Help for the codependent mare?

[archieflies]

I’m having an issue with an otherwise-lovely red-headed mare who is only codependent after being trailered with another horse.

She’s a 5 year old TB rescue that I’ve had since she was 2. I keep her at home where she is turned out with my gelding and a mini mare. She will occasionally get worked up if I’m working my gelding and she feels ignored, but it’s rarely a problem. At home, she’s fine-- even my kids can catch, tie, groom, ride her on their own. When a guest is here, she’s the one I put them on, either leadline or following behind my gelding and I on a hack. She’s a kind soul. When I haul her places solo, she’s about as good as you can expect from a young horse. She’s been nice and quiet at group cross country schoolings and trail riding solo at a new place, standing at the vet, so long as i haul her alone. And if I take my gelding somewhere and leave her at home, she’s fine hanging with the mini.

But if i trailer her someplace with my gelding, she comes off the trailer a totally different beast. Even just the 30 minute trailer ride to the vet gets her so attached that she comes unglued when she’s not with my gelding. I hauled them both to my trainer’s to meet the chiropractor today, and she was insane, pawing and whinnying and dragging me around trying to get to him. I lunged her for a while and could just never get her focus.

This mare has the makings of a real decent horse, and she could be a great kid/husband horse… but this feels like the fatal flaw. I know she’s young, but I’ve never seen codependent mares improve with age.

Any advice on easing her codependency, short of just avoiding the situation? We’re due for the vet soon, and I’m dreading having to handle both of them myself.

Thanks!

[theresak]

One of my geldings is like this. If he trailers somewhere with another horse, we separate them as soon as we arrive. I make sure my clingy gelding has other horses around him, just not the trailer friend. If you can’t separate them at the vet, I’d just make a plan to keep them as close together as possible.

[QuestionMark]

You may have tried this in the past, but if not, could you take them separately to the vet for the next couple of times, so that she can get some experience in the place without her pal and see if that makes a difference? It’s a logistical PITA, but maybe it would be worth it since the trip is only 30 minutes.

[Laurierace]

This is so common that they often suggest that you trailer two horses together somewhere before introducing them together in a paddock. Some horses can handle it, some can not. If yours can not the easiest thing to do is haul her separately.

[Abbie.S]

I guess - if this is the only time she gets buddy sour - you will have to decide whether you set things up and put the work in to resolve this, or whether you just avoid it.

Personally, this to me suggests a hole in your mare’s confidence, something that I would want to resolve instead of leave in there as is.

FWIW, I have a gelding like this. Travels fine alone, but put him in the trailer with another horse and he becomes too reliant on the presence of that horse (even if he had not met them prior). He needed to learn to deal with both, and over time he has improved. I think it actually had more to do with how he felt about trailering than how he felt about being alone, because it was always the trailer that triggered it, so we spent a LOT of time making sure he’d load whenever I asked, without hesitation (but with total and utter relaxation, which is an important distinction), for all sorts of types and lengths of trips. I’d even stick him in there to hang out while I worked with another horse. All of this seemed to have helped quite a bit.

[equinelibrium]

OP I don’t have a solution but I can commiserate! My mare and my boyfriend’s gelding live together and have become attached. If we trailer them anywhere together, we can’t leave one of them at the trailer alone. Like your girl, they are both super chill horses normally. But when their buddy goes away they get very upset, screaming, pawing, dancing around, etc. Luckily they’re ok when being handled away from each other but their antics alone at the trailer are a pain.

@Abbie.S I would love to hear more about what you do to get your horses more confident about being alone. I suspect our issue has more to do with self-confidence than the trailer itself, as they will call when their buddy gets taken out of the paddock as well.

[archieflies]

Thanks, everyone. I guess for this vet visit, we’ll do multiple trips. She’s pretty used to going there solo, but if it reduces rama/chaos for everyone around us, we’ll stick to that. We can probably stand to go back to some basics and work on confidence. She’s been chill enough that I’ve probably left some holes in her groundwork. The ultimate goal would be being able to trailer both horses out to a trail system to ride together with my daughter. But that may just come with age and experience… and miles in the trailer.

[frugalannie]

Two off the wall things to try. Maybe a little (1/4 tube) ulcerguard or some such given 30 min or so before shipping to quiet any gastric distress she may be getting

And really off the wall: put a little Vicks Vaporub on her nose before loading her. It’ll keep her from getting the scent of her buddy. I have no idea if it will work but it’s cheap and easy to try, and I have had it work with horses in other situations where insta-bonding was a problem.

[sportyspicepony]

Can she trailer with horses she doesn’t know and not get attached to them, or does it just happen with the gelding she lives with?

I rode a mare for years who was like this, and there was no real way around it. If her owner wanted to take her other geldings to a show that I was riding her mare at, we’d have to stable them at completely separate properties, and never allow them to see or hear each other at the show - the geldings would also act up so it wasn’t just the mare’s thing. It was a huge PITA!!! But with very careful management we got through it.

However if she went on an outing with a horse she didn’t live with, she couldn’t care less. She didn’t love being left anywhere alone, but it would be like, within reason, not anywhere close to the dramatics you’d get if you brought her out with either of her boyfriends.

[NancyM]

I had one years ago who was like this with his girlfriend, who lived at our farm, and was owned by a friend of mine. Even if we shipped to a show separately, it was BAD. My horse was violent about it, his girlfriend HAD to be standing next to him at the side of the jumper ring. There was no other option, people and horses would have been killed in the temper tantrum that would erupt. He would allow her to go into the ring and do her round, and she could stand by the ingate before going in, as long as he could see her there. He would watch her round intensely, sometimes giving her some quiet encouragement as she went by. At the end of her round, she had to come back to his side in a reasonable amount of time. Or ELSE!!! If we shipped separately, and he saw her in the distance, all hell broke loose. If she stayed home and was not present at the show, he would keep a look out for a horse who was the correct colour (dapple grey), but reject as it became apparent that it was not the correct horse. Both horses jumped extremely well, very competitive in the same jumper divisions. So we worked it out, and it worked OK for us to stay together. His girlfriend didn’t care one way or the other about my horse. But my horse would be extremely dangerous if we did not cater to him… it wasn’t worth the risk to life around us to attempt to “make him change”… which would have been useless. So my advice is to “keep the peace”, cater to the horse, and keep anyone from being killed by a horse having a temper tantrum. Ship one horse at a time to your vet.