how do you manage degenerative joint disease? also in vet.

Montys_Mum

Montys_Mum

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My 12 year old TB has just been confirmed with degerative joint disease in his left hind hock. He is now on boxrest for a week (for bruising or lami on front feet) and back onto danilon bute 1 a day for the next month and maybe rest of his life.

Has anyone elses horse have this and how do you manage? Its a long term thing so when come the point where you cant manage it any longer?

Any help much appreciated :(
 
The hock is the best place to get it as it's a relatively immobile joint. If I recall my vet's explanation correctly there are three (?) joints in the hock, two of which are responsible for 10% of the movement but 90% of the problems and most likely your horse's arthritis is in one of these. Mine is.
You have a lot of treatment options depending on the age of your horse, what you do with him and how far the disease has progressed. My horse had steroid injections into both hocks and one fetlock (also has arthritis there as a result of an old chip fracture), two Tildren drips to help with bone regeneration and is moving much better and more freely.
Your farrier can also help. My mare has rolled toes and lateral extensions to her hind shoes to ease breakover which also helps with tracking up.
Arthritis can cause tightness in the back and hamstrings. I had a physio show me some exercises to do with her and I have a Equilibrium pad which I put on every other day to do the saddle area. I also do lots of rubber curry combing in the hope that that might help.
Finally get your horse on a good joint supplement. Mine is on synequin which is ridiculously expensive (£60 a month as I buy it from the vet, I could buy it for cheaper online but the insurance is still paying at the moment...)
She is moving much better and more willingly than she was. At the end of the day she is twenty one and she is not going to be a five year old again, but she is happy, healthy and sound. She is fourteen hands and when we went cross country schooling as an escort for a friend with a novice pony she was happily jumping some 3'6 fences (I did give her a bute when she got home, to be on the safe side). Her flatwork has improved massively since we started the treatment plan with the vet - before, the spavins hurt her so that if she was asked to work from behind, she would panic and run backwards. Idiot that I am, I thought it was my riding.:mad: Luckily I got a good instructor and a good vet who put me straight before too long. Now she can work from behind and will do an ok prelim or novice test but is hampered by said idiot rider.
In a couple of months the joint injections will need redoing - this will probably be an annual event for the rest of her life. At some point she will struggle to stay sound and then will be on a bute/danilon a day but I hope we're a long way off from that yet. Fingers crossed anyway.
Definitely talk to your vet though. There is a lot that they can do for DJD so they can advise you on your horse's specific case. Good luck!

Oh I just noticed yours is on box rest for laminitis, mine too :( But generally the thing is to keep them in work. Long slow hacking is ideal but as I have said now that mine has been treated she does everything she used to do without painkillers unless she has had a particularly hard day and I want to keep her from feeling it. My vet told me to avoid days off as much as possible. Motion is lotion and all that.
 
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My 15 y/o welshie has DJD in her coffin joint, she was diagnosed about 2 years ago after a 2 week period of not being lame but not being 'right' either. She has such a big movement usually that although I noticed she wasn't stepping through as she normally did and was more reluctant in her work it was virtually impossible for the vet to see.
We were lucky in that we caught it early, she wasn't lame enough for nerve blocks so the affected leg was xrayed, and DJD was confirmed. She was put on a joint suppliment (cosequin) straight away and was given a hyonate injection directy into the joint, then cartrophen injections every week for 4 weeks there after.

She was back to her usual self within 5 weeks and I brought her back into work slowly and carefully, the vet came back for a check up and agreed that she was fully sound. After 9 months I decided to take her off the very pricey :eek: Cosequin because I was unsure whether it was making a difference as she started taking it at the same time as the injections....it turned out it was making no difference.

2 years on and she is back in full medium work, I am careful out hacking and make sure the ground is ok when jumping on grass but she is managed like a normal (is there such a thing?!) horse. She hasn't had to have any more injections but I am warned that many need them every so oftern (2 years).
So I am keeping my fingers crossed that her 'growth' has been doneand can continue treating her like every other 15yo. She just compleated an ODE at the weekend and did a 15 mile endurence 2 weeks previous so DJD doesn't always mean the end of ridden work.

I know that more than likely she will have to 'slow down' and then retire earlier but she's got a home life and I have prepared myself for all eventualities! :p
 
Unfortunatly i dont have the money for injections and all sorts and he is not insured as my parents ended it without me knowing which has really screwed up this whole situation as we dont have the money for the expensive treatments. At the minute the danilon is doing okay, just depends for how long and how quickly he deteriorates. :(. It was quite a shock to be told this by the vet that my horse cant jump again and cant be cured as i have no idea where it came from as it suddenly seemed to spring up from nowhere.

He will only be able to lightly hack but atm hes doing okay but i just hope it continues because i would hate to have him pts :(
 
My cob was diagnosed with it last year, in both hocks. He was 18 at the time. He's now on New Zealand Herbals Devils Claw Flex, was on Naf Superflex (didn't help, probably too late for that) and Bute, which I vary between one every two to three days, depending on how he feels. He's probably doing more work now than he's ever done, although we've only ever been happy hackers - he's currently escorting my homebred, and carrying my husband whilst doing it. My husband is almost certainly too heavy for him, but we are very sensible with what he does, most of our work is hacks of 25 to 45 minutes, in walk with small bouts of trot. He's managing just fine with this, and is certainly no worse than he was before. When I ride him, we will still go for a good burn, and jiggy jog home, and most importantly he doesn't come up lame/sore/unsound afterwards.

