old mare suddenly ataixc behind.

[Perce]

my mare who is a long necked arthritic 16.3hh 24 year old presented as wobbly behind on Saturday evening.
best description would be that she looked drunk behind.

The vet came out yesterday and thinks she has compressed a nerve somewhere in her neck/back.
Possibly trauma but no evidence of that.
he thinks more likely her age/arthritic changes.
I had done a lot of weekend googling ( usually avoid it but...) so was expecting this :-(

She was injected and has a ten day dose of anti inflammatories and we will see how she gets on.
Unless trauma that is fixed by the meds he was not very hopeful of her prognosis.

She has been retired lame due to an arthritic hock for about 10 years now, but has not got any lamer. In fact we took her off the bute as she seems happy without it and hadn;t expected her to be around quite so long .

He feels this will be the 'thing' that forces me to make the final decision and if she is the same in a fortnight .....
I adore her and she is a lovely girl without a nasty bone in her body so is a pleasure to have a round.

I have looked at some previous threads. I had never come across anything like this before in many years with horses but it is obviously fairly common.

So does anyone have any experience to share. particularly of older horses who have had fairly sudden onset due to arthritic changes. She is an incredibly stoic mare so was probably hiding it for a little while.

 

[sarahann1]

Not my own horses, but two at the yard I keep them at, both went from being a bit stiff and just 'old' to markedly stiff/lame in a matter of weeks. I'm afraid neither had a positive outcome

Fingers crossed the medication helps your mare, but remember better a day to soon than a day too late.

I think this is the hardest part of keeping old horses, we have the hardest decision to make for them.

 

[Circe]

I'll pm you
Kx

 

[Birker2020]

my mare who is a long necked arthritic 16.3hh 24 year old presented as wobbly behind on Saturday evening.
best description would be that she looked drunk behind.

Sorry for long reply - to save typing this again I have copied and pasted it from a post I replied to a long time ago:


My ten year old got wobblers after falling over onto his neck and couldn't raise his head higher than chest height for a few days. A lot of horses who get late onset wobblers are caused by trauma to the neck region. Immediately he was ataxic but the vet seemed to think he had EHV (Equine Herpes Virus) and he was swabbed for this which showed him to be a EHV carrier (this was just co-incidence as eventually EHVwas ruled out). Because he was wrongly diagnosed with this the vets wouldn't travel him anywahere in case he spread it!

Rommy was Grade 3 touching on 4 wobbler and he had C3, C4 and C6 (with C6 vetebrae being the most difficult to treat). He was eventually (on my insistence) referred to Liverpool and was PTS within 2 hours of arriving after receiving a much deeded diagnosis. He had three bad ataxic episodes and you could literally pull the horse off his feet by pulling on his tail. It was a very very sad thing and before he had his three episodes he displayed some strange gait in canter where his canter threw you out of the saddle upwards quite violently and his body appeared to concertina itself from nose to tail.

He also threw his hind leg out wide (circumducting??) on a circle and was very hoppy if you made him rein back.

He started rubbing his hind fetlocks together, the farrier came out to make the inside of his hind shoes higher and he was fitted with a sausage boot. The physio came out twice as the farrier failed to make headway and even in his worse symptoms I was told the horse was not a wobbler!

The whole thing was a nightmare. Anyway in the end I got a phone call on a bank holiday to say the horse had had a very bad ataxic episode and could hardly stand in the stable. The vet came out and stabilised him with finadyne and I INSISTED on referral. He got referred when he had stabilised four days later to Liverpool.

There are many reasons a horse can be ataxic and its not just down to CVM or Wobblers. Excess clover in the field can cause ataxia, so can certain poisons, and crop sprays.

Even if your horse has CVM or wobblers it can still be okay if it can have an operation. But if there is too much damage (as in my horses case) then sadly there is not much they can do. Rommy was pts on humane grounds as I was told this would be appropriate under BEVA guidelines as the horse has poor prognosis and unfair to keep alive as unethical and inhumane.

