What next? IRAP or Tildren.

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milz88

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Hi just looking for a little advise.

My horse has been diagnosed with bone spavin in each hock, he was injected 3 weeks ago on friday into each joint, receiving a little more in his left as he has also got a small bony spur.

He had 3 days off, 3 days hacking and then some shockwave therapy and I have been trying to work him again, to me he feels alot more level than before diagnosis, he used to feel lame in his step and was alot stiffer to the right, but not he feels equal and level, however he still really does not have the ability to 'push through' from behind, he can amble around steadily in trot in the school and canter but after 10mins i'm knackered from keeping him going and I can kick and push him forward for about 5 strides then he is back down 3 more gears!

Now I have had him 4 years and I know this is not laziness, even if he is 'not interested' or a bit blase about schooling, when I ask for him to get his butt in gear and work he will! The other factor is that, when I take him for a walk and trot on the gallops he becomes very very excited and he feels like he is doing the best trot ever, but I am confident this is just him running on adrenaline and excitment, as I am sure he must still be feeling some pain because of how he feels in the school, and even, on the occasion when he is quiet on the gallops (just grass fields (ALW)).

So tomorrow we are having the 3rd shockwave session and I will speak to the vet, but I think he may need to try Tildren or IRAP so I was wondering what would you try/what has worked and why did you try it?

Many, many thanks.
 
My pony has recently been diagnosed with bone spavins. He was alot worse in the right hind and had a boney spur. He was injected with something in this leg but cant remember what that was called. Unfortunatly this made absolutly no difference, in fact he got worse. So back in he went for more scans and xrays. No real difference to joint, they were slowly starting to fuse but nothing major. So we gave him tildren and he is on bute. You can now not tell he was ever lame. The only other option we had was an operation to fuse the joint but I didnt feel comfortable with putting him through the anisthetic and with the amount of box rest he would have to have afterwards. I was slghtly worried about him staying on bute for so long but my vet said that were not covering something up which can get worse. It has worked out for the best for us so it's kind of trial and error with bone spavins in my experience
 
Slightly different condition - trauma arthritis in the knee (and not noticably lame) - had tildren and 6 weeks rest whilst also on Adequan and Metacam - was wonderful when I first started to ride again but showing slight signs of discomfort now ( (7 months after Tildren). Would have liked tro try Irap but the box rest would have been too stressful!!! Good luck with whatever you decide xx
 
Hi many thanks for your replies,

We shockwaved him again yesterday and had a discussion about what we should do next. We have decided to begin with a 4 day bute trial that will hopefully show us whether he is still in pain somewhere (potentially from something other than his hocks, if they are now pain free). If the bute shows me an improvement in his way of going we will investigate any other sources of pain with another lameness work up, suspensory nerve block and maybe a bone scan.

The other idea is that it could just be immobility, now I understand this is a very real option but if he was suffering this amount of 'immobility' in the sand school, then why oh why does he do the best trot i've sat on in over a year out on the grass! immobility is immobility surely, no matter how excited he is! so this leads us to the suspicion it could be suspensory damage due to the way he changes in 'going' from the hard grass to soft sand. Of course at the moment this is all speculative, so I am hoping over the next few days we will have some more answers, he goes back to the vet for a check up Tues 3rd May including nerve blocks etc.

Fingers crossed we can work it out, thanks for the replies too! :)
 
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