Excessive pooping / Anxiety about Pooping

[jessgallison]

Hello,

My horse is an 8 year old warmblood gelding. He poops 5+ times per lesson. I know horses poop excessively when they are anxious, but he does not exhibit this behavior when anxious and not being ridden. Additionally, he poops at the same frequency when being lunged or worked in a way which does not appear to cause him any anxiety.

If it was just the frequency of his pooping, I wouldn’t be concerned. However, his need to go seems to be a cause of very real anxiety for him. This issue has been going since we started him under saddle. When he was younger he’d feel the urge to go (I could feel he had to go because he’d lift his back and move funny) and try to bolt a bit. Then he’d come to a dead halt, try to poop and fail, then try to run off. Sometimes this went on for 20+ minutes before he managed to pass a very small pile of poop. The cycle would begin again after just a short period of time.

Through a lot of very compassionate training my trainer and I have taught him not to run off (both when he needs to poop and generally). He no longer bolts, but he really struggles to poop and move. He is capable of it (a clinician was riding him and forced him to keep going once with serious some leg and spurs), but I can’t / haven’t been willing to force him. The urge to poop makes him so anxious that i’m quite concerned its pain related. I understand this type of issue is typically a training problem, but that just doesn’t feel right to me.

Sometimes he poops so much that I literally can’t make it once around the arena at the trot without him slamming on the breaks and trying to poop. Half the time nothing actually comes out. This is starting to become a real issue, as its very disruptive to any kind of effective training. He is not colicky, as he has many normal piles of poop in his stall each day.

I’ve treated him for ulcers twice. He had ulcers both times he was scoped, even though we have him on a pretty serious ulcer prevention regime. Ulcer treatment seems to help the problem to a limited degree in that he’s less anxious / explosive when he needs to poop. The frequency and the struggle to move remains the same, and it obviously is still a source of anxiety for him. We also treated for hind gut ulcers and used sand clear, and the problem continued.

My trainer is similarly concerned. She said she wouldn’t feel right dropping the hammer, so to speak, to make him keep moving while pooping. This is way beyond just encouraging him to keep moving, turning him, or catching him before he stops all the way. We’ve tried all of that. I know we’d have to be very firm to keep him moving, and i’m not sure that’s fair given how anxious he is about it. He’s a good horse, and I can tell he’s trying to do the work I ask him for, even though he’s struggling to progress.

Has anyone ever dealt with a similar issue? Has it always turned out to be training related? I’m wondering if doing an x-ray of his back or ultrasound of his intestine (i’m not sure if that’s possible) is warranted. He doesn’t really show any other signs of lameness or back pain. His movement is fantastic when he’s not struggling to poop. The biggest problem I have with him mechanically is stiffness on his right side and a right tail tilt. I’ve spoken with my vet, and she has said that its a tricky problem and the medical testing is going to be expensive if I decide to pursue it. I would rather not spend thousands of dollars to confirm its just behavioral, but I also don’t want to work a young horse who is in pain.

Thanks for your feedback, it’s much appreciated.

[Abbie.S]

Well, consider this - what motivation would a horse have to do this if there ISN’T some discomfort (either physical or mental)?

There is no such thing as “just behavioral”. Think about it - anything a horse does he does because he needs to communicate something. There’s always a reason, some are just more obvious than others. “Just behavioral” implies that there is no reason, it’s just an odd tic or quirk. When someone brings a horse to me and says it does x, y, z and it’s just an odd behavior, my response is usually somewhere along the lines of “no, your horse is telling you something, you just haven’t figured out what that is yet”.

Have you witnessed this horse pass manure when he’s out at pasture or in his stall? Does he struggle or otherwise get amped up in that setting?

The fact that he has had ulcers both times he was scoped and that treatment mildly helped makes me think that is your link. Additionally, typical ulcer treatments don’t usually target the hindgut, which may be where his issues lie. How is this horse being kept? Can you manage him differently, i.e. pasture turnout, increase roughage, decrease grain?

[Simkie]

I’m sure @IPEsq will be here shortly with this title, but I’ll page her for you she faced this same sort of thing in her horse, and it’s not just training–there are physical factors. She posted about it a few times, which will be in her post history, if you want some ideas right away.
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[cnd8]

I’d guess some sort of maldigestion going on in there that is exacerbated by exercise. The movement pushes things through and something may be getting held up, etc. that causes him the pain. My gelding had maldigestion issues with a certain variety of hay and when worked, or occasionally just out in pasture, he’d get anxious when pooping as if it was hurting him. Changed hay and issue went away.

