Lateral work and DJD

[Tangle]

I'm currently helping to bring a horse back into work after having c. 4 months rest following athroscopies on both front fetlocks for DJD. He's going really nicely, and the logical next step in his workload would be to introduce a little lateral work.

However, I'm confused as to whether this will be good for him (help him to gain more flexibility and use himself better - he's currently very stiff) or not (lateral work increases the load on the weight bearing leg and will hasten the DJD process).

I'm a bit confused on the latter point, as I understood lots of horses were "retired" to a dressage career after getting injured SJing or eventing.

(edited to add: ) We're not talking canter half pass and piaffe here - probably just leg yield and shoulder in. Horse in question is between 8 and 10.

Thoughts, comments, opinions.....

[MeMe]

Bailey has DJD, he has it badly in 1 back leg, and minorly in the other, and on the fronts, its quite bad in his right shoulder and in both his fetlocks due to strain from how his legs have formed, to much over the years.

Im very lazy on riding him now, his sharer rides him a few times a week, but we retired him from comps in Jan, and I myself hadent sat on him since Jan, until yesterday, where I noticed how stiff and inflexible he was, just with his sharer who potters around.

I used to school him properly including, shoulder in, haunches in, leg yeild, abit of counter flexion, shallow loops, loads of transitions upwards and downwards and rein back, he is much better if he gets his weight onto his hocks, and at one stage he was performing a half decent canter pirouette, nothing on the spot, but a 4m canter pirouette is still hard.

He was the soundest he could ever be, as I had him moving and flexing well, on days where he might be abit to stiff we stuck to more basic stuff, but it certainly dosent hurt and trust me, my horse can come out like a cripple, but it tends to work off.

[Waikato Valuta]

It really depends how bad his DJD is. My horse had a mild case (this showed up on xrays) but he's never lame. and the vet said I could still jump him. and that it's going to get slowly worse and there aint much I can do about it.

But my horses case is very mild and not agressive. So ask your vet what he thinks is a good idea.

I was also told to do long warm ups and cool downs, streaches, ext...

and that it's good to keep the active. maybe not high level competition but my horse is capable of competeing at PC.