Weak knees and stumbling help please

[jessieblue]

Hi everyone. Have a wierd concern and looking for some advice/expereiences etc. My horse is still recovering and returning to work after hind suspensory injury. He is doing well but seems to stumble when out hacking quite abit,plus whenin the menage he tends to have his knees give way slightly resulting in him dropping the shoulder. This only happens in walk. He doesnt fall to his knees or anything, but there is a stumbling feeling. Both front legs do it at different times equally. I feel it could be a straightness issue as he does have a lot of crookedness which we are working on straightening. Also, it seems he doesnt always pick up his feet properly, a little laziness Thats how it feels anyway. He is very on the forehand and again this is something we are correcting and it seems he sometimes doesnt get his front feet out from under him and fully extended when they hit the ground, resulting in the knee giving way. This is how I see it if it happens on the lunge. He has done this for some time, as he was doing it when i first got him 3 years ago, although i seemed to not notice it as much after a while and now do again.

Has anyone any experience of this sort of thing. My farrier says there is nothing wrong and he feels its a fitness/balance and laziness thing. He fitted him with natural balance shoes but i havent notices any real difference. He does not have any signs of navicular and has not got navicular shaped feet, so i dont feel this is a ossibility at this stage, but maybe arthritis??

Thanks for reading.

 

[sophiebailey]

Hi Jessie, not sure how helpful this will be to you but my 20yo was stumbling and tripping a lot during schooling, so we had the physio out who identified a weakness in his left shoulder that was contributing heavily to the stumbling. After one session with her the difference was noticeable. She came again on Thursday to have another look and said the shoulder was looking better.

We worked on getting him to pick his feet up and strengthen his shoulders by walking him in hand over 4 or 5 raised poles a few times each day, making him repeat the exercise until he didn't knock any of the poles off. (We just use sticks on top of plant pots) This seems to have helped as he's now not as lazy with his legs. We also try to do some polework in walk or trot once a week (sometimes with raised trotting poles) to get him thinking about picking his feet up properly.

The physio also found that as he had a weakness in his left fore, he was compensating with his right hind which was making him unbalanced and more likely to stumble, so perhaps the same could apply but in reverse for you? If he's putting more weight on the front to compensate for his hind injury it could be unbalancing him to make him stumble?

May be worth mentioning the stumbling has improved since we put him on Glucosamine xxx