Locking Patella/Stifle

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Dressagebabe

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One of my horse's has been diagnosed by my OH with Locking patella and told me to do loads of fittening work up hills etc to sort it. I just wondered what success stories some of you have had with the type of exercise work you did with your horse.

As my husband is on duty this weekend and I only managed to see him for 10mins to have a quick look at my horse before dashing off to a colic it has left me wondering!
 
People tend to think it must be great being married to a Vet but believe me I have to threaten him with going to the oposition practice to get him to look at my horses!! he comes home and wants to just 'veg' in front of the TV after doing 100 hrs a week . I think this happens to most people that are married to someone with a trade, I had a friend whom had a builder husband and she spent 4 months with no roof over her attic bathroom, she used to bath under the stars!! Thanks anyway
 
my horse was diagnosed with the same ( at 4yr)
i too was told to get him as fit as poss and keep him that way if not a simple operation could be done to sort it out wasnt keen on that idea as ge would have to have time off
at his next vaccine 12 months later the vet said there would be no need for an op as being kept fit had sorted things out.
hope its the same for you
smile.gif
 
Thanks for your reply, thats great news about your horse's recovery. Did you do lots of hill work out hacking or loads of schooling?
 
Hi,
my boy has locking stifles, one leg is worse than the other. it really helps to keep them in regular work and i do hack up lots of hills, i mainly do hacking for fitness. it certainly becomes less apparent when he's fit and he's also turned out 24/7 which helps i think, not getting stiff.
I've asked my vet about it, and she said not to worry too much. You start worrying when they can't click /disengage out of the lock (if you see what i mean!)
 
I had a big TB filly with this same problem. She was just turning 3 when I bought her and stood 17hh then. Her locking up was worst in the mornings after she'd been stabled for the night. Both sides were similarly affected. Keeping her out as much as possible helped, but by far the best 'treatment' was hill work and keeping her fit behind. A fairly straighforward procedure is available if your horse's condition deteriorates or does not improve with the fittening work. Thankfully my big mare never needed the op, so I am afraid I cannot comment on it from personal experience - only that I was told be a couple of good equine vets that it was "a simple procedure".
 
My circs are similar to Spyda, although we bred our monster. She grew very tall, very quickly, although she was never overfed. She was always very stiff when stabled overnight in winter.

Through the summer she is out 24/7 on quite a hilly field (it's a bugger to muck pick) and she has muscled up nicely. One leg is still a bit stiffer than the other but she is still very immature as a 5yr old.

Now that she is backed and being ridden away it is coming better still but she is still reluctant to cross her back legs over when turning - requires lots of suppling.
 

Yes! should stress that my big filly was never over fed. Rather the opposite from the looks of her when I bought her, poor thing that she was. Know over feeding and fast growth are contributors to the problem, but in some horses I think they are simply genetically predisposed because of their conformation.
 
My horse is a lightweight Anglo bought for dressage, I find he is mainly struggling with his downward transitions from canter to trot. You can hear it clicking all the time too. I keep them on cortaflex HA and make sure they stay at their optimum weight with plenty of turn out but he is a strange little chap as he spend the whole morning on a sponsored walk!! then stands at the gate for the rest of the day until I bring him in at around 9pm.
 
I had a horse with a locking patella, here is what I learnt about it (although certain your OH will know a lot better!!!!):

The locking is a symptom not a problem in and of itself, the question is what is causing it. Intermittent fixation of the patella in young horses tends to be caused by poor muscle tone. Gradual, increased exercise, especially up hills tends to resolve this problem completely. The same symptom could be much more serious in an older horse as it could be caused by OCD (osteochondritis dissecans) a problem with the cartiledge (which is what my horse had). Stiffle nerve blocks should help diagnose OCD, followed by x-rays (although they won't show the full extent of the problem) and possibly ultrasound in some cases. There are three clinical options depending on the amount and type of work you want the horse to do: rest may help especially if the horse remains in light work, injections have been helpful in some cases, by far the preferred option is arthroscopic surgery. Surgery does require a long period of box rest (6-9 months), gradual return to work, final results are not really known until 18 months down the line, but the success rates (i.e. return to previous level of work where this can include high level competition) are good at 80% (a lot depends on the animal's temperament and likelihood that they remain calm through the box rest, rehab). Horses can be billaterally lame from OCD (mine was) which makes diagnosis difficult, but they are likely to have serious problem working correctly and engaging. Clicking sounds, like you get when you crack your fingers, are clinically insignificant (or so my vet claimed at the time! My OCD horse clicked all the time, but I have two others that also click with no further problems).

I am sure that your horse has the first, and rather innocuous type of the problem, so don't stress about OCD.
 
Booboos: Many thanks for your info it was good reading, I am going to increase his work load dramatically and see what the outcome is I think.

I have only had him about 5 months but hardly done anything with him because he really freaked out with new ownership, panic attacks, separation anxiety, box walking you name it he suffered from it so I took him right back to basics to build a bond with him purely from the ground and now he totally trusts me, I really disliked him a few months ago as he really was a 'skittso' but spending as much time as possible from the ground has worked fantastically and now I love him to pieces as I have discovered a very special & intelligent little horse so I think I now need to start really asking a lot more of him and hopefully his problem will ease rather than get worse.

He is insured to the hilt with loss of use etc so I will do all I can for him and see what we find. I do hope its not OCD but when I bought him he was really fit as the previous owner didn't turn out so she did 2 x 1hr daily hacks on the open moors and 1x 45 schooling session every day with him. However, I did find out after I had bought him that he had a nasty kick on the patella area and was on box rest for 6 wks due to this so part of me is wondering if it has stemed from the injury which could then be OCD! We did a thorough Vetting as you can imagine and he never showed an ounce of lameness nor stiffness and the bloods were drug free too. I suppose he's in the best place if he does have a long term problem and as I know my money is protected with Loss Of Use I can happily retire him at home should it come to this.
 
I am sure it is the milder, much more common condition and he will grow out of it. Perhaps he has lost a bit of fitness in the last 5 months and this is what has brought it on.

Good luck!
 
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