Can kissing spines be a hereditory condition?

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PFM22

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I am looking at purchasing a 2, rising 3yo gelding and have found out from his current owner that his dam was retired before her ridden career had barely begun due to kissing spines, though was signed off by vet as being suitable to breed from.
Should i be concerned? I will not purchase if there is any chance of it being hereditory but so many mixed reviews around that hard to know what to treat as gospel!
Any thoughts/suggestions welcomed. Many thanks.
 
Our CB stallion has kissing spines only diagnosed because he did not want to canter, ridden on left rein. He was vetted sound by a total of 5 vets in Uk and France. It was only with the help of a sympathetic dressage rider, one of top ten in France, he was diagnosed.

Seen by an FEI vet who found, badly healed fracture in his neck, bone chips on front leg and two kissing spines. NOT congenital but as a result of a 'crunching accident' probably in the first year of his life. He could have been fixed but the expense greater than the value of the horse.

He produces fabulous foals.
 
PFM22 said:
I am looking at purchasing a 2, rising 3yo gelding and have found out from his current owner that his dam was retired before her ridden career had barely begun due to kissing spines, though was signed off by vet as being suitable to breed from.
Should i be concerned? I will not purchase if there is any chance of it being hereditory but so many mixed reviews around that hard to know what to treat as gospel!
Any thoughts/suggestions welcomed. Many thanks.
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I would definitely have x rays.
 
Many things might cause KS and conformation of the back is one of them that clearly can be inherited .
However if you look at the shape of the horses back that should tell you all you need to know on that front .
I do think I would be put off buying a horse with a parent who had KS not sure it's completely logical but it would put me off .
I think KS is very often secondary to a lot of worse things eg hock and foot pain so yes I think that's what's would worry me .
 
cptrayes said:
It didn't show in the back conformation of either mine or my friend's GS, and both were serious cases involving multiple vertebrae
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You miss my point, conformation is inherited and therefore the horse inherits the preposition with the conformation .
But that's only a tiny part of wide range of things that cause KS which also occurs in horses with good conformation for a large number of reasons .
 
Goldenstar said:
You miss my point, conformation is inherited and therefore the horse inherits the preposition with the conformation .
But that's only a tiny part of wide range of things that cause KS which also occurs in horses with good conformation for a large number of reasons .
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What back conformation would you say predisposed to kissing spine, G?

I always used to think that a short back would be one, but Khalswitz tells me that there is no evidence to support that view at all.
 
My horse has a very short back and very high withers, but his KS is believed to have developed as a result of an ill-fitting saddle.

I don't know how often this is the case or indeed if perhaps horses that are trickier to saddle correctly are more predisposed to it as a result of poor saddle fit, and therefore there would appear to be a link with a short back. If that makes sense...!!
 
In my experience horse with dipped backs that muscle poorly are likely to suffer this type of back issue and this often inherited .
Any horse whose way of going ,and this about hind leg use as well the middle bit of the horse , means that it does not easily learn to lift it's abdominal muscles and therefore the muscle along the top of the back develops poorly is more likely to suffer .
However it's my view that inherited traits will be only a small part of why horses suffer this nasty condition .
The skill of the person who starts their development off , the care taken with saddle fitting and refitting as the horse develops , the roll of compensation caused by hock pelvic and foot issues , acute traumas ( I think this was the case with one of mine )the list is a long one .
OP asked if we would be put off a horse if the mare had suffered I stand by my answer I think it would put me off but I am not sure that it's a fully logical position to take .
ETA we were trained that short backs are predisposed to problems this was however in the days where they could not even diagnose KS I have to say it's not been my experience but the post above shows it does happen.
 
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IMHO - YES!

My just backed 4yr old (now 15) was unbelievably dangerous for 2yrs until at 6 he was finally diagnosed with KS - whilst I can't say for absolute certain he wasn't broken somehow before I got him, he passed a 5* vet and was so so green I can't believe he'd been overworked. He'd never been in a stable/shod/on a road and could barely go large in the school with a rider without almost toppling over he was so unbalanced bless him and I certainly didn't jump him as I just wouldn't before they are fully grown, we started him education very carefully, he was never worked with gadgets or been forcefully schooled so I do believe as does the vet that mine definitely did not have KS from over work and the vet is certain he was genetically pre-disposed.

My horse is wonderful and thank goodness for him, he is the most wonderful character which saved him from being PTS as a 6yr old, but it has been 11yrs of unimaginable hard work to train and keep him fit both physically and mentally. Whilst he had a successful operation and 8years of doing ok, he has never been able to reach his full potential and now has just been diagnosed with suspected spavins despite being beautifully schooled and amazingly light and sensitive to aid and ride, his back end engine has gone. Maybe he has just been very unlucky, but genetic KS means from birth they move incorrectly which puts stresses and strains on their body as they grown that you just can't see and won't be hit with until you try to get them into a decent level of work. secondary symptoms can be SI/hocks & stifle issues.....

