My horse is odd in that the 4 years I’ve owned him, he’s never been able to poo while moving. During a workout, he will usually go once or twice. I’m used to the signs, as it takes a few minutes for him to “work one up”. His tail will slowly raise higher and higher, and his movement will get slower and less coordinated until he’s ready and he’ll stop and do his business. Then he goes back to normal.
The last 2 times I’ve ridden/lunged him, he’s been acting like he was about to poo for the whole workout (30-40 minutes each). He held his tail out a little bit for pretty much the whole time and was moving incredibly slow at all 3 gates. He especially struggled to get any forward momentum cantering. He did go potty once (and they’ve been normal and solid, no loose stools), but instead of moving normally after, he went right back to acting like he had to go again.
He has a wonderful new farrier, UTD with his back and SI injections, got a new well fitting saddle in July, and was doing better than ever up until now. I palpate his back/SI area before and after every workout, and it’s felt completely normal. I don’t think it could be tooth related but he does have a dentist appt in a couple weeks anyway. The only thing that’s been different is he recently had an increased dose of MSM. I found out about 2 weeks ago that my barn was only giving him his smartpaks every other day, so since then they have corrected the error and he is getting 10,000mg MSM every morning, instead of every other. The only side effect I’ve heard from MSM is it making horses hot, but it seems to have had the opposite effect or perhaps causing some digestive upset? Have you ever heard of such a thing? I can’t think of anything else that would cause this.
They are also very good at training us to let them slow down and stop because that’s easier.