janehandley
Member
Hello all,
I ride a 12 year old Selle Francais two or three times and week in the school, doing basic preliminary level dressage, working on suppling and transitions with him at the moment. His owner brought in a professional dressage coach to have a lesson with him, with a different rider, and the professional told the owner the horse has a problem with his right patella. He proposed a 'simple' surgical procedure, which he had done to his own horse, which he claimed would really make a big change, and done to both kneecaps. Another horse at the same yard is also now having this surgery.
This is a fairly average horse, not particularly talented, and he has only done one competition in his life in which he came 5th out of 9 horses. He is not destined for greatness! I ride as regularly as I can and have not found any hint of lameness, crookedness, reluctance to move, and apart from the need to have a long warm up session working long and low, he works reasonably well. His previous rider had been doing lots of shoulder in, flying changes and collected work, but he started grinding his teeth so now I am working with him to get some muscles back in the right places and get him into an outline in which he is comfortable. After six months he is now no longer grinding his teeth.
Does anyone know what this so called simple procedure is? I have heard of cutting ligaments for locking stifle, but surely SURELY they can't mean this!! I think it extremely suspicious that three horses this man has seen (his own, and two at our yard) all suddenly need an operation on their patellas. can anyone shed any light on this?
thanks for reading my long post!
J
I ride a 12 year old Selle Francais two or three times and week in the school, doing basic preliminary level dressage, working on suppling and transitions with him at the moment. His owner brought in a professional dressage coach to have a lesson with him, with a different rider, and the professional told the owner the horse has a problem with his right patella. He proposed a 'simple' surgical procedure, which he had done to his own horse, which he claimed would really make a big change, and done to both kneecaps. Another horse at the same yard is also now having this surgery.
This is a fairly average horse, not particularly talented, and he has only done one competition in his life in which he came 5th out of 9 horses. He is not destined for greatness! I ride as regularly as I can and have not found any hint of lameness, crookedness, reluctance to move, and apart from the need to have a long warm up session working long and low, he works reasonably well. His previous rider had been doing lots of shoulder in, flying changes and collected work, but he started grinding his teeth so now I am working with him to get some muscles back in the right places and get him into an outline in which he is comfortable. After six months he is now no longer grinding his teeth.
Does anyone know what this so called simple procedure is? I have heard of cutting ligaments for locking stifle, but surely SURELY they can't mean this!! I think it extremely suspicious that three horses this man has seen (his own, and two at our yard) all suddenly need an operation on their patellas. can anyone shed any light on this?
thanks for reading my long post!
J