Being able to roll, in the wide open space of an indoor or field is different from getting up from laying in a stall.
I’d consider a lameness exam ( either just a simple one or more involved with xrays to establish a baseline) and whether Adequan or similar would be helpful. Besides effecting her sleep, minor but chronic pain can certainly effect weight gain and attitude.
You may have already covered this with your vet, however in case not, have you tested for Lyme’s? Which can make the horse touchy, irritable, very sensitive and also creaky in their joints.
good luck and best wishes for you and your mare
Looks like a sweet mare. I will second the potential for MSM to make things worse for a few horses. Also that magnesium can make horses that are twitchy and reactive to grooming more comfortable. I personally like the grooming gloves, because it really lets me gauge the pressure.
Also, tri-amino is a nice help for muscle development, I have my two drafts on it.
Being a lesson horse is not an easy job for any horse, and that may be a big part of the problem. For starters, they have to be able to tolerate unbalanced riders and inconsistent aids from one rider to the next. Some are better at it than others, some will never adapt. She may have a history of injuries or poor fitting tack which is or was causing pain. She may have been doing too many lessons every day. Barn staff may have had holes in their training, leading to problems handling her. She may have been mistreated. You don’t know her history of training on the ground or with a rider. It sounds like she has been bounced from one barn to another, one more contributor to her problems. If she didn’t work out in a lesson program she was sold - in her case several times to her detriment.
No matter how good a horse is performance-wise it doesn’t mean they are cut out for life as a lesson horse. If she was skinny when you bought her that says no one was taking care of her. Add it all up. This is one of those deals where most of the horse’s problems start with human beings. I expect she figured out years ago that she’s not interested in the job. She hasn’t had a person with the time, love, and patience to invest in her. It sounds like she finally landed somewhere where everything has changed for the better.
Everyone talks about retraining a horse to do different things that we want. It’s not easy to substitute a different response for one that is well-established. They never know in advance what we want so they take a guess: if they are correct they get a reward. If not, we keep going. That isn’t necessarily a good training technique. It’s easier if we unwind back to the beginning with groundwork they do well. If a problem crops up, go back to something they do well and try the cycle again, We need to keep in touch with the 3-second attention span. Repetitions are key to their learning style . If they need 100 reps to learn something you don’t have to do them in one day, or week, or month. Always stop in a good place.
My big Paint gelding is 27 and we’ve been together almost 21 years. He is versatile, smart, curious, and exceedingly handsome (he makes me say that). Everyone who sees him falls in love - most recently the UPS driver. He doesn’t do things because we’ve been together for 20 years. It’s because for the entire 20 years I’ve been say “good boy” constantly. I ignore what I don’t want unless it is potentially dangerous - e.g. biting or kicking. And I concentrate on having a measured response. I watched a woman’s mare break the crossties one day, and she got on her - “don’t do that” - going after her head. Horse was in a panic and broke the ties 4 more times in about 15-20 minutes. She’s known to have an attitude problem. I feel bad for her horse.
If I do something the same way once every day my gelding figures it out. I’ve tried to limit his training to 15 seconds a day, sometimes more, often less. It took me a while to shift my training techniques. I forgot one of the most reliable cues I have. I lightly hold the noseband on his halter and gently stroke his face. It’s a head-down cue that calms him down. It helped yesterday with the farrier. Horse was distracted activity outside where he couldn’t see it.
I have what I call my accidental training techniques. Do something exactly the same way, every day. One day I figure out that he has already figured something out. He’s ahead of me, I guess. Time, consistency, patience are the keys.
Yes my old TB gelding has similar behavior. Vet and I had hoped that fixing his feet would eventually remedy this, but so far unsuccessful and horse is sound to the eye moving out; good heel first landings etc. I dosed him on Remission (a mag plus others supplement) for 3 months with no change. Have tried different housing and bedding (alone, w friend, in, out, shavings, pellets, extra thick shavings over pellets) arrangements; no change.
Left to try: straw, sand, different mag supplement. If he’s not better by the time vet comes again we’ll try something like Adequan or Equioxx.
You should get her a pair of bedsore boots. I had a horse who was sleep deprived and would also almost fall down on cross ties. The sores on the fronts of her fetlocks went away after wearing the bedsore boots for a while. She eventually relaxed enough that she would lie down to sleep, she was also an older mare - over 20.
Those look neat. Thanks for sharing
Actually, this is the exact ones I have:
Oh yes. And mares really thrive on praise. Some colts and geldings will be a little naughty out of playfulness, nippy or pushy. But mares act out only when they are having feelings, either high spirits or fear or anger or anxiety or trying to communicate something. I find letting them know they are such good girls!! When they are doing what I want goes a long way.
Heap praise on this sweet older girl. She’s likely never had any.
Me and my riding teacher talk about how horses who end up dumped at her stable ALL suffer a praise deficit in their lives. This came up with one particular gelding, “trained” Western, that stable tried barrel racing, then he got passed on to a “hunt seat” stable with low riding standards, then sold to a woman with MS (not me) who was a total beginner, then she abandoned him at my riding teacher’s stable.
My riding teacher asked me to take him on. He was the ugliest horse I ever rode, he had the worst disposition of any horse I ever rode, he had horrible conformation for a riding horse (croup high, low set neck, super THICK throatlatch, ewe neck, and a defiant brain), he balked, he would back up long distances when he did want to move forward, if that did not work he would run away and the gate had a magnetic pull on him. Many years previously I told my riding teacher I would ride whoever she wanted me to so I took him on.
