Article From SubmitYOURArticle.com: Horse Degenerative Joint Disease - Care and Prevention

Regardless of what tasks your horse performs,
from racing to the casual jaunt around the farm,
its joints end up getting a lot of wear and tear.
It makes sense since horses are not small or
light weight animals, their joints have to hold
up a lot of their weight. Without proper care,
your horse's joints will wear out overtime or are
more prone to experience trauma. When that
happens, your horse will likely develop a
condition known as degenerative joint disease or
DJD in short.

This is a condition that befalls most horse
during their lifetime unless the horse is largely
let alone to pasture and is never ridden. While
a horse certainly is a wonderful mode of
conveyance, the horse's body did not develop and
evolve with a large amount of weight on top in
mind. With this in mind, joint care should be an
important aspect of your horse overall health
care.

Degenerative joint disease is the name given to
the condition that arises and progresses as a
horse's joint becomes worn. The membrane within
the joint is slowly worn and inflamed to where it
no longer produces the fluids found in a joint
regularly or in sufficient quantities. The
limited amount of fluid causes the cartilage of
the joint to thin and possibly even tear which
will be painful for your horse. If degenerative
joint disease is left untreated, a horse will
experience lameness in no time.

The first sign of joint problems is puffiness
around the joint areas. Unless you are looking
for this, you are unlikely to notice it, and a
horse that exhibits no other symptoms might still
be on the path towards serious joint disability.

More overt and obvious symptoms involve clear
pain in the joint areas, and your horse may be
very reluctant to do work. At this stage, the
horse will have obvious puffiness around the
joints. You may note that your horse movements
and gait seems to be stiff when you first brought
her out and that they improve as she warms up.
If you notice that maneuvers that usually would
have been easily performed are now very difficult
or your horse refuses to do them, this may also
be a sign that degenerative joint disease has
indeed set in.

You should bring your horse in for a checkup
immediately if you suspect that it is developing
degenerative joint disease. A flex test will be
carry out on the joints. Afterward you will
likely be asked to lead your horse to walk around
briefly which will give your vet a chance to get
a look at the horse's gait. At this point, your
veterinarian will advice if your horse is
required to take x-ray to confirm the condition.

There are several therapies you may use to help
treat your horse's joint disease. You can run
your horse's joints with cold water after
activities. This simple exercise will help to
reduce the swelling in the area. You can consider
to reduce your horse's activities to those that
stress the joints lesser.

Last but not least, your veterinarian can
administer injections, made out of your horse's
own blood, that go directly into the joint to
help mitigate the pain and inflammation.

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