transient lameness?

[abowls]

My friend has an Appendix that has been off and on lame since November. He is only 3 and she has been lightly riding him for a year. Up until November he had never shown any lameness. He has seen two vets. The first guess was navicular (him being half quarter horse and all). The farrier and vet were going with that for awhile but eventually discarded it in favor of Lyme. The thing is that when you watch him go the lameness travels. First he's off RF, then LH, then RH. You get the picture.

They treated him with Doxy and he seemed to get better for awhile but then he was the same as before so they pulled him off the Doxy and titerred him a few weeks later and he was negative. They tried Adequan and that also didn't seem to help. Any ideas? The one vet on it is my good friend that I recommended to her (actually the first vet was a former coworker/acquaitance type friend as well) and they both seem stumped. Right now they just seem to be recommended periods of time off. This poor girl has no idea what to do. This is her first horse and she's new to riding. It was an abysmal idea to buy a yearling when she had only been riding for 6 months or so but she's really trying to do right by him. I really don't think she had any idea how expensive horses can be if something goes wrong and she's probably going to have to suck it up and get a referral to Morven Park or VEI but I don't even know where they would start since his lameness travels.

Anyhow anybody seen anything like this before?

[samantha]

She needs to get a full workup on the horse- could be a suspensory, or even bilateral suspensories. Could also be a growing issue, depending on his size, etc. At this point it isn't going to get better- sounds like they have tried everything they can without doing diagnostics. She is just going to end up pouring money in him trying different meds and shoeing, etc. I'd probably take him straight to Morven- they have all of the diagnostic tools you could ever need, and they are really good.. they could probably pinpoint the lameness.

[abowls]

Yeah that's what I've been telling her. I worked at Morven forever and know all of the faculty vets there very well so I'm a big believer in them. I think that's probably what she is going to have to do. It's probably going to be crazy expensive though b/c it can't even be isolated to one leg.

I keep picking my brain for what it could be and couldn't come up with anything else. I was just wondering if there was something lyme-like (in that it can manifest in really weird ways) that I was missing. That's the only thing that I think is lacking at Morven. Sometimes things like lyme (that was controversial for awhile with equine vets) and alternative therapies like chiro are not widely accepted by the vets there. They may be a little more open to these things now that they are gaining more widespread acceptance but I've heard a lot of scoffing over chiropractic/acupuncture/lymes disease at Morven when I worked there. They don't do it in front of clients but as soon as the client leaves the room that's what I heard a lot of the time.

[animaldoc]

Need to have a good workup - it might be that he's sore in more than one place - not that it travels.......lameness/neuro exam and maybe blocks would be where to start....

[CC]

Does he show any issues with lack of muscle development, especially in the hqs? One of the symptoms of EPSM in my appendix was lameness in the front. It disappeared once I got him on the high fat diet. Of course, EPSM is a bit controversial to some vets also!

Good luck to your friend!

[abowls]

Apr 17, 2010 18:03:13 GMT -5 CC said:

Does he show any issues with lack of muscle development, especially in the hqs? One of the symptoms of EPSM in my appendix was lameness in the front. It disappeared once I got him on the high fat diet. Of course, EPSM is a bit controversial to some vets also!

Good luck to your friend!

I wondered about that but I don't know much about it. I'm off to go look up EPSM. It's worth a try huh?

[CC]

My appendix had quite a few of the EPSM symptoms but some horses do not show them until they get older. And sometimes, the symptoms can mimic other things so it can be difficult to figure out!
But, yeah, it is definitely worth exploring. Dancer started showing symptoms as a yearling. This was in 1988 and no one knew about EPSM. So, I spent countless hours and $$ trying to figure him out. Unfortunately, he did not start on the diet until he was 19 so there was some decrease in symptoms but not 100%.

For $65, she can have the genetic test done at the University of Minnesota. Although a negative test does not rule it out, a positive result would (hopefully) give her an answer.

[abowls]

CC I already texted her the info. It's next on the list before she moves on to a referral hospital. Thanks for the info!