He had NO IDEA what I was doing when I praised him. It took tons of well timed praise before he started believing me, believing that he was a good riding horse, believing that humans could treat him decently, and finally believing that there were some humans he could TRUST.
It took a while, but he became a really sweet riding horse, very obedient and I had fingertip control. Both my riding teacher and I agree that Bingo was the greatest horse training victory of my 50 years of riding.
He was old, he died, and I still miss that ugly defiant horse who was just trying to understand what people wanted him to do. Rest in peace Bingo, you ended up being quite a good ride.
It would probably be Mad Barn’s Three Amigos for the OP. I highly recommend it - my older horse has shown a big difference after about three months on MB amino acids.
I have not read all the replies, but regarding sleep - my older mare sometimes won’t lie down to sleep if she feels unsafe. And by unsafe I mean something that as a human I would never notice. Spending lots of time watching her in person and on camera in her stall and paddock, what worked for her was closing her stall door for the night and banking in a lot of fluffy shavings. She pretty much sacked out 3-4 times overnight. I don’t do this all the time but from time to time when I notice her acting sleep deprived, it seems to work.
Your mare doesn’t want to be inside but maybe think if she has a “spot” that would naturally give her a little shelter (under a tree, near an exterior wall, etc) and make that a little more inviting? I don’t really know, I feel like with my sweet older girl my life has become a cycle of “can’t hurt, might help” ;). She’s so lucky to have you, I’m sure with time and patience she will come around.
Re: The Haas brushes. I had just read about them on here and been curious, wished they had been around when I had a thin skinned sensitive TB (probably with undiagnosed ulcers
) years ago.
But a couple of weeks ago I was in an enormous well stocked tack shop that had the Haas Diva and a few other Haas brushes for sale. I ran around to all my barn buddies who were shopping with me exclaiming “Here! Feel this!” and we all ohhhhed and ahhhed over them.
Re: praise. I have a sweet, wonderful recovering school horse who is kinda a sensitive guy and what he lives for is knowing he’s doing the right thing. And once he knows he has given the correct response to an aid, that’s it - that’s his response forever, because he’s so relieved he’s figured out what the crazy people want. This is where some of the TTouch stuff comes in handy - instead of just rewarding him with a “Good boy!” or a pat or a stroke, I do one of the TTouch exercises I know that he likes. It’s unique in his experience to our relationship, so there’s no amibiguity or confusion - he knows it’s the right response because he gets a specific scratch or rub.
I feel strongly that there was a lot of confusion about what the correct response was, and what praise was, in this horse’s previous life. He’s a much happier horse when he knows how to be a good boy.
One final note: LISTEN to her. She’s been SCREAMING in horse language about what hurts, what she doesn’t like and what she does and no one has been paying attention. The best way to figure her out is to listen to what she’s trying to tell you.
Thank you for taking this project on. This poor mare sooooo deserves you.
I have both styles of fetlock boots and prefer this kind. I think the other ones posted are too easy to fasten too tightly (especially if you’re not the one doing it every day). These ones are also a bit easier to hose off.
About praise and horses. I was at a small local derby and was watching a rider with her very green OTTB doing the grasshopper round. He’d trot up to a log and ‘boink’ over he’d go and trot to the next and ‘boink’ over that one. He had quite the cheering section in his corner and when he was done everyone was patting him and telling him what a good boy he was. You could actually see him puff up with pride in himself. It was the cutest thing.
Not exactly a school horse, but one of my horses was used for those dude ranch pony ride trail riding places.
That is, until she started acting out.
For her, it just took a bit of time to realize that we could have fun on rides. She came to be extremely barn sour and with a habit of bucking in the canter. She had learned that timid riders were scared of the bucking, so she didn’t have to canter if she bucked.
She didn’t want to walk around the arena or trail ride; she wanted to run fast and jump things. The first time I set out a tiny jump for her and we jumped it, she was never barn sour again.
Mares are very smart. Give your mare a reason to be excited to be ridden.
Does she have shoes on? I’ve seen sour horses get much happier after shoes.
Bute to break the pain cycle?
@Mistys_Girl if you want to PM your location, I’d be willing to lend out my LTTJ books if you happen to be in my local area.
Just curious, how did she react to the Equi-Bow? Did you seem to see any changes?
I went up last night and just groomed her. We have a routine of she gets a treat when she gets her halter on and when she’s finally in cross ties. Was able to get a good groom done, spent lots of time finding the good itchy spots. She is very expressive in the eyes and loves the praise and I ignored the bad, just quietly corrected. Was a nice successful visit reflecting back to 4 months ago where brushing was quick and dodging feet!
She has front shoes on, that seems to help her shoulder and knee that was tender.
The Bowen was a lot of work, she won’t stand longer than about 2 mins for anything and was not as relaxing as it should be so we are taking a break to figure her out more.
Started her on magnesium last night, will see how she is in a week, hopefully that helps her as I know it can work.
This mare is sure teaching me patience and to slow down, which is what I need. My life is very busy and seeing her is my escape.
I also highly recommend TTouch- worked well on a semi-feral horse I brought in.
Also, you might want to ask around if anyone is trained in Reiki, I used it on this same horse and
the results were quite interesting. He was a fan and pretended to be in the ‘zone’ so we’d continue. If you’re not familiar, google it, it’s used a lot for humans too.
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