Kissing Spines: A Dressage Buyer's Guide

“Kissing spines” is the trade name for impinging or overriding dorsal spinous processes — the upward bony projections of the back vertebrae sitting closer together than ideal, sometimes touching or remodelling where they meet. For a buyer, the single most important fact is that these radiographic findings are common in comfortable, well-performing horses, and the image alone cannot say whether a given horse has a problem. Whether the finding matters is a clinical question — decided by the whole examination against the horse’s back behaviour, not by the x-ray in isolation. This page is the buyer’s decision guide: what the finding is, why the radiograph-versus-clinic distinction is everything, how it shows up at a vetting, and what it means for price, insurance and the choice to walk on.

Kissing spines is one entry in the wider catalogue of common findings decoded; this page expands it. The framing rules from the pre-purchase examination and purchase x-rays govern everything below, and one caveat sits above all of it: this is education about vocabulary and stakes, not veterinary advice. No finding described here can be judged for an individual horse from a wiki — the examining veterinarian’s read of this horse against your intended use is the decision-grade input.

What impinging and overriding spinous processes are

Each vertebra in the horse’s back carries a tall bony spine projecting upward — the dorsal spinous process. In the ideal back these processes stand with clear spaces between them. In kissing spines the spaces narrow so that adjacent processes sit abnormally close, touch (“impinging”), or overlap (“overriding”), and where they contact, the bone can remodel: the margins thicken, develop increased or decreased density, or form new bone. The changes cluster most often in the mid-back beneath the saddle — the segment running roughly from the tenth to the eighteenth thoracic vertebra — and can also appear further back in the loin.

Two plain-language points matter for a buyer. First, “kissing spines” describes a radiographic appearance — what the bones look like on a film. Second, that appearance exists on a spectrum, from processes merely closer than average, through touching, to overriding with marked bony reaction. The word alone conveys none of that gradation, which is why a seller’s bare “he has a bit of kissing spine” is a summary of a report the buyer is entitled to read in full.

The radiograph-versus-clinic distinction

This is the article’s spine, so state it directly: radiographic kissing-spine findings are widespread in ridden horses, including horses working comfortably at a high level with no back symptoms whatsoever. Surveys of horses without back pain have found close or overriding processes in a substantial share of them — studies report the bony changes in roughly a third to nearly half of clinically normal sport horses, depending on population and criteria. The image is not the disease.

Clinical kissing-spine syndrome — back pain, behavioural change, or performance loss that can be attributed to those processes — is a separate and considerably rarer thing. A horse can have dramatic-looking films and a comfortable, functional back; another can have modest films and a genuinely sore back. The correlation between what the x-ray shows and what the horse feels is imperfect, which is precisely why the modern reading of any purchase radiograph, formalised in the German radiographic guideline’s 2018 move away from grades, asks not “what does the picture score?” but “what is the risk of this finding for this horse in the career described?”

For the buyer this converts into a single discipline: never let the radiograph answer the question by itself. A kissing-spine finding is a prompt for clinical correlation — for the ridden and palpation layer of the exam — not a verdict in either direction. “Clean back films” is reassuring but not a warranty of a comfortable back; “kissing-spine findings noted” is a question, not a diagnosis.

How it presents at a vetting

Because the radiograph cannot stand alone, the standard dressage-buyer package pairs spinous-process x-rays with a clinical assessment of the back, and the two are read together. What the examining vet is doing:

• Back palpation. Running the back and loin under pressure, watching for pain responses, guarding, muscle tension or asymmetry, and how the back moves when stimulated to flex and extend. A back that palpates supple and reactive-free is meaningful evidence.
• Ridden and dynamic signs. The exercise phase of the five-stage exam is where a back problem often declares itself: reluctance to lift and swing through the back, a hollow or braced topline, resistance to bending or to the rider’s weight, difficulty with transitions or with going forward into the contact, cold-backed behaviour at mounting, bucking or tail-swishing under saddle. None of these is specific to kissing spines, which is the point — the vet weighs them alongside the images.
• The horse’s work history. A horse demonstrably performing the collected work comfortably, in a verifiable competition record, is itself a form of clinical evidence that the back is functioning.

Where palpation or ridden signs raise a question that the plain films cannot resolve, vets may recommend further imaging or work-up — additional radiographic projections, nuclear scintigraphy (bone scan) to see whether an anatomical finding is metabolically “active”, or diagnostic local anaesthesia to test whether numbing the region changes the way the horse goes. A buyer does not need to master these; the relevant point is that a recommendation for further imaging is a normal, responsible step, not automatically a red flag — though its cost and what it might reveal belong in the decision.

The grading vocabulary buyers will hear

Buyers encounter several overlapping ways of describing severity, and should treat all of them as summaries rather than verdicts. Radiologists describe the degree of change — from reduced interspinous space, through impingement (contact), to overriding with remodelling — and may note the number of sites involved and their location. Some reports use numbered radiographic grading scales that rank severity by how narrowed, sclerotic or reactive the processes appear.

