“The last barn I was at insisted that I routinely have my horse’s hocks injected. Is that part of your “maintenance” routine?”

No; horses that are trained and developed correctly don’t usually need them. I totally agree with the studies that have found the best cure is a preventative one. A person’s money can be more wisely spent by finding a trainer that can progress a horse properly so the need of injections doesn’t arise instead of trying every new cure on the market to “patch” a horse up.

I’m certainly not saying that there aren’t cases where some intervention may be necessary but we rarely have them ourselves. We’ve had horses brought to us that were deemed lame and were only usable because of their routine injections but are now drug free and sound. We are not trying to replace the advise of a veterinarian but in our experience a lot of hind leg “lameness” is often a lack of strength and a horse not connecting through the top line and what you see is an unevenness of the gait.

Horses that are ridden hollow, forced against the hand, rolkur-ed or forced to carry themselves in any unnatural posture will increase the likelihood that they will suffer long term damage.   Ridden in this unhealthy way forces the vertebrae of the spine to rub together (kissing spine), the sacroiliac joint and the lumbar vertebrae to separate (hunter’s bump) and the the vertebrae of the neck to stretch (known as “broken” between the 3/4 vertebrae) which can lead to injections.

development lame neck injections