Horse only rolls or lays down on one side ???

[Obsidian_Fire]

6 y/o OTTB mare. Has had one foal. Off the track for 2 years. Recently restarted under saddle. Did a very thorough PPE with full spine xrays - they were fine, but she does have a slight roach in her back and the very end of the spine is fused. Don’t know if that makes any difference or not.

Now. I did not xray her neck and I don’t know if that has any bearing or not.

I had a good DVM Chiro out about a month ago (and she’s coming again this week). I am also scheduling a bodyworker to come out.

Anyway. I’ve had the mare 2 mos. What I notice is she only lays down/rolls on her right side. Never her left. I am trying to puzzle out why this might be.

First time chiro was out, she noted her pelvis was not aligned - one hip bone higher than the other. She worked on that and gave me some exercises to do. One was to pick up the hind leg, and make small circles with the hoof very close to the ground. What I noted about this was doing the right side was very easy and doing the left side she was very, very tight. I do these when she’s warmed up, not cold.
Chiro is not of the ‘crank and yank’ variety - she works thoughtfully on the mare. She also told me that racehorses almost always have some SI issues, (no surprise there) and mare is the type to drop her butt lift her shoulders and move uphill naturally at all gaits.

So, I am just looking for some thoughts. As I go along with this mare I’d like to be able to thoughtfully work through whatever body issues she has.

Ideas? Things I might ask the chiro about, or exercises to consider as I work the mare?

[findeight]

What did her hocks x rays look like? That’s typical in horses with arthritic changes but could easily be due to some old injury that hurt when she tried to get up on that side, maybe still hurts, maybe doesnt any more because she quit trying and it’s gotten stiff.

[Obsidian_Fire]

@findeight

What did her hocks x rays look like? That’s typical in horses with arthritic changes but could easily be due to some old injury that hurt when she tried to get up on that side, maybe still hurts, maybe doesnt any more because she quit trying and it’s gotten stiff.

Right hock has some changes, left was better. Right hock had slightly less ROM than left. Yet she lays on the right. Go figure.

[Obsidian_Fire]

Bump… anyone??? I’d really like to puzzle this out.

Those of you with extensive OTTB experience, thoughts?

[Princess_Sparkles]

All I’ve got is the hock issue suggestion too, unfortunately. My mare does this as well, but she’s 17 years old and confirmed arthritic in both hocks, worse on her right, so she always positions herself so that her left hind is doing the majority of the work to stand back up. Though she has recently started flipping all the way over sometimes when she rolls (not all the time) and then seems annoyed that she has to use her right leg more to get up. To be clear, my horse is totally sound for light riding, and is on maintenance (Legend and Previcox) but she is careful and protects herself.

Since x-rays of your horse sound like they indicate that she should favour the right leg more, but isn’t, I don’t have another explanation other than that horses are creatures of habit and not all horses can roll all the way over. If she just routinely goes down on one side because that is how she usually does it, and can’t roll all the way over for whatever reason, she is always going to go down and get up on the same side. Why she can’t flip all the way over is a separate question . . . when I was little I remember people telling me if a horse was too fat they couldn’t roll all the way over, but I doubt that is actually true

[AnastasiaBeaverhousen]

I was told long ago that some horses couldn’t roll over because of their withers. A high -withered horse gets stuck. There may be something to that cause my very solid horse can roll over. He doesn’t have much of a wither at all.
She could just roll on one side just because that side is easier.
I’ve seen some horses roll on one side and get up and then roll on the other side.
And I’ve seen some that just roll on one side and not the other.
I wouldn’t worry about it too much as long as she can get up easily.

[Gamma]

My old guy does this, he always lays down on one side, he will flip over to the other side but always flips back to get up. If he can’t flip back it is clearly harder for him to get up on the bad side.

He is arthritic, but not so much in the hind end–it is mostly one front leg that bothers him so that he does this.

I guess ideally you would flip her over when she is lying down and see if she can get up OK on the other side, but it can be difficult to achieve this…