Suspensory Ligaments - discuss

[MrsMozart]

Sorry to post a veterinary type thread on here, but any of you reading the veterinary forum will know there are a number of horses on there with suspensory ligament issues: I lost my four year old IDxTB mare to it on Friday. Too bad to operate or treat. She went downhill very quickly at the end.

I had Tiggy for a year, just after she was backed. She was in very light work (being young we were taking it easy). As far as I'm aware there were no issues before I got her, but there was no damage done, as in an accident, whilst I had her.

This is where the disucssion comes in. When I started out in horses (thirty odd years ago), I never heard of suspensory ligament issues. One of the posters on the veterianary forum said her vet was seeing a new case a day! Is is because we are now using atificial surfaces? In my early days, we rode on the roads and in fields; it was very rare we got to use a menage other than the occasional indoor school winter competition. When in fields or on bridle paths we naturally tried to stay out of the deep mud, or even the not so deep mud, but of those of us who use menages, how good are the surfaces? Too much trotting on hard roads is bad, we know that; is too much work on soft surfaces the culprit where suspensory ligaments are concerned? Are we making too much use of boots? Although they are designed to support, are we relying on them too much so in fact our horses are not building up the strength needed? I'm not a vet or a medical person in any way, shape or form, I'm just trying to think what has changed over these last thirty years. The vet who diaganosed Tiggy's problem is probably one of, if not the best in the country and her research is thorough and on-going and far beyond anything I could do, but as this issue has now had such a huge impact on my life and I am interested in other's thoughts and experience.

 

[dozzie]

I was taught that you should do 6 weeks of road work before going in a school to harden the tendons etc. Then to introduce circles slowly. But that was 15 years ago so I am not sure if that still stands or was just the thinking at the time. Maybe people start young horses in a school nowadays due to traffic etc.I would not be surprised if some suspensory injuries were caused by to much schooling in deep surfaces on unfit horses though. Not all of course but some.

The fact more are being diagnosed I would suspect is to do with the fact that Vets know more about these things now and they can be diagnosed more easily.

I also think that people are more demanding of their horses as well as more knowledgeable about the way their horse goes but perhaps less knowledgeable or patient about fittening.

 

[MrsMozart]

I think you could be onto something with the fitness before too much work in the school/competition. Of course this will not cover all cases, but I remember having to ride the horses from the equestrian centre and the showjumpers I worked with for hours at walk and building up to trot to build up the fitness levels before they went anywhere near the school to work more intenvively or to enter competitions. I think that now there are so many competitions and so many people have that little bit more disposable income (or did, global economic doom aside), to pay for lessons, that maybe we're losing sight of the necessity of just riding? Should a horse always work, every day, in an outline on the bit and working up from behind in the school? Or should we be spending more time out and about and just having fun with our neds? With such times, surely comes the fitness and strength to be able to do that work that we then ask of them in the school or in the competitive arena?

 

[angiebaby]

I think a lot of the reasons is working horses without them being fit enough for the job; I know mine was probably caused by working him when he was tired

and not recognising it! ( He was quite fit, well at least I thought he was)

I think road work is best for fittening, lots and lots of walking; I walked mine everyday for 6 weeks before doing any trotting.

I'm only just doing canter work in the school, 6 months on.

 

[MrsMozart]

With hindsight everything is so easy

I now firmly believe that fitness is everything, and our two ponies will be having their regime changed. Back to the basics of my youth. And if (when? if?) I ever get another horse, he/she will have the same. Lots of hacking, lots of getting fit, lots of having fun just being together, and the lessons and the menage work and the competitions will come, but after the fitness and the strengthening ground work is done and it will be on-going.

 

[Halfstep]

MrsMozart, I'm really sorry to hear about your horse. To be honest, it does sound like she was an extreme case and you were very unlucky. in a case like that, I imagine she was born with weak ligaments (it happens) and never would have stood up to work no matter what you did. How was she bred?

But on the otherhand, yes we are seeing more suspensory injuries diagnosed. This is probably for three main reasons:

1). Better awareness by vets and owners and better diagnostic equipment. Also the ubiquitousness of insurance - which allows owners to pursue costly diagnostic work which without insurance would be prohibitive. I think it the past horses that present with classic suspensory issues (up to but not including lameness) would have been described as "sour" or "untrainable" and turned away.

2). Chronic suspensory problems often lead to secondary issues which are more easily diagnosed and visible. So, before the increased awareness/diagnostic tools mentioned above, a lot of horses would be presenting with back pain/hock pain/sacro-iliac pain/heel pain/whatever.

3). We probably don't do so much conditioning on the roads as we should. This is no doubt due to the bloody awful traffic nearly everywhere, and also to the increased number of arenas easily accessible to a lot of horse owners.

