How to Do a Quick and Effective Lameness Check

There are many times in a horse person's life when it is essential to know how to do a quick and effective lameness check, from assessing a horse at an auction to seeing if your horse at home needs the day or week off. This article relates a quick and effective method to do an overall lameness check that is good for the horse and makes you look good to whomever may be watching you.

Things You'll Need

  • Horse
  • Level ground that is easy on the horse's feet (grass or medium 'hard' dirt ideally)
  • Objective eyes
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Instructions

    • 1

      Run fingers up and down legs of the horse and see if there are any differences between right and left leg. Keep in mind that conformational differences between right and left legs of horses are always present. Heat on one side indicates possible inflammation. To assess tendons (on the back of the lower portions of the legs), flex the leg and feel the layers of tendons (should be three) for any bumps, sources of heat or breaks.

    • 2

      Trot the horse by having someone lead the animal with a halter not on its back. Look for anything overt with regard to horses favoring one leg over the other. Most importantly, look also to see if head bobs up and down to same extent with each stride. If the left front leg is lame, for instance, horse will lower head most when the right leg is hitting the ground. Look from the rear at the hips. Do both hips go up to the same extent? If there is pain or lameness on the left side, the left hip will go 'up' more than the right. Also, trot horse in circle going clockwise, then counterclockwise to see if there is any difference. Normally, horses prefer one direction over another, but look for overt differences if it your normally 'counterclockwise-is-better' horse is better going clockwise.

    • 3

      Repeat the above step but after flexing particular joints. Opinions vary as to which joint to start at, but in this writer's experience and knowledge starting with the proximal (closer to the trunk) joints then working your way down is best. Start out with limbs that you suspect are defective. Flex them as hard as you can for at least thirty seconds then trot the horse out and look for lameness, doing this for each joint individually.

    • 4

      If all okay, test hoofs and frog (sole) by punching the hoof wall against the frog at various places. See if there is pain afflicted. To test for soundness of lungs, lope (canter) the horse for a minute. See how long it takes for breathing to come back to normal rate and depth. If it takes more than a minute, or if there is coughing, there may be lung problems (such as 'heaves' or COPD) or heart disease.