I definitely found that the Bioflow boots helped loads, but I've been very unhappy with the quality of the boots and the lack of interest from Bioflow that their product literally fell apart after only a couple of months (including a magnet falling out somewhere in a five acre field, great!) so I personally would look at a different manufacturer.
 
I did ask my vet about supplements but he thinks they are more of a preventative and wouldnt really be that helpful and can be quite expensive. He was a showjumping horse but i suppose he will still be happy going for a nice plod around the countryside which is a good job we have very good hacking around the yard :)
 
My friend did it without insurance so no Tildren which is about £500 a time but she did have the joint injections for about £250. She found they made all the difference to her 15 year old pony. He had been on/off lame, couldn't keep him sound on bute and now he is back in full work including hacking and jumping. If you can save up for the injections they are the most worthwhile thing we did for our arthritic horses so I would definitely recommend finding a way to go down that route if you possibly can. Maybe your vet would do a payment plan or something like that for you?

It will also be worth talking to your farrier if your horse is shod. Rolled toes and lateral extensions will make him a lot more comfortable and ease breakover a great deal and in my case this doesn't cost any more than a regular set of shoes.

If you are thinking of trying a supplement I am looking at switching to this one: http://www.riaflex-equine.co.uk/product_riaflex_complete.htm when my insurance runs out as I won't be able to afford Synequin (I'm a trainee teacher) but I don't think that the ones you buy in the feed shop like Cortaflex or Superflex actually have enough active ingredients to do that much good.

Good luck and I hope I helped. And I hope your horse recovers from the laminitis soon.
 
my boy has djd of both hocks. he is now sound with a year off. he is now barefoot (shoes made him lamer) and has glucosomine, isnt stabled (makes it worse!) and isnt worked to much on hard ground! its is managable and isnt the end of the world :-) i thought it was at first but after a while you realise it could be worse. I thought he would never come sound, he has his off days but when hes sound he looks fab! Mine was on danilon for about 8 months, he hasnt had any since about feb this year. he was on double strenght buteless from equine america for a while but he has been fine without.
i am under no illusion that he will stay this way, it is degenerative after all.
 
Hi! :)

I have a 15hh new forest x exmoor, 18yo ex show jumper who was diagnosed 3 years ago with djd of the distal tarsal joint in both hocks

Doing my BSc in Equine Science, i was able to research using veterinary journals the best approach to helping manage this. The vet suggested to box rest my horse and retire him, however, his nature did not allow us to do this! after being retired for 2 years, he was losing weight and just being a miserable sod!

We then slowly bought him back into work, and kept him on the one bute a day (which may be 2 a day, depending on how he is), alongside visits from our bowen therapist relieving the pain and discomfort, and our physiotherapist, which helped his flexibility and compensatory problems!

3 years later, he has retired from all jumping activities, and although can still have his off days has only this weekend qualified for the veteran horse championships with dressage scores of 74%!

I use raised heels on his back shoes to take the pressure off the hocks, and supplement his feed with extraflex and glucosamine, and although a little pricey really does pay off in the long term!

We have just had our visit from the vet, and although I went against his original advice, he said it has paid off because now we have a pretty sound boy again!

The vet suggested using lateral extensor shoes, however the downside was it could have caused him to go severly lame again due to having to work his h/q differently and causing compensatory problems

our only problem was our horse has just recently been diagnosed with having some psychological issues too resembling OCD in human beings, so he thinks he doesnt have back legs sometimes!
I use controlled exercise with him, keeping our sessions short but worthwhile, ensuring he has 10 minutes to warm up to stretch and bend, then may spend 20 minutes doing pole work and medium trot/ canter to really engage his hindquarters! our only problem was our horse has just recently been diagnosed with having some psychological issues too resembling OCD in human beings, so he thinks he doesnt have back legs sometimes!

Also i will add- my horse did not receive any joint injections/ surgery, due to possible complications!

Hope all goes well :)
 
Unbalanced - i know you ahve had steroid injections and tildren drips from your horse along with supplemants but where you told when she was diagnosed that your horse wouldnt jump again?

Monty's fairly happy on bute atm and not too bothered about his box rest ( but its only been a day)
 
showjumper16 said:
Unbalanced - i know you ahve had steroid injections and tildren drips from your horse along with supplemants but where you told when she was diagnosed that your horse wouldnt jump again?

Monty's fairly happy on bute atm and not too bothered about his box rest ( but its only been a day)
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No, my horse is still jumping. I've been told that cross country is better than show jumping because it is gallop-bound-gallop in straight lines rather than tight turns as in show jumping but we can show jump as long as we're sensible. We are at a very low level - unaff novice 80cm kind of level and we would only do one or two classes. The vet said that if we show jump go easy on her, don't do lots of rounds and if we do get into the jump off don't do tight turns, think of her hocks but this is not a hard compromise to make.
To be honest I don't do a huge amount of jumping but that is really because of my interests than because of arthritis limiting my horse. In a few years if she needs to slow down of course we will but for the time being she is giving every sign of being happy doing what we are doing (laminitis aside. She is very very unhappy about her diet).
 
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