse and all had been ok there, so never thought to question his fitting. Obviously his way of shoeing didn't suit my lad.
 
i had to change farrier a couple of years ago and he came from a number of recommendations so i thought he was one of the best in the area, 18 months of my horse being shod every 5 weeks by the new farrier and my horse was lame more than sound.
it took me a while to start thinking of feet, mainly because everyone was singing the farriers praises i never thought he would be at fault. my vet said that his feet didn't look 100% to him and that maybe i should look into going barefoot or changing farriers.

i changed farrier, removed shoes and i could see the difference immediately, also looking at the shoes that came off (the yard normally holds horses for farrier so never seen them before) i'm not surprised my horse was crippled. he was meant to be on rolled toes for starters but the rolled part was more dimpled than rolled, and a nail went through the rolled part of the toe, not only that but the rolled part of the shoe was not central, in fact it was very much to the outside on one foot and the inside on the other.

anyway since changing farrier i've not had much to deal with in lameness, my horse has been sound more than lame/footy.
i'm glad i've finally made him comfortable again but i do hate myself for changing farrier for what i thought a better one.

in otherwords if a horse is badly shod/foot balance out then it can cause numerous problems elsewhere.
 
What Maggiesmum said ^^

You could do a lot worese than thinking about contacting Nic Barker down at Rockley Farm - particularly since you say your mare has navicular. Go look her up and find out about what she does - Nic is incredible in the changes she manages to bring about in the horses she rehabilitateshttp://www.rockleyfarm.co.uk/RockleyFarm/Home.html

Back problems are so often secondary to foot problems.

MY gelding has a slightly misaligned back fetlock and he grows his hoof at a strange angle, In shoes he was never sound because he couldn't grow the hoof he needed (which is actually a slight medial extension - farrier's can't easily do that!) - and he also developed spavin, and a lot of secondary back pain. He also showed signs of navicular syndrome and had a very poorly developed caudal hoof.

I've been barefoot now for 4 years and the difference in the horse is incredible.

At one time if I put my hand behind the saddle he would try to throw me off - that's gone, he is moving really well and coping with fast work on all surfaces - you'd never know he had a problem but for that one hoof that makes you look twice.


This is what happened in the first six months after the shoe came off - it makes you think - if there was that much development in the back of the hoof in 6 months then what effect were these shoes having?

dscf0381.jpg
 
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Thanks everyone - interesting stuff.
Brucea - I have doe a lot of reading about barefoot since my mare was diagnosed with navicular and it just makes sense. Wish I'd looked into this sooner, then she prob wouldn't have so many problems. I hope it works as well for my mare as it has for your horse and many of the others I've read about.
I spoke to Nic at Rockley a few weeks back and have decided to send her there for rehabilitation in Feb (fingers crossed) :-)
 
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