I have a gelding by Sir Donnerhall out of a Weltmeyer mare with Shivers. I know this could be just shit luck but, I would love a thread to see if there are certain dressage lines that tend to have certain ailments. The riders seem more honest and open than the breeders, which may just be because we aren’t giving them the feedback! My horse is very unhappy and about having his right hind handled and can be quite kicky. If you hold the leg up he is slow to put is down and it trembles a bit before he places it down. To ride, and travelling forward under saddle he is perfect. I hope he doesn’t deteriorate!
I knew a Negro gelding back before Valegro who had shivers. With the symptoms you describe. It mostly affected him as a young horse but he learned to compensate and went to I1. His farrier was patient, and that was key. KEY! So was the trainer when picking out his hooves. Many dressage lines today have pulled stallions with “carrier status”. I’m certain not all. Actually, I know not all. There is a lot of line breeding that maintained genetic anomalies in the population. That’s what happens when people breed for performance rather that health/soundness.
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I had a gelding with shivers or something similar whose sire was by Weltmeyer. It does seem common in horses of certain sizes and breeds, so a genetic component is likely. However shivers is so frustratingly nebulous and hard to diagnose definitively, it also makes it hard to reliably link it to a certain bloodline.
I understand that they recently changed the criteria for diagnosing shivers to make difficultly backing up a mandatory symptom. My horse never had that problem at all, although he was a textbook shivers case in many other regards. To me the neurological symptoms always seemed linked to some kind of immune deficiency - in addition to the hind leg “shivering “ issues, he also seemed prone to infections in seemingly minor cuts, frequent abscesses despite having good thick soles, frequent minor eye infections, etc. Recently somebody sent me info about Bartonella infection in horses and it described my guy in so many ways.
Not saying this to sideline the discussion about bloodlines, but just to consider as a possibility with your horse as my understanding is that a long course of antibiotics may make a significant difference. It’s a cheap. Easy, and low risk experiment to run and I wish I’d known of it in time to help my horse.
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