Suspensory ligament damage in older horse

[dressage_diva]

A week ago my 16year old gelding suddenly became stiff behind and started taking short strides. Vet thought it might be his hocks so on Friday we spent the day at the vet hospital and after x-raying both his hocks and fetlocks, various nerve blocks, flexion tests and finally ultra-sounds he diagnosed that my gelding has damage to both hind suspensory ligaments.

On the scans the suspensory ligaments showed quite a bit of thickening and the vet seemed to believe that the issue was chronic and had been occurring for a while (my horse has shown odd days of stiffness before but we always thought it was back pain as getting saddler out to reflock saddle or quick physio appt and he always seemed fine again).

As he's not hopping lame and damage is already thought to have been done, my horse is to have 3 weeks off work (but daily turn out) and then vets will see how he's doing. They seemed to suggest though that he won't ever make a full recovery and he needs to slow down. Up until this he had been working 6 days a week - mix of hacking, lunging and flatwork - and jumping once a month (BN/disco height) and doing Prelim/Novice level dressage.

Has anyone else had chronic issues with both hind suspensory ligaments in an older horse and what was the prognosis/outcome?

I must admit I'm truly gutted as I've had my gelding since he was 4 and he's hardly had a day lame! Although he works 6 days a week, he's certainly not hammered (only do it too keep his weight down as he's such a good do-er). I'd never imagined he would need to slow down at 16 and had just registered him with BD before this happened. He was my forever horse and honestly thought he'd at least be competitive for a few more years and a happy hacker into his 20s but now that all seems pretty unlikely

Would really appreciate hearing others experiences.

Thanks

Vet suggested that the

 

[muff747]

I have a TB gelding, he's 23 now and retired. He began having SL injuries about four years ago. Unfortunately his first injury was not treated properly i.e. he was turned out too soon by someone else and the injury took a long time to heal. He had other SL injuries after that which took longer to heal and now I think he has DSLD, (you need to google it because I can't remember the proper spelling). This usually shows up bilaterally and my gelding is worse on his back fetlocks. There are sometimes other signs that we can put down to being quirky or difficult.
My boy has always been difficult to shoe behind, he argues when his hind legs are held up and when you ask him to lift his hind leg, he lifts it up under his belly first and then carefully lets it down to be cleaned/picked out. Latterly, he began "knuckling over" on his hinds when I was schooling him, and sometimes he would not go forward and felt like he had the handbrake on.
Look at this thread with a similar story to yours http://ihdg.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=ght10&action=display&thread=107631
I hope you can manage his condition and you will have many more years together. Good luck.