 

[MrsMozart]

I think you're right Halfstep. My girl was an IDxTB, with Dallas line (showjumper, but I don't know anything about him, it was just an added bonus as I love the Tiggy as soon as I saw her). Her symptoms started not long after I got her, but we thought it muscle related at first (months of back lady and vet and on and off lameness followed). We did a lot of hacking, but did use the school a fair bit as well, the surface of which could have been better. The vet knows us well (with three neds she is bound to!). We don't have a school at our new yard, which we rent, but I think that when we do find our own land, we will have a school so long as we can afford to make if big and to have the best possible surface.

Just read this through again, and it makes it sound as though I think all schools are bad! I don't, but I do think that, as a generalization and probably given the traffic, we use schools too much and hack too little. Our current yard has the best locaiton, being admist quiet lanes and close the most wonderful estate that we can ride in. Our horses are exposed to as much traffic as we can find (management of the local fields offers a lovely range of tractors and combine harvesters lol). Maybe when we do use school, we concentrate too much on 'schooling' and not enough on our horses just having fun?

 

[Marchtime]

I have to agree with Halfstep here. I think the number of cases being diagnosed has risen sharply due to the increased awareness of the problem. It's true of most soft tissue injuries. When I lost Sammy five years ago to collateral ligament damage he was only the ninth horse Sue Dyson had ever seen with it. Now five years on and with another diagnosed with the same problem it is far more common. The good news is that with increased awareness and better diagnostic tools the chances of the horse returning to work are greatly increased. I'm so sorry for your loss MrsMozart and I'm sure you did nothing wrong. I hope with time you'll be able to look back on all the good times with a smile.

 

[angiebaby]

I agree with you all!
I mainly hack out, at least 4 times a week and up to three hours , I only go in the school for my weekly hour lesson ( I have to hire it)
The roads used to be so quiet; I live in a small village, but the single track roads are a pain when you have a pony that dislikes tractors lorries and motorbikes!

 

[Rollin]

I don't compete and don't much like school work I love hacking. However, we have a lovely mare who did very well in the show ring. She was being schooled by my instructor when I noticed very very slight hind leg lameness.

We took her to the Dick Vet in Edinburgh who could find nothing wrong and she got better after a couple of weeks BUT. The vet wanted to see me ride her I warmed her up well and then started to trot - he told me I had not walked her for long enough and she should walk for another 5-10mins.

I have noticed that lots of experts I have employed to school for me are very hasty to get on with the job lots of trotting circling and cantering. I wonder if the increase in tendon injuries is caused by our lifestyles. Working people who have only an hour a day for their horses?

Because I like to hack my horses get lots of walking - the oldest a 29 year old ride/drive still does gentle work and has never given me a vet bill.

 

[Hollycat]

So sorry to hear about your horse Mrs Mozart. I think you were just desperately unlucky. I agree that we are not doing as much road work and conditioning before schooling than we used to in days gone past. However, we all have to work with what we have and its not a perfect world. Vet treatment & diagnosis has also got significantly better and I agree with the poster that said many horses in the past would just be considered sour or tempremental rather than recognised as being in pain. I also am not too keen on horse walkers simply since it is a constant circle. Other things that spring to mind is that we have more warmbloods these days who do not mature until a lot later, than say a TB. Its easy to push a warmblood too fast rather than giving it the time it needs to mature. Also, so few people long rein their babies these days - most are lunged which again is a lot of circle work for young horses.

 

[lannerch]

So sorry also mozart to hear about your horse, you have been so unlucky as has the horse.

With a young horse, to improve then it has to be regularly schooled, to do well eventing these days you have to do well in the dressage, and to do that you have to regularly school, however in the olden days you schooled out in the field not on a perfect surface.

I do not think boots have an influence, as the support these offer is next to nothing, however they do provide protection from striking.

I agree with hollycat about lunging a young horse too young, and a lot of young horses are worked in my mind too hard, which would predispose them to injurys such as that being discussed, however in your case, I have read some of your other post and this certainly does not seem to be.

I hope you have more than good luck on the horse front next time, you are certainly due for a shed load!

 

[MrsMozart]

Thank you for the thoughts Ilannerch. My babe apart, too young and definately not too much work, ah well, but it is the numbers that seemed to be increasing overall.

I think, given what I've seen since being back in the hoss world in the last two years, that people don't put the fitness work in. I know we need to school and to be precise in order to do well, which is fine and one of these days I'll be there as well I hope, but I will go back to how we used to get fit, and my daughter's ponies will be ridden to get fit before they are pushed in the school. As to the schools themselves, I've seen a number of them over the yeats, and I think that some of them really are too deep.

It's been an interesting discussion I think

 

[MrsMozart]

I forgot to add, we're quite into schooling when we're out and about as well, which seems to keep the pones happy and interested. Had to do this due to one pone deciding he really had had enough of the school work and he just switched off. Now we're back to getting fit and schooling on the move, and he's happy and more into everything.

