Tony-- unless things have changed, virtually every time a horse is "tapped" (meaning fluid is removed from a joint to ease pressure), cortisone is injected. It helps a lot short term, and one of the problems with betting cheaper horses is that it is done pretty often, and they don't tell you when-- which accounts for some of the erratic form patterns.

The problem is that cortisone eats up bone-- if you do it too many times, you don't have a joint left. Back when I was running a claiming stable, there were certain guys you did not claim from, because they took a very short term approach (tried to get a few wins, to hell with the horse in the long run), and tapped like crazy.

There have been lots of advances in sportsmedicine in general, and even when I was in that end of things they were starting to use things like synthetic joint fluid-- they would tap to take out what was in there (which with problem joints often contained blood), and put in the healthier stuff, which did not degenate bone. It didn't have all the short term effects of cortisone, but it was better in the long run. My guess is that there have been a lot of developments since then.