I feel comfortable saying it’s not you.
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Thank you. I’ll have to blame it on that “closer to the ground, closer to the devil” pony thing.
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Had this happen once, my horse was usually pretty high up in a herd, put him with an older (20+ yr) gelding who immediately established dominance. They coexisted for about a year and one day the old horse showed up in a neighbors yard bloodied up from being run through the fence by my horse. We separated them, but they couldn’t even get close to each other without my horse going into attack mode after that. It seemed like he truly just snapped. He was in many herds before and after that without issue (but I always disclosed the incident and did not try to put him with other dominant horses).
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I think he was onto something. I had three horses who mostly got along OK, although the two pony geldings made a lot of faces at each other and did some low level snottiness. My full size mare was the very strong alpha of my little herd, but never had to do anything physical to make the boys respect her.
One of the ponies colicked, and was sedated by our vet. The pony was lying down in their common corral, and the other two went after him. We moved the sedated pony into a separate pasture, and DH sat outside with him for an entire night to make sure he didn’t end up a coyote or mountain lion meal. Once the pony came out of the sedation, we tried him back with the other two (with human supervision), and herd dynamics went back to normal.
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You are so lucky, OP, that the gelding chose your horse to attack. Had he chosen another boarders horse you would have been on the hook for all costs.
I hope that you asked the owners of the other horses if they were okay with having the Canadian out with their horses. You’ll still be responsible for any costs if he does attack one of them, but at least you won’t have to deal with the backlash of putting a known aggressor in with their horse on the sly.
I have seen it once in my years of boarding and the BO response was the same as your initial response - remove the victim. Until they realized they’d be responsible if the aggressor ever attacked another horse. The aggressor had to leave as the barn wasn’t set up to accommodate single turnout.
I owned a horse that ended up as the only gelding in a group. The mares were all his boss until the day one of them went to a horse show and returned. He chased that mare out of the herd and wouldn’t let her back in. He didn’t physically attack the mare, but the mare did get some cuts from running too close to the trees. As soon as I heard about it I asked the BO if there was another group my horse could go in, preferably with dominant gelding as mine was happiest being a follower. The mares’ love you today, hate you tomorrow relationship was stressing him out.
If the Canadian didn’t get to the point of cornering and kicking/biting, he may just need herd leadership he can respect.
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This is interesting to me. It would be a plausible explanation for my horse. We investigated a lot of things that can cause low seratonin without turning up anything, seratonin itself is not something we ever explored.
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Huh. Super curious and interesting. Can this be a microbiome issue since so much serotonin is produced in the gut? And…theoretically treatable with a probiotic or transfaunation?
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Does the boarder of this otherwise wonderful horse, who has been with you for some time now, have to leave? It’s not like the owner is doing anything wrong. The horse doesn’t seem dangerous to people, or to other horses when he’s under saddle. Does the property not allow this “saint” of a horse to have his own paddock?
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That’s really interesting. We just put our 13 yo mini Aussie on probiotics after she had some GI issues over the last week. Shes always been very dog aggressive…I wonder if that will take any of the edge off.
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I do not know anything about the OP’s barn, but generally speaking, some barns do not have the space to offer private turn out. Just like some barns have the opposite set-up where they do no large group turn out.
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Well, I’m nost usre there’s any conclusive evidence out there for horses.
It would likely be a fairly elaborate and therefore expensive investigation to undertake, though there’s a lot more going on in equine behavior than there used to be.
Another rabbithole I can use to avoid doing actual work…
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Since you mentioned it I have gone down my own rabbit hole. And let’s just say my horse is the poster child for low seratonin on horses.
Quite interesting to read up on all this.
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That’s an interesting question, but we first need to establish lots of preliminary data for horses–what are normal serotonin levels, how closely linked are low serotonin levels to aggressive behavior in the horse, and does raising them lead to a cessation of the behavior.
How would you set up such a study–and get it past an institutional research review board is something that might be a problem.
And you’d need to know whether it was brain serotonin levels or somatic serotonin levels that affected the aggression.
So far as I know, brain serotonin is synthesized within the brain by neurons.
However, we are learning a great deal more about communication between the brain and the gut.
Then you need to do a lot of work to establish what elements of the microbiome favor production, how to measure it, and how to manipulate it.
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It is, isn’t it?
I’d hazard a guess you’ve supplemented said horse with tryptophan?
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No, I have not.
However a lot of her symptoms have resolved with pergolide, which we elected to start even though her bloodwork has never been consistent with PPID.
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I had a mare that was human aggressive that was temporarily fixed with pergolide. Unfortunately, she needed ever increasing dosage and they quit making the flavor she liked so she was euthanized. My vet hypothesized that she has a malignant, fast growing tumor on her pituitary. She never had the typical cushings symptoms.
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We had a gelding that went after another gelding. Old guy developed a thing for the ladies in his older years. The ‘victim’ got turned out with the ladies, with the hope he’d learn something from them. No one expected the older man to be giving the lessons. His day job was giving up-down lessons.
The old gelding also had some on & off stifle issues. Turned out his barn name should have “Randy.” He got real friendly with the mares.
