Legacy and Cloudy had the back man out last week. This is something that was well over due for them both. I typically like to get them checked every 8-12 weeks. This is because they are both idiots in the field. Thankfully it's just Cloudy who's an idiot after I've put him out in the morning, Legacy just walks straight over to the haylage and will have the odd roll now.
The man who I have out to have a look at them has been doing them since I first got to the yard I'm on now, this is the 4th year using him and I've never had any problems after having him out and he's only ever been great with the 2 horses. He checks them all over, all down the spine, checking the poll, hips, legs, feet.
Legacy was first up and she had a sore tail bone and a dropped left hip. This is the first time that she's ever had a sore tail bone but it's a regular thing for her to have a dropped left hip. This must be something she does while being an idiot in the field. This typically never effects her when being ridden or she never really shows any pain from this. She can be lazy with her hind legs so maybe this could be contributing to this. The main time you do know when she's got something wrong with her hip is when you try to pick her back feet up. She will very much let you know that it's painful and I know it's bad but due to this I tend to leave the picking out her feet hind feet when I can, thankfully she doesn't have hind shoes on. Due to her hip she had to have a few days off work for the pain to go.
Cloudy was pretty good with his check over as he only had his poll out. Typically he will have his left hip dropped like Legacy and his arthritis with be showing in his foot, but this time he wasn't too bad. Super flex must be going a great job for him during the winter. Due to him only having his poll out he was fine to be ridden after but my mum wanted to give him a day off for him to get back to normal again. He was defiantly feeling better when he went out after as he was running rings around the field stopping for the odd buck, rear or roll. He even went over to Legacy who just went over to the haylage to try and get her involved but she didn't both and then he carried on.
Although there wasn't much wrong with either of them and there were no major issues in terms of pain riding before hand I'm going to make sure I don't let them both go 6 months without being checked again. The 2 times I've been thrown off of Cloudy have been due to back pain which could've been avoided if they were checked more often and that's even when they were done every 8-12 weeks.
Do you get your horses backs checks? How often do you do it?
