Lameness & Poor Performance

Poor performance is a common issue in all equine disciplines. There are a number of potential causes and areas to investigate:

Lameness

Lameness is a common cause, however it is often subtle and in multiple limbs, making quick diagnoses difficult.  We have experienced clinicians who have years of experience working with all types of lameness’s. We can analyse the horse with our Equigait gait analysis system or the Sleip gait analysis software, for extremely accurate measurements of the horse’s asymmetry.

Airway

An resting endoscopic exam is a common first diagnostic technique for horses with airway issues to look for any kind of obstruction or cause of noise. If the abnormality is not present at rest, we also can perform overground endoscopy, where the horse is ridden with the endoscope in place recording a video of the airway.

Overground endoscopy

Overground Endoscopy provides accurate information on the function of the upper airway at exercise. Our system is lightweight and halter mounted. The upper airway is visualised while the horse is galloping and then reviewed digitally by one of our Specialist veterinary surgeons.

Overground endoscopy may be carried out at the Valley Equine Hospital using the gallop adjacent to the practice or at a gallop of the trainers/clients choosing. Additionally, it can also be performed in sports horses/ leisure horses on our brand-new, purpose-built arena at the hospital.

Back pain

There are a couple of potential types of back pain, but the most common would be kissing spines (aka impinging and/or over-riding dorsal spinous processes), where the horse has reduced space between adjacent thoracic vertebra, leading to pain from impingement and bone contact. This would be diagnosed with radiographs and local anaesthetic deposited into these areas.

Gastric ulcers

Gastric ulcers are extremely common in horses – up to 100% racehorses and around 50% of sport/leisure horses. The only way to truly know if a horse has gastric ulcers is to perform gastroscopy and directly view the inside of the stomach for the presence of ulcers. We perform this procedure commonly and just requires standing sedation and all of the stomach including the common locations can be viewed and then based on that a treatment plan can be formulated.

Muscle disorders

Muscle disorders are not very common and can be difficult to diagnose, especially if the horse is not suffering for one at the time of veterinary examination. We can perform an exercise test where we test the muscle enzymes in the blood before and after exercise and see if they change appropriately or not. Also, there are some muscle disorders that are diagnosed via genetic testing or by performing a muscle biopsy.

Dental/nutrition

In certain, more unusual cases, dental issues can be the cause of poor performance. In hospital, we would perform a detailed examination under sedation, where we would use a combination of instruments, such as a oroscope (dental camera), flexible endopscope and a variety of mirrors/picks, to understand if there are any issues in the mouth that could be impacting the horses performance.