An athlete’s body is conditioned to withstand an amazing amount of work and stress. From runners to swimmers, all athletes train their bodies to handle the specific stress their sport requires. Unfortunately, it is still not uncommon for these  athletes to injure themselves performing the very actions they trained for. This is also true of a horse’s body.

Many horses are trained athletes that are bred and conditioned for a specific sport such as racing, jumping, western performance or dressage. While these sports are relatively safe, just like a human athlete, there is always a possibility of injury and in most cases with horses the injury tends to be lameness. Lameness is an abnormality of gait that is caused by pain or restriction of movement.

“Most of the injuries we see are muscular/skeletal lamenesses,” said Kent Carter, DVM , MS , Dipl. ACVIM, professor of equine lameness and chief of medicine at the Texas A&M University College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences Large Animal Hospital. “The lameness can be a result of things such as chipped bones, bowed tendons, and other soft tissue injuries.”

The type of lameness is generally dependent on the horse’s use. For example, racehorses tend to present injuries such as bowed tendons or bone chips in joints. Jumpers on the other hand tend to have more soft tissue injuries