Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Lameness in hind or fore? Makes my head spin :-)

Most of us know that the lame horse tends to nod onto the SOUND leg when trotting, because they stiffen and raise their head when the unsound leg is bearing weight. However, a common mistake new vets and inexperienced owners make is to incorrectly or prematurely diagnose a front leg lameness. Specifically, it's easy to mistake a hind leg lameness for a front leg lameness on the same side.

Why?

Because a horse that is lame on a hind leg will try to throw weight onto the sound diagonal foreleg--the leg that shares the burden of holding the horse up during the weight-bearing phase of that hind leg.  The horse will lower its head as he/she takes more weight on that front leg. To the observer, it may look like the horse is nodding onto one forelimb -- and incorrectly concluding that the horse is lame on the opposite forelimb. The observer may incorrectly conclude the horse is lame on the foreleg on the same side as the  hind leg that is actually lame.

Get it? It took me a few readings and I had to close my eyes and squint hard while my imaginary horse demonstrated each lamness. This is not my wisdom! It's  from Adams Lameness in Horses.


11 comments:

  1. Ye gads. Well, this explains a lot, like why I never seem to be able to "see" lameness all that well, unless the horse is holding up the painful leg before it even starts moving (duh). After 40+ years of being around horses, I NEVER KNEW that they nod onto the OPPOSITE leg!!! See, that's why I read blogs! THANK YOU for educating us and I am planning to commit that entire lecture to memory.

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  2. I am horrible at figuring out lameness. I can look at -my- horse and say, "something's not right", but if we're just dealing with one leg, I never know which it is.

    Unless it's really, really, really patently obvious to anyone with eyes.

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  3. A trick for figuring out hind end lameness is looking for how much the hips drop from behind. Also how much overstep, but especially if you're trying to go on a circle it can be misleading at times.

    I am generally fairly lousy at telling where a horse is lame from the ground - but can usually tell from the saddle, including what general part of the leg.

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  4. "Head nods" on the front and "hip hikes" on the back.

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  5. You got it. That's why a hind end lameness is often so hard to detect. A flex test in the hind leg will usually show up an obvious issue.

    And I tent to agree that often riding the horse will separate a front from back end problem to the rider. One thing to try is posting on each diagonal to see if that makes a difference.

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  6. I very recently had to look for hind end lameness - watched from behind for uneven hip motion - hiking the hip of the injured leg.

    Very interesting about the front end expression of hind end lameness - I'm filing that away. Thanks for the info :)

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  7. Yeah, and then to blurry it up some more, try having multiple leg lamenesses concurrently. My gelding has played that one on us, and I used to think I was pretty good at pinpointing lameness.

    Stifles are the great Houdinis ... especially if BOTH are lame.

    And, the best one was when both his stifles were sore ANNNNND he was foot sore on one front from compensating. Whoo. Doozy of a time figuring out which was the good foot!

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  8. Very interesting. It is easy to see if a horse is lame but trying to tell which leg it is is another question!

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  9. I stink at this, too, but sometimes it helps to not look at the head (block it from your vision with your hand) and to just focus on the legs themselves.

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  10. Don't you just wish the horse could tell you where it hurts... well, I guess he is, in his own way, but darn, he doesn't make it easy!!

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  11. I'm glad I'm not the only person that can feel when my horse is off but can't see it. My 16 OTTB gelding has been moving 'funny' on his left hind for a few weeks. It mostly went away with rest but I never could see it on the ground.

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