When it comes to legs and soft tissue injuries, knowing what is normal for your horse and how to check and palpate their legs could save you a lot of heartache, money, box rest and time on the side lines. And if my recent experience with Splash isn’t a great example of this, then I don’t know what is!
Before I go on, I need to say that I know how lucky I am! I’m married to a very experienced equine vet who literally looks at hundreds of legs each year and loves orthopaedics. But as well as having Hugh to call on if I am worried, I have spent years working with racehorses and eventers where we felt legs every day, and in some cases twice a day. The slightest hint of heat or thickening and the vet would be called.
Although I’m (sadly!) not working as a professional groom anymore, Hugh and I have tried to put a system in place where we routinely check Splash every eight weeks or so. Hugh will feel his legs, trot him up, do flexion tests, trot him on a soft and hard circle, feel his back and every now and then x-ray his feet to manage some tricky issues he has with foot balance.
Last week I took him over to the clinic for one of his regular checks and my heart sank as Hugh saw straight away that one of his suspensory branches on his left fore was ever so slightly bigger than normal.
To the lay person his leg would have looked completely normal and it was only when he pointed it out to me that I could see what he was talking about. He was still sound in a straight line and on the soft circle but was fractionally off on the hard circle.
So we clipped, cleaned and scanned his leg and sure enough the suspensory branch was slightly enlarged and had an irregular pattern to the fibres. There is no black hole or ‘core lesion’ but it is enough that we need to stop working him and give him six weeks of paddock rest or low grade hacking.
I’m trying to be positive about it as I know it could have been a LOT worse. I could be facing 6-12 months of box rest, hand walking and rehab and I’m not, so I’ll take six weeks off games any day of the week!
It is however a really good example of how important it is to know what’s normal for your horse, and to have a relationship with your vet, who knows your horse and their legs.
Most core lesions don’t happen as a one off incident. They happen due to wear and tear and a build-up of heat and strain which denatures the proteins, and eventually the tendon fibres can’t cope and they snap, resulting in the dreaded black hole that we see on leg scans.
Some horses, especially older or high mileage horses, have lumps and bumps that are deemed as insignificant as they are a result of historic changes, and no longer cause an issue. These lumps would be classed as ‘normal’ for your horse, but it is still important to monitor the legs daily for signs of any ‘new’ changes, heat, or inflammation.
If you can catch the low grade wear and tear early, then you’ll save yourself a lot of heartache and time on the side lines.
Splash is currently behaving in a small paddock so he’ll have four weeks off and then I’ll start hacking him for 20 minutes for another two weeks before we re-scan his leg. Fingers crossed at that point we can pick him up and get going. So I might have missed two events and a couple of Ian Woodhead lessons but right now I’ll take that over 12 months of not being able to ride my pony!
I’ll keep you posted on his progress but for now, get out there, check your ponies legs and know what is ‘normal’ for your horse.
Liz S x