 

[Hollycat]

A good farrier could also influence things due to incorrect foot balance. I once kept my 2 year old in a yard where the farrier was AWFUL. Virtually every horse in the yard in work had suffered tendon injuries at some point. I initially thought it was due to the school or incorrect training/fitening work until I saw the mess the farrier was making of my fillies feet. It was a stud and they ended up shoeing all of the youngstock and brood mares - only the foals were unshod. Yearlings upwards were shod on all 4 feet as their feet were falling apart - the farrier said due to the hard ground which was cr*p. Its amazing the damage a bad farrier can make. Not saying this is contributing to the trend in these injuries but its something to bear in mind

 

[Rollin]

I agree about long reining versus lunging. I attended a very impressive Monty Roberts demo at Gleneagles where he demonstrated a horse which disunited on single line lunge - what a difference with long reins.

I never single line lunge.

I also agree with your comments about time. I have Shagya Arabs and Cleveland Bays. The foundation stud in Hungary (which is where I bought my Shagya mares) break mares and fillies to harness first and back the following year they told me 4 yr olds were too young for saddle work and benefitted from a year in harness.

Cleveland Bays continue growing until they are 6 years old and also benefit from long slow work first. They have been used to give bone and stamina to many of the modern warmbloods.

 

[_jetset_]

As many people on here already know, my 7 year old WBxTB is currently recovering (I still use this phase as I don't think we are fully there yet) from a PSD injury. I am extremely interested in this condition and before opting for the surgery in March (she was diagnose november 2007) I did so much research and read every veterinary paper I could lay my hands on.

It is difficult because there are so many contradictions within the research, as there always is. There seems so many contributing factors, I think we would end up wrapping our horses in cotton wool and not letting them out of the confines of their stable

I read some papers which were talking about the number of cases in endurance horses who are super super fit which I found really surprising, and then there were discussions about surfaces in arenas which were so interesting.

When my mare was diagnosed I asked a similar question on here and I think it was someone like Bossanova or BBs who suggested that we were seeing more cases because it is such a new diagnosis. It has only been researched for the past 12 years or so, and I think vets are only recently starting to pick up on this injury and referring horses to specialists with regards to the 'movement' it creates. Previously, horses were just thought to have lost form or interest and turned away. My own vet missed my mare's PSD injury, but because I 'knew' something was not quite as it should be, I took her to a specialist myself where it was picked up.

We believe my mare's injury was acute and caused by an unstable arena surface. I really analysed videos of her previous to October and there was genuinely nothing at all. But I think you can drive yourself crazy thinking about the reasons the injury has happened

As Halfstep has already said, I also think some horses perhaps are born with weaker ligaments and tendons and this predisposes them to this kind of injury.

 

[Halfpass]

My situation is very similar to yours MrsM. I have owned Alee since she was 2 and very lightly backed her myself as a 3 year old. I turned her away till spring this year and was very lightly hacked and long reined for a couple of weeks till the problems started to show.

I researched every part of Alee's training and feel that I took what i believe to be the best training routes at each stage. She had time off when she had growth spurts and was never schooled for more than 20 mins and never hacked for more than half an hour. She was only worked at most 2/3 times per week. The surface
in our school is very good and very well maintained not deep / unlevel.

Alee has PSD in both back legs but it was very difficult to notice a problem as she was bilateraly lame. It was only when she started refusing to go forwards and fell out hacking that I got it investigated. She was (prior to box rest and shockwave) 6/10ths lame on both legs!!!

My vet initailly diagnosed counter rotated pedal bones but my farrier and physio both got me to push for a referral and the RVC diagnosed the PSD.

On loooking back at old piccies and videos I am sure that Alee hasn't been right for a while. When first backed we had amazing moments where her true potential shone through this was short lasted and photos from just a few week after backing show lack of action behind and Alee nowhere near tracking up.

My vet and the RVC are all very guarded with their prognosis and feel that she will never return to full work and that the operation will not be successfull however they do also feel that it is an injury and not conformational however I am unable to pinpoint and specific time when / where it may have happened.

I do feel that this problem is being diagnosed more now due to research and better diagnostic equipment. On thinking about other horses / ponies in my life I wonder how many others may have had this but was dissmissed with old age or bad conformation or just plain lazy / stubborn!!?? Or how many were miss diagnosed as like other have said the other problems that PSD cause tend to be the ones that show up first.

Alee is off to the vets a week tomorrow for her next lameness work up. At this point they will tell me how effective they feel that the op will be ( I am not expecting her to be sound after shockwave) If the op will not work then I fear I will be in the same position as you have recently been in.

 

[MrsMozart]

Aw hunny. Unfortunately I know only too well how you feel. The only bright thing at the moment, and it's not very bright, is that I don't have to worry and think any more - the last two weeks have been bl**dy awful.

I was told there is the issue is not genetic or hereditary. I suppose there could be a weakness though, and our babes were/are prone and no matter what we did/do we the outcome was going to be whatever it will be. I donated Tiggy, after she had gone, to the AHT in the hope that it would help with their research. I will be interested to hear what their findings are in regard to my Tigsome.

Will be thinking of you. Please keep updating us, and if you ever want to talk you know where I am.

C.x