Suddenly cold backed in cold weather?

[GiantSteps]

My 17y.o. dressage horse has been showing 2nd level/schooling 3rd, and going beautifully until winter arrived this year. Then my trainer and I noticed that she seemed uncomfortable in collected work generally. So I made an appointment with a very good local sports medicine vet (which required a few weeks wait, during which I kept her going in light work, but didn’t ask for collection).

During a thorough lameness exam a few weeks ago she flexed slightly positive in both upper hind limbs (1.5/5), but had no response to any other flexions or palpation anywhere. X-rayed the hocks and saw evidence of sclerosis but good joint spaces and no osteophytes. The conclusion of the exam was that she’s remarkably fit and sound for her age but has evidence of joint inflammation in the lower hocks consistent with her symptoms and age. We injected the hocks and ended up having to give her extra time off after that, as the post-injection bute seemed to cause an ulcer flare.

After a couple of weeks of GG (which I am continuing as directed by vet) and a return to normal eating/stool we started her slowly back into work (also under vet direction). She has been great in easy work on warm (>35F) days – stretching nicely, responsive to aids. I haven’t asked more than basic W-T-C on big figures with some easy lateral work (LY, SI) at the trot. Warm day work seems slightly improved compared to work at similar temps before the injections, but I haven’t pushed for collection yet.

On colder days (<25 or so outside, when the indoor is <32F) her back is wound tight as a bowstring and she gets reactive to the aids – I can move her off my leg, or pick up contact, or rebalance with my seat, but if I coordinate these aids to ask her to pick up her back and stretch she tries a number of evasions and will get a little explosive if I push it. This is WAY out of character. She’s also more distractable/spooky on these days. My only goal on cold days is to get some topline stretch, but I’m failing. She stays forward but I just can’t get any suppleness, and my (very good) trainer has has experienced similar. The footing is awesome at all temperatures I’ve experienced – it’s rubber crumb/sand footing with mag treatment (no freezing). Her saddle has been adjusted to her by a good fitter and she showed zero signs of back pain when palpated thoroughly by the vet (also on a very cold day). I warm her up very slowly, starting with the reins at the buckle and have been keeping a quarter sheet on all ride. I’ve tried longeing her or hand-walking before riding, and she doesn’t seem to warm up out of it no matter what I do. I use BoT saddle pads (and have a BoT sheet, but can’t really use it as it stretches/slides back and rubs her withers badly if I leave it on her). I’ve kept in touch with the vet about all of this, but am not sure if this temperature-dependent issue is a lameness thing per se or something that’s better managed through non-veterinary means.

I’ve had this horse 6 years, and she’s never behaved differently under saddle during the winter. She’s a hot/sensitive one, but this weather-related Jekyll/Hyde thing is not like her at all and I just don’t know to respond. I’m also not sure if this is a new symptom or a more extreme manifestation of the collection discomfort we started seeing at the beginning of winter.

Has anyone out there experienced temperature-sensitive suppleness issues with a horse as a consequence of ulcers/GI issues?

Is cold-sensitivity something that horses experience as a consequence of ageing? If so, what is the mechanism, and how is it best managed?

We’ve got a lot of winter to go, and most days in the next few months will be cold ones, so I’d like to figure out how to make her comfortable, whether that means bouncing ideas off the vet re: further lameness, or making management changes. Thanks for any ideas you can share!

[Highflyer]

Did you test for Lyme? That would be my first thought. I would not expect to see a radical change purely as a result of aging or of temps changing-- my guess is something more is going on. I do think the “explosive” feeling can be ulcers but in this case it sounds like they might be secondary to whatever else is going on.

[Angela_Freda]

How much total ‘time off’ did she get for the injection/ulcer thing?

ETA have you tried only lunging her to get her to stretch over topline on those cold days? Not just as a warm up but as the whole of the work?
Will she do in hand carrot stretches?

