Analysis into the visual assessment of lameness in horses while being lunged.

It can be difficult to see lameness in horses, especially low level lameness, which can sometimes manifest simply in a lack of performance, or a feeling of the horse not being “right”. A survey was carried out to analyse how successful a range of people were in identifying lameness on the lunge.

Videos were taken of 23 horses that were lameness, or had induced lameness, and these were sent to Sweden for analysis. 86 veterinarians completed the survey, with 43 defined as experienced and the remaining 43 as less experienced. They watched the videos and then assessed whether the horses were lame or not.

The horses that were defined as lame were correctly identified by 68%, whilst the ones with less pronounced lameness were only identified by 32% of the participants.

That horses were lame was agreed upon amongst the more experienced participants, whilst the less experienced had more difficult in concluding whether the horse was lame or not. With hind limb lameness only 37% of participants could correctly see the lameness. This could be that the compensatory nature of the horse masks the hind leg lameness, and in particular does so on the lunge.

In conclusion the study showed that in general it is difficult to correctly assess lameness unless you are very experienced and that hind limb lameness is very difficult to pick up regardless of how experienced you are.

So if you ever feel guilty for failing to pick up on your horse’s lameness – don’t! But make sure you get a highly experienced, respected vet out to look at your horse should you have any doubts over his lameness.

Hammarberg, M., Egenvall, A., Pfau, T. and Rhodin, M. (2016). Rater agreement of visual lameness assessment in horses during lungeing. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/evj.12385/full.