For example, race horses tend to present injuries such as bowed tendons or bone chips in joints. Jumpers on the other hand tend to have more soft tissue injuries.
Some can happen as the result of accidents, such as stepping in a hole or on a rock during a trail ride and twisting an ankle. Horses can even injure themselves while bucking and playing in a pasture. As a horse owner, it is fairly easy to recognize if your horse is lame as most likely there will be some limping.
Many causes of lameness can be diagnosed with a thorough history, palpation of the limbs, observation of the horses gait and hoof tester examination. In some horses in addition to this local nerve blocks or joint blocks may be required.
When the hind limb is involved, however, many more are seen in the upper part of the limb, especially in the hock or stifle. It can take careful examination, extensive diagnostics and more than one evaluation of a horse to diagnosed more complex lameness.
It is always important to start a lameness examination with a complete history of the lameness, a general physical examination of the horse to rule out other, potentially more serious diseases, and a thorough conformation assessment. Usually this is done by a handler leading the horse but occasionally will be done under the saddle. A variety of surfaces may be used depending on the horse and the suspected lameness.
Hard level surfaces are most often used to evaluate lameness, however, in some cases the use of a sand or grass surface may be warranted. Through gait analysis, the veterinarian can then establish which limb or limbs are involved by observing the horse in motion. Many horses are lame in more than one leg at the time of examination. Once the limb or limbs involved in the lameness is identified, the veterinarian will palpate each lame limb to better determine which particular region is affected.
Hoof testers are frequently used at this point to assess the presence of pain in the foot. The goal of this phase of the examination is to find evidence of heat, pain, and swelling to better pinpoint the exact cause of the lameness.
Flexion tests are often used to see if lameness increases afterwards which can help isolate the lameness to that area of the leg. Lameness in the horse is often quantified by veterinarians using a lameness grading system.
This subjective grading system is based on a five-point scale ranging from 0 to 5. Using this standardized grading system allows consistent description of lamenesses and allows progressive tracking of a lameness in the same horse over time. The Veterinary Manual was first published in as a service to the community.
The legacy of this great resource continues in the online and mobile app versions today. This site complies with the HONcode standard for trustworthy health information: verify here. Common Veterinary Topics. Videos Figures Images Quizzes.
Lameness in Horses. Test your knowledge. A seven-year-old Quarter horse gelding presents with a 1-week history of mild lameness. During the examination, the horse raises his head as he places weight on his left forelimb and drops it when placing weight on the right forelimb. Which limb is most likely affected in this horse? More Content.
And the posting motion can feel generally uncomfortable in a particular direction. A normal horse should feel similar. This is particularly true when both forelimbs are lame because neither limb is comfortable under the weight.
Stumbling in front or behind consistently could indicate lameness, with the heel area a likely cause, she says. Horses also can stiffen their head and neck positions, which Dyson says is more apparent in Western horses that usually carry their heads low. You might suddenly find your horse deciding to go faster than usual or slow down without being asked. In more subtle cases of hind-limb lameness, you might just feel a loss of power. Transitions can help expose these subtle lamenesses.
Their work has revealed that providing pain relief in a suspected lame hind limb results in a straight saddle throughout the ride—proof that lameness is the cause. Observant riders might be able to pick up a subtle lameness by noting side preferences when jumping.
And a horse that used to easily make his distances in fence combinations might suddenly have more difficulty doing so, says Dyson. Do you feel any of these signs of lameness under saddle? Or get off and longe the horse. Before your next ride, she adds, have your veterinarian come out to perform a lameness exam and diagnostic imaging, as needed.
We know a lame horse often looks lamer when trotting in a circle. But what a rider feels can vary considerably, depending on the direction, the way he or she rides the trot, the location of the lame limb s , and the kind of lameness.
In fact, in some combinations of those variables, a lame horse can look even more symmetrical than a sound horse, says Rhodin, based on work she did with PhD student Emma Persson-Sjodin. And so does lameness. So you can either exacerbate that lameness or cancel it out completely. Her biomechanics team induced temporary subtle lameness in sound study horses.
They analyzed the effect of trotting on a circle on movement asymmetry. The circle induced asymmetry in sound horses and increased or decreased the degree of lameness, depending on whether the lame limb was to the inside or outside of the circle. If the rider sits when the sound limb hits the ground in impact hind-limb lameness, the asymmetry gets worse.
That asymmetry is further exacerbated if the lame limb is on the inside of the circle. The opposite might be true if the horse has push-off pain, Rhodin says.
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