Common Diseases of the Horse i 95 



the occult kind, it will, for the first few steps, be hardly able to put 

 its foot to the ground. 



As time goes on the sufferer will become more lame, and when 

 trotted will carry his quarter on the lame side low, and will drop 

 very much. It will drag the toe, thus causing the shoe to become 

 very much worn, whilst the heel may hardly be touched. Care 

 should be exercised in the purchase of an apparently sound horse 

 that has one hind shoe worn at the toe. 



Treatvient. — When one is satisfied that spavin lameness exists, 

 the earlier the animal is treated the more satisfactory will be the 

 result. If it is allowed to remain at work the deposit of bone may 

 attain to a very large size and cause complete disfiguration. 



Rest, of course, is the first essential, and for this purpose the 

 shoes may be taken off and the horse put into a loose box on a 

 good bed of spent tan or peat moss. Cold-water applications may 

 be then used for as long as may be considered necessary. If in a 

 month or six weeks a satisfactory result has not been obtained, then 

 one of several operations should be tried. The most successful, ir 

 the writer's opinion, is firing with a fine-pointed iron. Other opera- 

 tions successfully performed are those of line and needle firing. 

 After each of these it is necessary to blister a day or two later, and 

 again once or twice during the treatment. Setons are often used, 

 and have proved very successful in many cases. 



Another operation is that known as tarsal tenotomy; it consists 

 of dividing a tendon which passes obliquely over the hock. It is 

 very good treatment where large spavins exist, particularly when 

 the horse is doing slow work. After any of the above operations 

 a rest of two or three months is necessary, in order to give the 

 horse a fair chance of recovery. 



The best method is to give him a summer's run at grass; or if 

 not in the grass season, turn him loose in a box with his shoes off 

 and feet carefully rasped. At the end of that time it must not be 

 expected that the spavin will have disappeared; it will probably be 

 as large as ever, but the affected bones will have become united, 

 the hock action greatly limited, but the lameness gone. 



Occult Spavin may be said to be an inflammation of nearly the 

 whole hock with the exception of the true joint, and may start 

 between two of the bones or in several places at the same time. 

 It occurs more often in well-bred animals than in the coarser and 

 heavy types. The long narrow hock is particularly susceptible. 

 Lameness varies when compared with that of bone spavin, and is 

 not lessened by exercise, but persists continually for months. 

 There is also very limited movements of the joint, and on resting 