The buyer’s bilingual rule mirrors the one for the German x-ray classes: whatever grade or descriptor appears, it summarises a document. Ask for the report and the images, ask what each finding means clinically for the horse in front of you, and resist collapsing a rich clinical picture back into a single number. A “grade” high on bony change but silent on the ridden exam, and a “grade” low on bony change but paired with a sore, guarding back, point in opposite directions despite the labels.

Why the dressage career loads the back

Kissing spines is not more common in dressage horses than in others, but its consequences bite harder in this discipline. Dressage asks the back to lift, round, swing and carry the rider’s weight while the hindquarters take load in collection; the entire training scale is built over a working back, and visible tension through the topline is among the first things judges penalise. A genuinely painful back therefore undermines the very quality the sport rewards, and the higher the ambition, the more the back is asked to do over a longer career.

This is why the dressage buyer, more than a happy-hacker buyer, reasonably adds back radiographs and a thorough ridden back assessment to the exam, and reads a symptomatic back finding with particular weight. The flip side is equally real: a mild, silent radiographic finding in a horse whose back demonstrably works — supple in palpation, swinging under saddle, competing at level — is a common and frequently acceptable picture, and treating every kissing-spine word as disqualifying would eliminate a large fraction of sound, competing horses.

Management and surgical options at a glance

For a horse with clinically significant kissing spines, a range of interventions exists — at overview level only, since outcomes are individual and belong with a treating vet. Conservative management centres on physiotherapy and a targeted exercise programme to build the muscles that support and lift the back, sometimes alongside anti-inflammatory medication or injections around the affected processes, and saddle-fit and rider-position review.

Two surgical procedures are established and named. Interspinous ligament desmotomy divides the ligament running between affected spinous processes, typically through small incisions and sometimes with the horse standing under sedation. Ostectomy removes a portion of bone from an impinging process, a more invasive approach with a longer recovery. Both exist; neither is promised here to work, and a horse that has needed surgery to do its job is a materially different purchase from a sound horse carrying incidental films — the surgical history, the records, and the vet’s read of residual risk all enter the decision.

Insurance, exclusions and negotiation

Kissing-spine findings on a PPE report have direct commercial consequences, and both are flagged in insurance. First, noted findings typically return as an exclusion: the insurer removes the back or spine region from vet-fee and loss-of-use cover, sometimes time-limited (“reviewable after twelve months symptom-free”), often permanent. That exclusion is a lasting economic cost of accepting the horse, and it follows the horse. The timing option is real and underused — a buyer can ask the insurer’s underwriting view on the specific finding during the vetting window, converting “probably fine” into a priced fact before completing.

Second, findings feed negotiation. A kissing-spine finding is a legitimate price lever, and the discount should reflect not only clinical risk but the uninsurability of that region. Where a sale is structured “subject to vetting”, the finding is exactly the moment that clause was written for. Buyers concerned about later disputes should note that the PPE report documenting the finding at sale is also the buyer’s evidence baseline — its value in any later hidden-defects question, and the seller’s written statements about the horse’s back history, are the buyer’s sharpest instruments.

The honest walk-away signals

No wiki can decide an individual horse, but the pattern of responses is consistent. Findings that are mild, silent and paired with a demonstrably comfortable, working back sit at the acceptable end, usually with a back exclusion priced into the deal. The signals that push toward walking away: clinical signs accompanying the findings — a painful, guarding back on palpation or clear back-related resistance under saddle; marked or overriding changes at multiple sites; a short or unexplained gap in the work record around a possible back episode; or a seller reluctant to permit back radiographs at all, which is itself a question. The clarifying test throughout is the same one the whole examination applies: not “what does the picture show?” but “what does this horse’s back actually do, and what will it cost to insure and to keep it doing it?”

Sources

• American College of Veterinary Surgeons — Overriding/Impinging Dorsal Spinous Processes, 2026. https://www.acvs.org/large-animal/overriding-impinging-dorsal-spinous-processes/
• Merck Veterinary Manual — Disorders of Spinal Processes and Associated Ligaments in Horses, 2026. https://www.merckvetmanual.com/musculoskeletal-system/disorders-of-the-back-and-pelvis-in-horses/disorders-of-spinal-processes-and-associated-ligaments-in-horses
• Animals (MDPI) — Impinging and Overriding Spinous Processes in Horses: A Narrative Review, 2025. https://www.mdpi.com/2076-2615/15/18/2679
• Gesellschaft für Pferdemedizin (GPM) — Röntgen-Leitfaden 2018 (risk-based interpretation of radiographic findings), 2018. https://www.bundestieraerztekammer.de/tieraerzte/leitlinien/downloads/171020_GPM-Roentgen-Leitfaden.pdf