06/03/2026
Kevin
Interesting case of one of my own horses. Kevin is an 8yo warmblood/TB. 10 days before this video I did a competition and while he placed and was a good boy he just wasn’t himself in the jumping, not taking me to fences like he usually does, no power on take off and slightly reluctant to travel. I put this down to a bit of jarring in the front end with the hard ground so we put pads on him and he had a few days off. The farrier and I put him on a tight circle on hard ground and he was moving quite well. I then bought him back into work after 5 days off. A few days after this I gave him a jump and no typical lameness presented but he was still backed off. The “skipping” you can see in this video the stride before take off was not present until I had a showjumping lesson on him. He only did it when he came into a fence of the right lead canter. He has was not reactive to palpation of his hind legs, no swelling or heat and again no typical lameness. Vet came out, he flexed up quite well but on a tight circle on the hard ground was quite cautious with his front feet and interestingly he’s sore in the right pectoral muscle and up high in the right of his neck. I was relieved that it was nothing too major and also super interested with his symptoms vs the outcome. The jarring in his front end makes sense and I’ve definitely noted to allow more time to settle in the future, it’s interesting how every horse is different in its way to evade pain though and although he is a very sensitive horse in many ways he’s also a very honest horse as he never even hinted at stopping.
Have to say thanks to Glynn Haag (farrier) and Kirsten Neil (vet). It’s important to have a good team around you that you can trust and rely on
