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RE: [RC] off-horses and LD's - Susan E. Garlinghouse, DVMCan 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 =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Ridecamp is a service of Endurance Net, http://www.endurance.net. Information, Policy, Disclaimer: http://www.endurance.net/Ridecamp Subscribe/Unsubscribe http://www.endurance.net/ridecamp/logon.asp Ride Long and Ride Safe!! =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
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