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RE: [RC] off-horses and LD's - Susan E. Garlinghouse, DVM

Can we please differentiate between pleasure trail
riding and the rigors of endurance competition.  I
believe the original inquiry, from Katrina, would the
mare be allowed to compete in an LD under current
guidelines?  Would the vets not elect to let her
compete based on her fused fetlock? 

I would be most interested in what ride 'vets' have to
say about this.  Do you evaluate the tracking of a
horse based on it's medical history vs what is being
presented to you at the time?

I originally replied privately to this, but my opinion as a ride vet is that
if the horse were presented to me at a ride vet check, and if the horse did
not seem painful at the time, and any "offness" did not progress throughout
the ride, then I would not pull the horse.  No, we don't really track the
medical history of a horse per se, but we do remember that "I had to treat
this horse last year because it didn't drink well, so I'm going to pay
special attention to that this time".  We also have a pretty good memory for
individuals we vet on a regular basis---good and bad.  We (hopefully) don't
pre-judge a horse before we see it, we just try hard to use whatever info we
have to prevent injury.

At the same time, if the horse were presented to me PRIOR to the ride, and
if they asked for my opinion 'should I do an LD on this horse with a fused
fetlock' (or pastern or whatever it was), then in all likelihood, my advice
would probably be "no".  I understand there are lots of horses out there
with varying degrees of wear-and-tear and some gait abnormalities that do
just fine.  But I also think that, as previously commented, the distal
joints have to provide a lot of elasticity and support to the entire limb.
If it cannot do that through being fused, I don't think the horse is in a
good position to travel 25 miles without being at increased and unnecessary
risk of further injury.  I also think that there is higher amount of
inflammation being produced compared to another average horse, and therefore
a higher likelihood of future arthritic and degenerative changes.  I would
see it as part of my responsibility as a vet to point that out.  I
*personally* would probably have a fairly strong opinion about it, depending
on exactly what I saw in the individual horse.

I agree that it's great this horse has largely recovered from its injury and
has a happy and useful life.  There are a lot of things this horse could be
doing very well, I just don't think an LD ride is probably on that
list---putting the horse at further risk is, IMO, not fair to what sounds to
be a very nice animal that's already beat the long odds once. 

JMO.
Susan Garlinghouse, DVM 



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Replies
RE: [RC] off-horses and LD's, Katrina Mosshammer
RE: [RC] off-horses and LD's, D'Arcy Demianoff-Thompson