Also Rommy's spinal column had 17mm gap to allow the spinal cord and nerves to go through, normal horses have a gap of 51mm. The huge difference obviously had devastating effect on his spinal cord which led to the ataxia and this was thought to have come from the fall on his neck.

Finally long necked thoroughbreds, Warmbloods, Shires and Quarter Horses are breeds most affected and there is more prevelence in geldings/stallions.

I hope you find a solution for your mare. I would ask for a referral to a centre with a large XRAY machine such as Liverpool so you can get a correct diagnosis and go from there. Don't rely on a portable xray machine as I had xrays done with this and was told the horses neck was okay. This is because there is a lot of muscle on a neck and the portable xray machine struggles to get a correct diagnosis due to unclear xrays (or this was the case in 2004 anyway) as the machine is not strong enough to penetrate the neck.

One more thing PERCE. Don't write off your mare because she has arthirtis in her hocks. Read this article first. http://www.horsesandpeople.com.au/article/ethanol-treatment-hock-arthritis-shows-promising-results I know of three people who have had this procedure no their horses including myself and it is very sucessful to the vast majority and is inexpensive (compared with tildren, etc) at £300 to treat both hocks.

The horse is out of pain immediately as the nerve are killed straight away and you can start riding after a week to ten days. My boy who was only able to lift his hind leg about two inches off the floor when picking out his feet the following day after treatment lifted his foot so high he nearly knocked my teeth out! lol

 

[fatpiggy]

I took over the care of a 40+ year old pony and one day I came down in the morning to feed her and her front end and back end were going in different directions. I don't think she was in any pain, but buted her and phoned her owner immediately saying that in my opinion she should see the vet immediately and if PTS was suggested, I completely agreed with it. Needless to say she didn't see the vet for a week and didn't improve much, so eventually the owner pulled their finger out and had her put down. She was still cheerful and eating well but trying to keep her back legs upright made her shake continuously. It broke my heart to see her like that. I used to lean on a concrete wall and let her brace herself against me while she ate her bucket feeds, just so she could get a little relief from it. I found out afterwards that a new horse that had gone in the field with her "couldn't stand little ponies and would go for them" and I suspect had a go at her while she was lying down and she twisted herself getting up in a hurry. A sad end for a gutsy and just lovely little character.

 

[Perce]

thanks for replies, especially your super long one applecart!

As I said she has been lame for years and the arthritic changes are to do with a dodgy hock with a lot of history - she strained the tendon sheath twice and then had a year off for a badly strained tendon and so I don't think she will ever be a riding horse again. She has earned her retirement anyhow

She is significantly better today on her meds. still ataxic but less unstable on her hinds.
but I would guess even if arthritic rather than trauma, the anti inflammatory would still help. I will contact the vet again tomorrow to update.

 

[Pearlsasinger]

I'm sorry to say that I recognise this. Exactly a year ago, our 31 yr old retired cob showed lame on a hind foot. I and vet thought it was probably an abscess but neither vet nor farrier could find said abscess. We had hoof x-rayed because I didn't want to keep her going unnecessarily but nothing showed up. She got a bit better and after the snow had gone was turned out in a small paddock on her own. She improved a bit more and went back in the field with the others. She was on bute all this time. Then she took a turn for the worse, farrier came on a routine visit and I had to tell him not to risk doing her hinds as she was in danger of falling over. Vet out again, diagnosed muscle wastage, could be various causes. By the end of the week the poor old girl didn't know where she was putting her back legs. She could walk uphill but wobbled going downhill, (gentle slope), it was obvious that she couldn't feel her back feet. Vet came again and diagnosed a tumour, either in her brain or her spine. Vet gave her powerful painkiller and she improved rapidly while waiting for the knacker to come out.
If only we had known she would have been spared the last six weeks of discomfort, including some nasty cold weather, when she had to be kept away from the herd for her own safety. Good job the sheep spent some time with her.