Just checking in to see what has developed, if anything.
Just FWIW…I had a horse that just started refusing to step under who flexed clean multiple times, but kept getting pissier to ride. Finally just went ahead and injected his hocks and he went back to his old self.
I had a horse do this exact same thing. Turned out he had EPM.
+1. I was confident that my saddle fit my horse, but her bodyworker questioned it, so I went to the fitter who thought my saddle was fine with a thinner pad, but I could go wider. Bit the bullet on an XW saddle that I’ve had for two weeks now and every ride is better. My little mare put back muscle on really quickly, and now she is able to lift her back up more than she ever has. Really amazed at how it has helped solve what I assumed were training problems.
Just wondering if the OP ever got to the bottom of this!
Me too. I actually had something very similar happen a few years ago. I just came across this thread so would be interested if and how it resolved.
What’s your definition of round? How many days per week and for how long are you working him “round”. Is it kind of deep and on the forehand? On some horses when their back muscles get overworked and sore from that they invert and hollow. That’s when you know they sore. Couple days off and focus on something new.
Maybe change it up big time. Stop focusing on round and work on leg yielding and getting your hind legs or shoulders for a few days.
I wondered that when i first read it too… and I thought maybe OP’s concern was about her horse’s ‘frame’.
Hi everyone! It’s been awhile! But I saw a few people asking for an update so I thought I would fill you in on what happened the last 8 months. A lot of diagnostics but I think I can remember most of it!
I ended up taking my guy to the clinic in February for a poor performance evaluation with their top sports medicine vet. She watched him go and agreed she felt like it was something physical he was reacting to vs. a behavioral thing. We did some blocking of his left front because he looked slightly off there that day, and the blocking did bring him fully sound but didn’t fix the feel in his neck or body. I rode him for her in a bit and he was again still very resistant to give to any contact. I then tried him in the bitless bridle and he was much better! She immediately ran and grabbed some numbing cream to numb his mouth and tongue, but that didn’t do anything as when we put the bit back in he went back to resistance. We x-rayed his head and neck that day and didn’t find anything of note.
We decided to go ahead and do a bone scan and the findings were not significant EXCEPT his sinuses lit up really bright. Which is odd for a bone scan - in fact, she had never seen it before and called in a few of her sinus experts who were also stumped. We decided to do a CT scan to see if we could find any broken teeth, lesions, etc. Nothing, and the sinus lining did not appear inflamed. Also had their dentist do a full workup on him and there was nothing out of the ordinary. Since we couldn’t really find anything, we decided to put him on antihistamines for a month to see if that would help.
It did!.. for a minute. He was feeling almost full back to normal going right, but was still super heavy going left and developing a slight head tilt. I bought a horse nebulizer (didn’t know that was a thing until this!) to see if that would further help his sinuses at all but it didn’t.
After about 2 months of this (still on the antihistamines) he was back to very heavy and resistant in both reins. Mind you, I didn’t ride him much over this time and when I did I was focusing on getting him forward and his hind end engaged to push into the bridle - I really tried my best to try not to stuff him into a frame. It just wasn’t working and neither of us were having fun
So I took him back to the clinic in June (2x actually) for further performance evaluations. Over this time we blocked his top, middle, and lower neck, TMJ, poll, and a few other things I can’t remember off the top of my head. Again no significant changes with the blocks (i.e., nothing). We discussed blocking his sinuses but felt it was too dangerous. We discussed flushing his sinuses but again in talking to the sinus expert, he really felt that wasn’t the issue and we didn’t want to put him through drilling holes in his head for likely no response. We did decide to inject his left coffin bone because over the evaluations he was on and off slightly off on it, and xrays showed his coffin bone was very slightly irregular. That got him fully sound but still didn’t touch the roundness issue.
So by now it’s August and I’m getting desperate! I love this horse and he is such a sweetheart, and I really wanted to get to the bottom of what was bothering him. I ended up having an animal communicator talk to him and he pointed to his hyoid apparatus as the issue. He said it wasn’t severe pain but more like a nagging headache every time he would go round, and so he started to tune me out because he didn’t like the feeling. But he said he liked to work! I conferred with the vet and she felt there were no clinical signs of a hyoid issue but I decided to get a myofascial therapist to examine him. She did two adjustments and agreed his hyoid was definitely out of whack. She felt that the adjustments would do a world of good and I will say he did feel softer after those adjustments (but still resistant overall).
Out of ideas (the vets literally had no next steps they could suggest!), I took him to my trainer’s for a month to see if she could get anywhere with a breakthrough. She worked the same way on getting him engaged from behind and had the same resistant results. After a lot of discussion and agonizing, we decided he just wasn’t meant to be my dressage horse. He is happy as a clam to lope around on a loose rein, but didn’t want to do the job I was asking. And he’s too kind and sweet to force him to do anything he doesn’t want to do - especially if something I’m asking is causing him any kind of discomfort (even if we can’t pinpoint what it is).
So, we found him an AWESOME home where he’s got a very low-impact job with someone who is also happy as a clam to lope around on a loose rein. He is happy, and although I’m sad it didn’t work out for me, I’m happy I could find him a solution at the end of the day.
I’m not sure this will be helpful for anyone that might be experiencing a similar issue, but hopefully it can at least give you some places to consider looking.
Thank you for sharing this story, and for going above and beyond for your boy! I’m sorry it didn’t work out for you, but happy to hear he found a great home.
A bittersweet update, for sure. I’m terribly sorry you won’t have this lovely horse in your life, but how wonderful that you went well beyond what most would have done to find the cause of his discomfort, and than made sure he had a soft landing.