[Jealoushe]

pain while defecating is a serious issue, one that requires a full vet workup.

[fargaloo]

I’m assuming this would have occured to you, but just in case… is he grey? Could he have anal/perineal melanomas that make it difficult to pass manure?

[myhorsefaith]

@IPEsq definitely has more to share on this too, I’ve definitely kept up with her posts regarding her gelding.

I am going through this will one of mine - you are not alone. Mine will do it on the longe line as well - where he can’t really seem to find his go button until he squeaks out some manure- sometimes a pretty decent pile but other times its 1 or 2 nuggets. And once it passes he clicks “on” and is very forward and willing to work, and once he gets warmed up and working then he can pass manure while working, which he sometimes does. Edited to add: he also has a tail tilt - it goes left and he does this weird “belly dance” when things touch him and tends to always go into butt-clench mode when nervous or spooked or whatever.

My vet and I have been working together on this - we’re not totally there yet with a diagnosis for this. My guy is 11, diagnosed with Cushings last fall, now under control - that didn’t change the pooping issue one way or the other. Confirmed no ulcers on scope, suspected issues in hindgut. He also has SI issues, hock issues and more-than-average arthritis in some joints for an 11 yr old who hasn’t done much work in his life (has spent more time off than actually working). He does get injected, which seems to help him. Recently my vet had me put him on Assure Guard Gold - it actually seems to be helping in that he’ll either not poop under saddle at all or have 1 bigger poop and then be done with it. It is still too early to tell if it is truly helping (he also got his SI injected again at the same time I started the Assure).

It is also important to know that when this horse was younger, age 5, he got sick with a virus and spent several days in the hospital. He was experiencing colic like symptoms and was on a long course of banamine, fluids, etc. His entire digestive tract was hit hard, his body was convulsing for days, and then harder with the banamine. He had just been started under saddle a couple of months prior to getting sick and he didn’t have any of these issues back then. It does make me wonder if he has sustained long term scarring or something as a result. Or whether there is a compounded issue.

We do have a couple of other diagnostics in mind to consider down the road. For now he is in what i’d consider light dressage work, 30-45 min 3-4 days/week of mostly w/t with some canter, or basically just about the level of what he can do on any given day/week which will fluctuate - all approved and under the eye of his vet. Exercise overall seems to help him - the stronger he is the better he seems to do overall and it does seem to keep him brighter and happier than sitting around doing nothing. And so we let him be the judge of how much and when.

He is my little medical mystery who physically seems much older than 11. Definitely teaching us all as we continue the journey with him. Not exactly what I had in mind for our partnership, but so is horses…

[WildGooseChase]

We have a mare with a hind gut ulcer in our barn that acts somewhat similarly. Would stop during a ride and try to poop and not be successful. Become obviously uncomfortable before passing manure, and be completely fine afterwards. Excessively cinchy etc…

If he has gastric ulcers, then I would talk to your vet about hind gut health and ulcers. We control the mare’s ulcer with diet. Lots of soft foods, more forage pellets and grain than long fiber hay. In the summer she is on pasture 24/7 with no issues. She just can’t seem to do dried and baled hay very well. She no longer stops to pass manure, or tries. And she isn’t nearly as cinchy anymore. Sometimes she will be a bit uncomfortable before actually passing manure still but it’s not nearly as bad as it was before we overhauled her diet to better fit her needs.

Edited to add: This hind gut ulcer was DVM diagnosed but not imaged in any way. The vet is the one who suggested we feed more processed feeds and cut back on hay.

[IPEsq]

@Simkie Thanks…lol! OP, my horse was very similar. Though he didn’t bolt. He would throw any kind of refusing to work kind of tantrum if pressed. Some days even being gassy really upset him. He would be happy to work once he passed manure (and thankfully he would usually pass normal, big piles and mostly get it over with). But when he was a 4-5 yo, he might poop far too many times. And pretty normal amounts still. But if you had gone through a fight, he would be pretty pissed off by the time he felt better physically enough to work so a whole ‘nother can of worms.

He also had several physical things going on including back and SI troubles, stomach sensitivity, and it turns out an abnormal attachment of the cecum and large colon to the abdominal wall (which ultimately killed him by allowing a complete volvulus of the colon to occur). Based on what the surgeon said about this defect (it’s not that uncommon), and based on chronic sensitivity over the right dorsal flank, and increased cecal motility at times of stress or increased unrelated physical pain, it’s really no wonder he was so anxious about having to poop during exercise. I think all of it was related.

