Cartrophen

[FlyingFeathers]

After my other post a few days ago regarding my horse tripping, I had the vet out yesterday and it’s looking likely to be arthritis in his knees. He already has it in his hocks, and he’s 8 years old.

He has the gels in his hocks which have worked great, however I just know he’s going to get it somewhere else and we can’t keep going through this (he’s a massive stress head, doesn’t load or travel very well, can’t cope with box rest etc).

So I was looking into cartrophen and people’s views on it?

Sorry to hear about your horse @FlyingFeathers

DD’s horse has recently had cartrophen injections along with steroid injections for his hocks but sadly it doesn’t seem to have made any difference. Our vet said in his experience, cartrophen worked best in conjunction with steroids and he’s had a lot of success with combining the two.

However, although dhorse looked (and felt) like he was back to normal immediately after treatment, only a few weeks later and he’s back to how he was before, so we seem to be in the unlucky minority.

We’re starting to run out of options - he needs to be in work to stop the arthritis getting worse but we don’t seem to be able to keep him sound enough to work and he’s not completely sound on bute so just medicating him and keeping our fingers crossed isn’t an option either ..,

It’s so tough isn’t it

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking this week about what the future holds and how I can manage it long term. Chances are he’ll get it somewhere else, and where do I draw the line. I can’t keep putting us both through this. If he was just slightly stiff, or even fractionally lame I’d just lightly hack him. But the tripping is dangerous

Thank you for your reply, I’ve only heard success stories so it’s interesting to read one that hasn’t worked. I think my plan is to get the gels in his knees just the once, and hope they work. Then look at cartophen for next year. My heads a massive mess and I can’t decide what to do for the best.

My horse is a cob, I struggle with his weight so he needs to be in work to stay at a safe weight. He also has suspected ulcers so it’s a nightmare to manage it all.

My mare was 14 when diagnosed with arthritis. We had 2 courses of cartrophen and I then had her on the supplement called synequin. She was in regular controlled exercise, qualified for many local champs in dressage and never needed bute. She’s was in pads in front. She was pts this year aged 22 and it wasn’t the arthritis that took her (she was grey- melanomas sadly)