I love my horse to bits but I will never buy another as I just couldn't bear to go through another broken horse. KS is more common now as they have the diagnostics to identify it, some horses have it and it doesn't bother them - I probably wouldn't buy the youngster - but on the other hand at least the owner has been honest with you, you may buy another horse & not know it's history. I think my horse was probably bred from a broken mare too!
 
Goldenstar said:
In my experience horse with dipped backs that muscle poorly are likely to suffer this type of back issue and this often inherited .
Any horse whose way of going ,and this about hind leg use as well the middle bit of the horse , means that it does not easily learn to lift it's abdominal muscles and therefore the muscle along the top of the back develops poorly is more likely to suffer .
However it's my view that inherited traits will be only a small part of why horses suffer this nasty condition .
The skill of the person who starts their development off , the care taken with saddle fitting and refitting as the horse develops , the roll of compensation caused by hock pelvic and foot issues , acute traumas ( I think this was the case with one of mine )the list is a long one .
OP asked if we would be put off a horse if the mare had suffered I stand by my answer I think it would put me off but I am not sure that it's a fully logical position to take .
ETA we were trained that short backs are predisposed to problems this was however in the days where they could not even diagnose KS I have to say it's not been my experience but the post above shows it does happen.
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Interesting, thanks. I don't have any experience with dipped backs and is certainly a conformation defect that would stop me buying the horse. I've always had the impression that short backed horses were the ones I saw bucking most seriously most often, but I've no real evidence for that. Except that both my short backed four year old warmblood horses were buckers, particularly on the canter transition when they started. And one of those would not jump, so now I know more I'm suspicious about him too, as he was also cold backed in winter.

OP, I would get back x rays because if he's been born with the processes crammed together, as mine was, you'll be able to see it. It won't stop him developing them from other causes, but at least you would know he was clear now.

Like GS, having owned one, I don't think I'd buy the one you are looking at, but I don't think there's any evidence, only gut feel, to support that.
 
My horse is a sports horse bred from a half TB & half conne mother - my gut feeling is that the TB bit probably had confirmation issues and passed that on to mine. There is so much interbreeding now I think that plays it's part - oh and I also wouldn't rule out rubbish farriery causing poor foot balance - the spavins seem to have come on since we took the shoes off as he wasn't moving well after changing farrier 18months previously, I think he was shod badly & then the correction of the foot balance sped up the onset of the spavins by putting pressure on the joints which were already underlying and waiting to come out. He is very slightly straight in the hock so that possibly hasn't helped. I think the spavins probably came about because of the way he moved when he was a baby and his joints were growing - KS means generally that they can be quite tight, short and stiff behind because the back is blocked from lifting so they can't swing through from behind which causes tension elsewhere.
 
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NZJenny said:
So what does cause it?
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I don't think we have any evidence at the moment. When mine was operated on the vets told me that it shows at three ages -

On first backing. Presumably many of these will have been born with it.

At seven or eight, when work has built up the pain to a stage where the horse can no longer cope. Some of these will have been stoic and born with it, like mine, and some maybe by other things.

At eleven or twelve, where either advanced work or wear and tear make it impossible for the horse to ignore, though the surgeon said these are often found due to performance issues, e.g. a dressage horse finding one movement difficult, not necessarily bad behavior.

I don't think we are going to know until we start x raying a lot of babies backs, and find out just how many of them are born with them too close together.

I've seen two sets of x rays. In my friend's, there was space between the processes but the tips had been clashing together and had bumps on them. Something in her training might have caused hers, but what? In mine, the dorsal processes were just jammed in tight together with no space between them and he must have been born like that. He was always cold backed and a bit of a bucker, But nothing out of the ordinary for a youngster until he got to six years. In retrospect, he was a very stoic and giving horse who had worked through discomfort and pain with only mild protests.

I think there may be an awful lot of horses out there doing the same thing. More research would be good, but as always it's the money problem, especially when it probably won't change much.
 
I would say basically three things that cause it:

1. Genetic predispositition. Weather this is just at birth, or it can develop later in life, I havent done that research.
2. As a result of an accident - think thats how my lovely little horse ended up with a severe case
3. "Other" factors - poor riding/poor fitting saddle/veterinary conditions elsewhere in the horse that make it move/squash itself up in a funny way, and causing KS
 
Every time this comes up I ask the question around my NZ FB friends - and still very few people have heard of it, and to date only a couple of people know of suspected cases.

Weirdly it either dosn't exist here or if it does, it's rarely diagnosed.

However, it seems to be a really big mystery in the UK as well with no difinative cause or treatment.
 
NZJenny said:
Every time this comes up I ask the question around my NZ FB friends - and still very few people have heard of it, and to date only a couple of people know of suspected cases.

Weirdly it either dosn't exist here or if it does, it's rarely diagnosed.

.
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I think that's because your human population is only four million-ish, so you've nowhere near the number of ridden horses this country has. Kissing spines that cause trouble aren't that common, we just have more cases because we have more recreational riders. Until last year, I'd never known one, then suddenly saw two in one year, but I don't know of any others amongst my friends' horses.
 
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