I never did get him pooping while moving except a couple of times by chance, but I did find a way to lessen his anxiety about it so that he could just stop, poop, and get on with it. We were moving in the right direction when I lost him though based on what they found in surgery, it was probably always going to be a thing, possibly could have been helped had they been able to complete a corrective surgery to reduce some of the abnormal laxity of the ligaments. But he still showed chronic disease at the SI joints post mortem that I’m sure contributed and we could manage but not fix. the tail posture on your horse makes me think of all of these possibilities.

Some things that did help to manage the behavior that you could consider… After he stopped eating TC Senior, I switched him to a small ration of TC Complete plus beet pulp plus Platinum GI. He had also been on an RB in the past. The Complete seemed (to him) to be a lot more digestible, and there was less straining, less mucous, and I didn’t have to constantly rotate the gamut of other gut support supplements. (I tried a LOT of them). He got Succeed anytime he had to take omeprazole, and at anytime he looked even a little more stressed about pooping. I was able to take him off of it from time to time, but that itself took a long time. He needed either 3 scoops of the Platinum GI a day (in 3 feedings) or 2 scoops plus HorseTech’s Gutwerks. He ate a lot of hay, some grass some alfalfa.

I used the Assisi Loop PEMF device as needed on his back and pelvis. He got regular chiro and acupuncture. We started injecting his SI joints as frequently as 6 months if behavior under saddle started to deteriorate (also with signs of reluctance to canter or the lead changes getting a little sticky). He needed long walk warmups, sometimes followed by Western jog style trots as he figured his guts out.

I started to learn his patterns and while I’m sure there was a local pain problem, anxiety about pain anywhere would also manifest in the guts, so I had a team of vets and body workers who got to know his movement and posture very well and knew I wasn’t crazy when I called to say something isn’t right because often he would tell me about it when the issue was sub-clinical to the average observer. He also had some neck stuff and could easily get into sort of a neuromuscular hyper state. Sometimes we’d do a course of steroids or Robaxin. He had a couple spots on his thoracic spine that were close (but not touching) and we injected that and we shockwaved his back and SI area a few times to get him willing to work enough to actually strengthen his back. Depo we tried last year and that also helped him I think because it made him less anxious (he exhibited some stallion like behaviors). We also suspected he had a muscle disorder like MFM, but I didn’t do the pathology for that post mortem—it was just getting to be too much.

Long story short is that I would consider a physical issue unrelated to the GI tract (back, pelvis, subclinical lower limb lameness, foot pain, neck arthritis), probably starting with back and pelvis in your case. Also consider that his GI tract may not be entirely normal and that he is more sensitive to some weirdness and discomfort there than others. Find a diet that minimizes gas and maximizes digestibility (whatever that means for him), watch out for sugars but don’t go crazy about it—if oats make his belly happy, feed oats but keep your overall diet NSC low. Try sources of omega 3 like flax oil (add slowly!). Feed good pre and probiotics, and don’t be afraid to feed a higher dose of them. Consider muscle disorders like PSSM or tying up or variants of that.

Back X-rays are easy. Rectal ultrasound is easy. Other abdominal ultrasound is easy. There are limitations in what you can see, but you can rule things out. You can do bloodwork to double check for EPM, Lyme, signs of colonic ulcers, tying up. Each of these things for me in my area would run a couple hundred bucks. Nothing will diagnose the ligamentous abnormality I mentioned from what I understand except opening them up. Those horses usually have a history of colonic displacements even as young horses. But mine never colicked in years until the one fatal one…he always kept himself well hydrated and I think that probably helped along with always having had a good diet with ample forage.

[jessgallison]

Thanks for your responses everyone. It’s been helpful for me to hear about other people having similar challenges. It can be super frustrating, but everyone seems quick to say that its normal and to just make him go. It doesn’t feel normal though when we have to stop lessons since he struggled to function.

Abbie, your comment about it not being “just behavioral” made a lot of sense. I’ve had similar conversations with my trainer and it’s a good reminder. Obviously, there’s a reason he’s doing this. It could be conformational, stress related, who knows. The magnitude of what exactly he’s trying to say isn’t clear yet. To answer your question, he doesn’t seem to have the same problems in his pasture. He will stop, spread his legs really wide, lift his back super high, and poop. It’s a big reaction, but I know some horses feel like they need to do that.

Ive done some experimenting, and it seems like he feels like he has to poop because he’s trotting or cantering. It stimulates it. But he can’t poop and trot, so he slams on the breaks. He tries to poop, and half the time he can’t. Then he trots again and the feeling restarts.

