bone spavin - treatment

[CM.]

Sorry may be an essay with terrible spelling as I am on my phone.

Basically, have a 6yo ex racer. She raced 4 times as a 2yo, 2 years off and been bought back into work and retrained just before christmas. She started to drag her near hind toe last week and x-rays show a bone cyst in one of the smaller joints of the hock in her near hind which has caused the arthritic changes/osteoarthritis/bone spavin.

I am not sure on the concepts of using the tildren drip. Also, the hock injections my nutrition teacher is really against and after looking on here... Doesn't seem I'll be jumping around out competing and having a happy and sound horse for too long?

Surgery is an option for the bone to be drilled into. So would love to hear more on this? Also, if I get the surgery done... Surely we still have the underlying issue of the bone cyst being present?

Lastly, I am just trying to be realistic on all this as I know many people won't touch a horse with a bone spavin. But what the hell do you do if a young horse gets one along with a bone cyst? Thanks for any help as I am comppletely lost.

 

[Madam Min]

Our gelding was diagnosed with athritic hock changes at age 6. He had a course of steriods and then a year later Tildren. We also gave him Cortaflex as a supplement. He really improved after the Tildren (although we did have to work him hard to stimulate the bones fusing). I know of other success stories using Tildren.

We had him PTS in March but it was due to a combination of issues not purely the bone spavins.


I hope the prognosis for ur neddy is a good one!

 

[Holly Hocks]

My horse has spavin coupled with PSLD. I took the shoes off, gave her six months off mixture of box rest and field, and brought her slowly back into work a couple of months ago. She is sound behind. She had tildren treatment for navicular at the same time, so it could be that the tildren had some input as well, but I have no proof of that so would not like to say that it was the tildren that worked for definite.

 

[cellie]

Had same problem with young ex racer.He had spavin op and it was successful BUT he had other lameness issues and i had 2 additional years of problems.On plus side his op was complete success.Make sure you have nerve blocks to make sure he/she doesnt have multiple lameness issues sometimes spavin puts additional strain on other legs esp when they have raced.Good luck

 

[CM.]

Thanks for replies. I worry if I get the operation done though, it won't be great news due to her bone cyst still being present? Aghh horses!!!!!! Too much heartache that's for sure.