Kissing Spines

[nicola2019]

My 10 year old advanced dressage horse has today been diagnosed with Kissing Spines. She’s not lame but we have had performance issues and a sore back. It’s approximately across 8/9 vertebrae. She is going to have 3 weeks of shockwave therapy and a rehab program. Has anyone had much success from shockwave therapy? And are there any success stories of rehabbing kissing spine? Trying to stay positive.

 

[Green Bean]

My horse was diagnosed with 5 KS, she had them injected with a short time off. The key thing is that your horse is working through her back and that helps to separate the spinous processes which I am assuming you are doing if you have an 'advanced dressage' horse . My horse had two sets of injections, two years apart, this seems to be accepted norm spacing in dealing with KS. Not heard of anyone having shock wave treatment for their KS horse so will be intrigued as to how this may improve the diagnosis. Hope you will keep us updated!

 

[sbloom]

Have you tried searching on here? We've had a lot of posts on it with tales of woe AND success. As a saddle fitter who works with quite a few horses with these issues my recommendation is to raise the bar for rehab - its the way he's been moving, no matter how successful in a competition career, that has at least in part led to this, so we need to change the way horses move, not just bring them back to fitness. I massively recommend having a look at FB pages like Tami Elkyam, Celeste Leilani Lazaris, Educated Equine...probably more than many of the "specialist" KS/general rehabbers.

 

[Birker2020]

My lovely horse Lari who I bought in Oct 2021 having passed a 5 stage vetting has KS. Initially he had them medicated under part of the saddle where upon palpation it was found he was particularly sore, and when that didn't work he was medicated a second time four months later, he also had a myriad of other issues including severe SI dysfunction which was both acute and chronic from before I had him. He had his SI medicated at the same time. He also has possible PSD in his hind legs as well as arthritis in his neck, he had his hocks medicated once. He lives pain free (or to my best knowledge he does) but despite us trying to bring him back into work three times with a pro rider and four months of groundwork to build his core he can't be ridden and is off to retirement 1st April, with the promise of a lovely leisurely life in front of him. He is rising 12.

My suggestion would be to find out if your horse has other issues as well as the KS as a lot of other issues such as hocks and PSD go hand in hand. THere's no point dealing with the spine if other areas of pain will mean she will overcompensate. Sorry I can't be more positive, my story is probably the far end of the spectrum and hopefully your horse is not so badly affected. I know you said you had a performance workup so hopefully this means they didn't find anything at the time. I wish you luck.

 

[Hormonal Filly]

Not sure if you’re on Facebook @nicola2019 but ‘Horses with Kissing Spine’ is a great group.

One of my horses had over lapping vertebra in several places and underwent surgery. Surgery worked, but It was the secondary issues that caused her to be PTS sadly.