I’ve tried him on a couple different types of hay, and hay pellets. It hasn’t really impacted him at all one way or another. He really didn’t like the hay pellets, so I had to give him back regular hay eventually. He’s not gray, and we have talked about melanomas. My vet didn’t think it was likely considering his condition (he’s in good shape otherwise), but perhaps I’ll bring it up again. Its been tough to work with the vets since they don’t really see the issue happening. At some point I’ll need to get them to watch me work him.

It sounds like SI issues might be a good place to start. That’s a repeated theme I’ve heard. I’d like to understand what is contributing to SI issues on a young horse that was started late and lightly worked. I guess it could be conformational, but it seems like there would be something else there.

Myhorsefaith, Its interesting that your horse was in the hospital when he was young. Mine was too. I imported him as a four year old. He got off the plane and immediately started spiraling at quarantine. He got a pretty nasty case of pneumonia. It doesn’t sound as serious as your horses’ experience, but he was thin to start and got scarily thin so I cant imagine that did him any good.

IPEsq, thank you for sharing your experience. I’m sorry to hear your guy passed, that must have been hard. All the things you mentioned seem like good things to discus with the vet. Its really helpful to have a list of questions to ask, since I think I’ll need to be proactive to get much forward progress.

After reading all these responses, I’ve decided to do more vet investigations. In the meantime, though, I think he needs to keep getting exercise to the extent that he’s able. As an experiment, I asked him to keep going even though he felt like he had to poop. I didn’t try to hold him back when he surged as much. Interestingly, he actually seemed happier at a faster pace as opposed to stopping to try to poop. Eventually he’d need to stop when he actually was ready to go, but in the meantime it didn’t cause so much turmoil for us both. I’m going to keep experimenting with riding techniques to see what makes him the happiest and helps him work through it.

[wildlifer]

Chiming in with another one where pooping issues were definitely connected to SI/pelvis discomfort. Mine was much milder - now-5 OTTB I got 2 yrs ago. When he pooped, it seemed like a lot of uncomfortable work - he’d really hump his back, groan, & it was slow. He was fine before & after.

His sacrum was way tilted sideways & he had huge weird knots in his right hip that mystified vet, maybe scar tissue from old injections, hard to know. It took over a year to get his sacrum back in place to stay, but when we did, the pooping effort stopped. It has taken me even longer to work those knots out but I did. He’s back to normal now.

[DownYonder]

My gelding did not poop excessively but he would absolutely not poop under saddle at all. He would lift his tail and sometimes be a bit gassy and his anus would pooch out but he would not poop while being ridden or lunged–even when halted. And when in his stall, he would act very uncomfortable and a bit agitated when he needed to poop–his eye would get hard and he would walk in circles and you better not get in his way.

This horse had mild kissing spines and recurring EPM flares that occurred every autumn (we believe triggered by fall vax). We were usually able to manage everything with meds and regular chiro and massage, but his SI needed to be injected every 9 mos or so. He took a turn for the worse this past winter and became ataxic behind despite the EPM meds so vet did a rectal palpation and ultrasound. Voila–he discovered a moderately severe herniated disc at L6/S1. Looking back at the horse’s long history of soreness in the lumbar/SI area, we think he may have had a mild herniation there for quite some years as he was always a bit reluctant to lift his back and come truly “through” under saddle. We now believe the herniated disc caused him pain when he lifted his back (even to poop).

I elected to put him down earlier this month after we found the compromised disc because he had loss of coordination and proprioception behind and I was terrified he would suffer a catastrophic injury. We did not necropsy him so don’t know if he also had gut issues similar to what IPSeq described but I now wonder about the possibility of a herniated disc for any horse with chronic SI discomfort–and especially when coupled with discomfort/agitation when pooping.

[bathsheba8542]

My gelding takes to nervous pooping while tacking up, and occasionally under saddle, when his hamstrings are tight. I’ve recently been doing proprioception work which appears to have increased his overall comfort by building up the correct muscles for the work (glutes). I find a direct association between his body discomfort at glutes/SI and how much nervous pooping there is.

[IPEsq]

One thing I have tried that you might want to experiment with is either working lightly on the longe first and trying to see if he will stop and poop there first. Canter on the longe before you get on to warm up his back. Another thing to try which can take a long time is to just walk him under saddle (trying as best you can for forward working walk but not necessarily on contact) and allow him to poop before you start the other work if you can. My guy was similarly dramatic about pooping in turnout including flipping his whole tail over his back like he was a foal.

