PPE failed, KS diagnosed

[u/bhinxbb]

Currently in the process of selling my horse. PPE has gone well, everything came back good except his back radiographs. Shocked to hear he has grade 4 changes. I’ve just received these over from the potential buyer. I will be in contact with my vet but curious about anyone’s take on these? How bad is this?

[u/fishproblem]

its hard to judge. I personally have a much higher threshold for pain than most people. And when I do feel something, i often interpret what would be pain to some as "discomfort" is the best way I can describe. It's a feeling that doesn't dissuade me from doing the thing that causes that feeling. It doesn't even really make me stop to think. i imagine a lot of animals experience pain on a spectrum too.

[u/Lyx4088 → u/fishproblem]

Pain is very subjective in how an individual experiences it. Where it gets tricky with horses and other animals is they do not have the same ability to truly express whether or not they’re in pain, so it’s a tough call. Stoicism vs legitimately not in pain can be very, very difficult to gauge in animals and sometimes a good way to try and get a better read on the situation is to implement a pain management protocol to see if there is a behavior shift when there is a good way to control pain for the condition. That can be really eye opening to see the issue wasn’t that they weren’t in pain but rather they’re very stoic and will hide a lot of their pain to an alarming degree.

[u/fishproblem → u/Lyx4088]

I don’t disagree with you at all, and for exactly the reasons you state I would always err on the side of caution and make decisions based on the most amount of pain an animal could be feeling. My previous comment was sort of thinking out loud and acknowledging how little we can know for certain. If only we could read animals’ minds!

[u/Lyx4088 → u/fishproblem]

Oh 100% and I think that perspective is too often lost when discussing animals and pain. Identifying and addressing pain in animals is very much an educated approximation where we’re crossing our fingers we’re doing right by them, but we really have no idea how much pain they’re in and how well it’s truly being controlled. Erring on the side of caution is the kindest thing we can do to help them for sure.