berkobadders
New User
I have a pony who about 18 months ago started to tilt his head, we changed his saddle, bridle and had his teeth done, saw a (useless in hindsight) physio but still no change. We continued to work him (which included jumping 1m10 tracks and eventing) as he didn't tilt it the whole time and other than the head tilt was performing brilliantly and then one day we were doing lengthening exercises with poles and he showed lameness on his back end. I took him to a vet who xrayed his off-side hock and found arthritis. He sent the xray away to a big vetinery hospital and the recommended treatment was cortizone injections and if that fails an operation to drill the two bones together so that they are fused. This was back in June, I declined this treatment and have pursued other things. He is on supplements, I have had another (this time excellent physio) who immediately spotted that his shoulders were out of proportion and very tight and has spent a lot of time working on them and trying to lengthen the whole body. I also have had thermal imaging done which shows no heat at all in the hock joints but a lot of heat in the shoulders which backs up what the physio has found. He has a small area of heat on his back behind where the saddle sits. The physio has done about 6 treatments and is seeing more suppleness, he is sound on a trot up on a straight line, if you do a flexion test you get a couple of lame steps on the bad hock and then he's fine. However if you lunge him on a circle the head tilting starts (mainly on the left rein with the head tilting to the right) and he is not tracking up on the bad hock, I know that if they have pain in the back end the symptoms can come out through the shoulder. If you put a saddle on him (just to see what he does) he shakes his head vigorously and even when I do the straps up on his rug he puts his ears back and lunges at me with his head so clearly there is pain in the shoulder & saddle area. I feel at this point I should go back to a vet and this time I will go to a guy who does only horses. But I can't think that he's going to suggest anything other than injections. The pony is only 10 and I worry that if these injections don't work we have run out of options. He has been off work since June and turned out in a field during the day and then in at night.