I am interested in hearing what horse owners have discovered as medical causes for horse spookiness or anxiety?
definitely ulcers
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vision loss/ blindness.
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Kissing Spine/stifles catching
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Pain in general can cause a horse to be spooky and reactive. It dumps them into a constant flight or fight state.
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Was coming for just this. Any discomfort, physical or emotional, lowers their threshold.
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MSM is a known but uncommon cause of spookiness in horses. Has there been a feed change or an MSM supplement added recently?
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Sore feet. I was riding an older barefoot mare on sand trails. Guaranteed if she took a noticeable ouch step once on a pebble (which likely meant she was feeling vulnerable in her feet generally) she would start with silly spooks. Put boots on her and the spooks mostly disappeared. Pain creates anxiety creates spooks
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Hearing loss
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Lyme disease
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high starch/sugars/carbs diet
too much confinement- stalling
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Absolutely this - my horse starts getting more reactive the closer we get to his hocks and stifles needing to be injected. He’ll never not be spooky, but his general spookiness increases as he gets sorer, and then once he’s gotten injected pretty much all of that tension goes away.
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No MSM 
Did you have any other symptoms of Lyme?
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How do you test for that?
This horse in question has a problem with me or things entering his space, but once there is fine with it. Maybe that could be vision. What other symptoms did your horse have?
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The biggies for me were Lyme and ulcers. Get a combo plate of those and life gets exciting.
And eye issues.
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Friends had a horse that started with random spookiness. She ended having EPM and that was the what they attributed it to.
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Feed , any pain/ physical issues and ill fitting tack. Tack isn’t medical but using it long enough can sure cause a medical issue.
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Have had mare with painful follicles, one gelding with both Lyme and low vitamin E. Dental didn’t cause spookiness, but fussiness for sure. I think real question is how to approach it - I started with ruling out equipment issues/saddle fit, then proceeded to assuming ulcers. Now, with lessons learned, I’ll run bloodwork first before treating for ulcers. Rule out any nutritional deficiencies/Lyme, then assume ulcers, then consider alternatives if the issue remained unresolved to that point.
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