I bought my first endurance horse when she was 7 years old. The reason I bought her (aside from the
fact that she is a very beautiful and well put together horse) was that she was
hesitant down hills. I had broken
my back the year before and had never been a confident rider.Hills filled me with terror –
walking slowly was the only way I could handle it.
The mare got a year off as we got to know each other as I
wasn’t anywhere near ready for competition.We started with Competitive Trail and
then were working our way up in speed as my confidence improved.The mare still desperately wanted
endurance speeds, but was still always hesitant down hills. As I learned more, I realized that the
nagging thought I’d had that something was wrong was probably
correct.
By age 10, the 10 minute P&R stands with no movement
really stiffened her up and she’d move out with some funny hitches.I tried Legend and voila!A new horse!For about 3 weeks she moved incredibly
well, very confident down hills. Then suddenly worse than ever.My vet was out of town, so I had another
rush out to give another injection and this time it really didn’t have
any effect.
So I took her to a lameness expert that I am lucky to have
nearby and we radiographed her hock. Lots and lots of
degeneration in the lower joints.So much that she didn’t recommend hock injections – which I
wasn’t too keen on anyhow.What she did recommend was a cunectomy.It’s an old procedure that is also
called cutting the jacks.What
caused her degeneration and was preventing the joints from fusing was the cunean (sp?) tendon.It used to control one of the vestigial toes and now all it does is cause
friction in the joint, so much in her case that fusing wasn’t going to
happen.I hope I’m
remembering all this correctly!
Anyhow, a lot of vets don’t do the procedure,
it must be done in a clean room and takes several hours.But this vet has had a lot of success
and while it’s expensive, seems to do the trick, depending upon the cause
of the degeneration.
I could have ridden the horse a day later (except for
another procedure we’d also done that required 3 days of recovery).So I schedule a riding lesson for 3 days
later and my instructor was amazed.The mare was bringing her hind legs well underneath her, which was
new.She seemed extremely confident
moving around in our crappy weed filled arena.The next day I took her out on some
hills and after a little experimentation, she really
was a whole new horse.
The mare got a year off – was planning on breeding and
had bought another horse, but now my husband is bringing her back.We just got back from a very hilly ride
and she moved beautifully down the hills. It was really amazing watching her
move.After seeing that, I swear I
want to do this procedure as a preventative measure for all the horses –
if it was cheap anyhow!