Reducing the anxiety about it will take you a bit farther towards him actually being able to poop even if he has to briefly stop but he can do that and move on. But I strongly believe there is a physical reason that they get so worked up about it in this way. Luckily I found a trainer who was able to work with me to get mine to do better about taking the right opportunities to poop and be relaxed about it. He was smart enough sometimes I think he would fake it as an evasion. However when his back and SI was the worst he would just tend to want to stop and park out anyway so there was still a reason for the evasion that wasn’t just laziness.

I have back and SI pain from time to time, chronically over decades, and there is a correlation with that and my GI discomfort as well as GI function. I think it’s a nervous system thing. And it goes both ways—GI issue leads to back issue and vice versa. So maybe I am more sympathetic to how uncomfortable the horse is even though it should be normal for them (vs us) to poop while moving.

[Dutchmare433]

My horse had similar issues as a first clue for his hind gut issues–he would not pass manure while moving, and if he needed to go, he would plant his feet and not move. It got a bit better with initial treatment of misoprostol and a hind gut supplement. It didn’t go away fully until I switched vets and we went all out. We did a month with no hay (long-stem forage) and weaned him back onto a normal hay ration over another month to 6 weeks. During that time and well past, he was kept on misoprostol, sucralfate, Platinum balance (2 scoops 2x a day), eventually a course of metronidazole. That’s the gist at least, there’s a bit more to his maintenance.

Several vets said it was normal or behavioral etc etc. We did a ton of diagnostics before I finally begged my original vet to consider hind gut and he gave us the misoprostol essentially to shut me up. Feel free to PM for more of the specifics.

[skydy]

I am surprised that anyone whose horse is experiencing such discomfort would continue to ride them, until the reason for the GI pain was successfully diagnosed and treated.

[IPEsq]

@skydy

I am surprised that anyone whose horse is experiencing such discomfort would continue to ride them, until the reason for the GI pain was successfully diagnosed and treated.

In the case of my horse, I did every test but exploratory surgery. I also tried everything for his back and SI. And one common theme through it all was that the horse needed to move, do do his PT—keep the gut moving and try to repattern the muscles in his back. I spent a lot of time off his back, long lining, longeing over piles and such. But to get him to carry himself better, I eventually had to get back on. It’s a fine line pushing them to move and being mindful of discomfort. Because we can’t explain what physical therapy is to them. I tried to treat the gut symptoms with diet and supplements and medication. His back was medicated (directly and systemically), and he got acupuncture and chiro and PEMF and mesotherapy. But the vets said he also had to move.

I got to a place where we had a compromise about the behavior in how I did the warmup and I would invite him to take breaks rather than having him demand breaks. It started to unwind the anxiety. And that was as good as I could get it ultimately. And I was ok with the compromise and so was my trainer even though it also kind of drove her crazy. But even when he was off due to something unrelated, I would tack walk as much as possible to try to keep from getting back to the worst place again (some of it had been caused by extended stall rest), and so that he would in a low stress way move to pass gas and manure.

It’s really not so simple.

[GraceLikeRain]

As a very simplistic anecdote, I know of one horse who was more or less “fixed” by epsom salt.

This horse strained both on the ground and displayed stopping under saddle. The piles he produced were small and hard. The owner was not going to invest in a C series of x rays or scope for ulcers, but hypothesized that low motility was resulting in hard to pass stool.

A few days after being started on a rounded tablespoon of epsom salt he had much more normal movement and has gone under saddle without stopping. My gut says that kissing spines are still a very real possibility for this horse but it does seem to have provided some relief. Her vet apparently gave a thumbs up for long-term use but I haven’t done any reading on whether there are other potential risks to consider.

[Haylter]

@GraceLikeRain

As a very simplistic anecdote, I know of one horse who was more or less “fixed” by epsom salt.

This horse strained both on the ground and displayed stopping under saddle. The piles he produced were small and hard. The owner was not going to invest in a C series of x rays or scope for ulcers, but hypothesized that low motility was resulting in hard to pass stool.

A few days after being started on a rounded tablespoon of epsom salt he had much more normal movement and has gone under saddle without stopping. My gut says that kissing spines are still a very real possibility for this horse but it does seem to have provided some relief. Her vet apparently gave a thumbs up for long-term use but I haven’t done any reading on whether there are other potential risks to consider.

my guess he was not drinking enough and that amount of salt got him to drink more.

[IPEsq]

@Haylter

my guess he was not drinking enough and that amount of salt got him to drink more.

It’s not “salt”. Epsom salts are a laxative (it is a form of magnesium more likely to cause GI side effects).