So my pony has always had issues with stress that I struggle with. Can’t take a horse away from him even on property or he calls, looses focus which cant be gained back for something like an hour, and will at times rear out of anxiety. It should be noted he is very polite and well behaved otherwise. Other things trigger him too but this is one of the main ones. He is also very spooky and always on edge. When he is worked up he gets completely liquid projectile poops. I have never been to a show with a clean horse. Anyways I havent been able to do much about it where I boarded but I moved him home a month ago. He has been fine but something has set him off and he has spent the last day and a half running around and pooping up a storm. Nothing has changed and he is kept outside 24/7 with free choice hay and is only grained a small bit of topper for the vitamins.
Anyways what would you recommend for a calming supplement, if that would even help? I am in Canada and struggling to find options for long term. Thanks!
There is not a calming supplement that’s going to touch this unless he has some type of deficiency. First step I’d scope and if necessary treat for ulcer but even if there is ulcers, it’s also a training issue.
Not a training in terms of obedience but rather his mindset. He sounds like he is worried and obedient rather than calmly connected to you. He knows that if he does the right things then he doesn’t get in trouble but his comfort and safety are reliant on the horses around him. When there is a stressor he has zero tools to de-escalate and doesn’t see you as a trusted resource. That’s why changes in his environment rock his world. If he’s calmly connected to you, as long as you are calm he has no reason to care about what is going on.
I’ve spent the last three months and ($$$) working with a very niche trainer for this exact thing. I have a highly obedient but incredibly anxious horse who would stand on the other end of the leadrope not putting a toe out of line but have baseline of a 7/10. If you didn’t know how to read the lack of blinking, hard ears, shallow breathing, she didn’t present as stressed. However, the wind would blow the wrong way and she would spin out or start screaming for her pasture mates. The traditional concepts of “moving the feet” and “establishing respect” would make her obedient but not any calmer and she too could take hours to come down.
Unraveling that and addressing the root cause is the willingness to invest a few hours a day for a month, maybe two, maybe five. I didn’t have that time so I sent her out for three months and am now trying to build off of that. I’m happy to talk via PM about the overall methodology. It is painfully simple but requires large blocks of time and the ability to be very zen. A few weekends ago my mare almost fell asleep in a ring with 8 other horses actively working. The transformative power is pretty tangible if you invest the time.
Thank you for your pm about your trainer’s methods. I read it before the forum change, but didn’t get a chance to reply. Now in the new forum I don’t know how to find it again to reply, so I want to say thank you for sharing your experience and your trainer’s perspective with me! I am trying some of the method with my mare and it’s helped me to take a step back and chill with her, rather than just pushing harder to keep her moving and working and occupying her brain. Thanks!
I have seen some incredible results with MagRestore. Its inexpensive to try and you’ll know in a week or less if it works for your horse. https://shop.performanceequinenutrition.com/magrestore-p45.aspx
I have also used it with success. And I know quite a few others as well. MagRestore - not other products.
Magnesium helped my horse in that it allowed him to slow his response and have a moment to think. It wasn’t a fix for his anxiety but allowed him to learn to calm himself through the exercises we did to teach him that he was okay. If insufficient magnesium (for your specific individual horse) is not a factor then supplemental magnesium won’t help. I freely admit that I tried magnesium as a bit of a desperate measure not expecting anything.
The exercises were based on Warwick Schiller’s. I didn’t have to spend hours at a time, but did have to do them when he needed regardless of what I wanted to do. I saw signs of progress over the winter but only saw how much we had really accomplished when we got out in the spring. Two years later I am doing things that I hadn’t thought possible for this horse and seeing the future possibilities as more likely than not.
I had issues like this for years with my PSSM2 mare. On particularly bad days she would be hurting so bad she didn’t want me to catch her and would run from me for hours. Once I got her diet dialed in and supplements in order she became a different horse. Easy to catch, no longer spooky, eager to work, and much much better under saddle. It was a huge lifestyle change for her, but well worth it.
Can you post the method in here or PM me? My boy isn’t this anxious, but he’s close.
@Dreamraiderr for the liquid poops, I have a friend who has found some relief with Redmond™ Daily Gold™ Stress Relief
Sending a PM! I’m long winded and don’t want to take over with a novel.
Hi, sorry to add to the bombarding of requests but may I also see what you wrote about your trainer’s methods? My gelding has become super attached to his pasture mates in the last year he has been on vacation…I haven’t yet taken him off property again but I can foresee a potential issue. Just want to be prepared.
I’ve typed novels worth about my gelding’s journey through anxiety over the past year. He’s a horse I raised, broke, and trained myself, and he’s now 12 years old. He’s been shown very lightly, and while certainly more “up” at horse shows (including large, multi-day shows), he was always reasonable and got through it (sometimes quite successfully!).
I sold my farm and moved him to a nice boarding barn last October. At first he was great. Then he slowly started being not-so-great. A spooky, anxious, nervous, freaked out hot mess…that’s what he became. I’d never seen him like that in his entire life. And what’s weird is he’d already been at the new place about four months when he started getting crazy.
Long story slightly less long…I believe to this day that it boiled down to pain. He hadn’t been ridden in a few years when I moved him, and then I’d started riding him more regularly. He was his usual good self at first, but the more I rode, the more he had issues. He was also being fed a high NSC grain that wasn’t agreeing with him. I bought a new saddle, thinking I was doing him a favor, and he continued to get worse. We changed his feed. He was still a mess. Had the vet/chiro come and work on him and she said his entire back was in spasms. She suggested MagRestore or another good magnesium supplement. I had some SmartCalm Ultra already that I had started him on but he wasn’t fond of eating it. We started him back on it and disguised it in his feed enough that he ate it and slowly but surely he started to improve. I started messing around with padding under my saddle, had a fitter out to work on it, and he still improved…though his back was still tender after riding. He also seemed to be very sensitive over his SI area
Enter the new barefoot trimmer. She made some pretty big changes to him, showed me how off his angles were in his hind feet, told me that could definitely cause him issues with his back.
She’s done him three times now (maybe four? I can’t remember). He’s been on the SmartCalm Ultra and the low NSC feed since this summer (and will stay on it). I just got him yet another saddle, a Wintec Isabelle, and he seems to love it…much lighter weight, fits his back great.
He’s calm, cool, and collected now. Even when things that used to send him reeling are going on. I could actually see during the transition that he’d get startled or see something and it was like he expected pain to happen (back spasm) and when it wouldn’t he’d just sigh and get over it.
Oh, and he was stupidly herd-bound during all of this too. Now, we did change his turn-out situation away from a few horses that he was way too attached to (and were too attached to him), so that’s probably helped. But I felt like it was a perfect storm of crappy situations (feet out of whack, poor saddle fit, new farm, magnesium deficiency, high NSC grain, clingy pasture mates).
Hopefully you’ll be able to narrow down your pony’s issues and check them off one-by-one to figure out what’s triggering him. It’s so frustrating, but if you’re diligent, hopefully you’ll figure it out.
Thank you everyone for the replies. I am extremely rural so sending him to a trainer would be an 8 hour ride unfortunately. Still something to think about, but I would have to wait until I have another horse at my barn since I have only the 2 and the other would be left alone. Thank you to those who mentioned products that may or may not help. For now I can try that incase he is deficient. 
Can you PM me as well. My boy sounds very similar.
Me three, me four! Can you PM me this method? I’m going through this right now after moving my guy to a new barn. Thank you in advance!
I too would like to hear your technic!
