Cross-species alert! My big gelding, Bard, developed OCD during a late growth spurt (he is over 17 hands tall, which means 5'8" at the withers, and weighs in at about 1450-1500 lbs--much, much bigger than both parents). Although they do a lot of OCD surgery on horses these days, his was very mild and he was a poor candidate for surgery. I did Adequan and Legend and injected the stifle joint with steroids twice. Nothing worked, so I threw him out in the pasture and left him for a little over a year. At that time, I pulled him out of the field and trotted him up--98% sound, sounder than many horses who are ridden daily. So, he went back into light to moderate work, and has been working for a year now. He misses a step once in a while, and he isn't as strong on that side as he used to be, but he is well within normal limits for a horse working at the lower levels of his sport.
My point is, I guess, even with OCD that is not a good candidate for surgery, the body can and does adjust itself given enough tincture of time. The vets said he probably wore the lesion to a more comfortable place just through his normal free exercise choices; they predicted that that was a possibility given how it looked in the initial diagnosis. Sometimes we look at these bone issues as the end of a healthy, happy life, and that just isn't necessarily so for most cases, in my experience (my beloved departed Akita, Rohan, had severe HD but it didn't really slow him down until he was getting up in years). Eileen Morgan The Mare's Nest http://www.enter.net/~edlehman --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.410 / Virus Database: 231 - Release Date: 10/31/2002