[CanteringCarrot]

My gelding is somewhat similar. He’s 7 years old and this is my first winter with him. Whenever the temperature dips below 30’s, I’ll hear about it from him! Even in the summer if we had significant dips (10 degrees or more) in temperature he’d be feeling fresh! He is kind of immature though, and can’t quite handle his emotions sometimes. :winkgrin:

I find on these colder days during the winter it can take me awhile to get him to loosen up. One day I did some bending, trot work, canter both directions and was about 20-25 minutes into the ride before I finally felt like he was giving me quality work and felt more supple in his body. Every once in awhile I will lunge him and he’s good about stretching then. Or we’ll go for a simple hand walk. I just try to make sure he gets some kind of movement every day.

Things seem to check out with him healthwise, and I think it is somewhat normal to be stiffer in the cold. I know it takes me longer to warm up and get my muscles going if I head out for a run during the winter.

Your mare seems to have a little bit more going on, but how long do you ride for? How many days a week? Is she still getting turnout on good footing?

If she’s not moving as much as previously (or previous winters) that could result in a change.

I could potentially see Lyme Disease coming into play. Or a mineral deficiency. Just interesting they the cold would exacerbate that though.

[JB]

Assuming there is nothing like Lyme (and definitely that tested for asap), then she may have simply reached an age where she needs more, and sooner blanketing. I didn’t see mention of blankets during turnout, or even in her stall, but she may well need it, even if she’s not clipped.

What is her diet? How long, to this point, has she been on just hay? When you get the vet to pull blood for Lyme, get Vit E, selenium, and magnesium tests done as well, just to cover those common muscle-related deficiencies.

[LadyB]

Try a heating blanket on your horses back while you’re grooming.

My horse sits down in the winter when I go to get on. Yes he’s been checked, only does it in the winter. A heating blanket helped it all out! Just warms up those muscles and joints.

[GiantSteps]

[QUOTE=Highflyer;8996831]
Did you test for Lyme? That would be my first thought. I would not expect to see a radical change purely as a result of aging or of temps changing-- my guess is something more is going on. I do think the “explosive” feeling can be ulcers but in this case it sounds like they might be secondary to whatever else is going on.[/QUOTE]

She had Lyme 3 years ago, with only a strange NQR inconsistent lameness/gait irregularity thing that seemed to shift legs as the sole symptom. I do ELISA titres twice a year (though I’ve since moved to an area with virtually zero Lyme, according to the CDC). Most recent reading a couple months ago was 1:320, which I understand reflects her past exposure but doesn’t indicate any active infection… it has been warm enough for ticks since then, but we don’t have blacklegged ticks here and she lives in a pretty low-risk environment now (dry lot/stall, no nearby brush or trees).

I am definitely worried about ulcers (or hindgut issues from the bute?)… she’s on a full omeprazole treatment dose still. The fact that it correlates with temperature kind-of doesn’t fit with ulcers as the cause of the tension under saddle, though, to my mind…

[GiantSteps]

Hm. Having trouble replying, esp. with quotes, so answers to queries:

@AngelaFreda: She got 2 weeks of just hanging out in her stall/25x50 paddock after we started GG, so about 2.5 weeks total. Then started with 20min W/T (at vet’s recommendation) and gradually increased that over the course of a couple of weeks. We’re trying to balance ulcer needs with maintenance of topline muscle. She loves her carrot stretches and is a downright gumby – she’d be happy to eat all of her treats off her hipbones if I asked. I’m hesitant to longe a 17yo horse more than 20 minutes, and I get zero stretch during that amount of time on a cold day. If I can’t get her comfortable enough to actually work on cold days we’ll probably cut back to 15-20 min longing on those days just to keep her moving, but I’m not hopeful that it will be a way to keep her back muscled or get her stretching…

@CanteringCarrot: Interesting to hear about your guy. I’ve kind-of hoped I could warm her up out of it, but we can walk 30 min at the buckle (or longe, or hand-walk), then do 30+ more minutes of warm-up type walk-trot work with changes of bend on big figures and I get zero loosening. I’ve been on her as long as 90min just trying to get a little bit of stretching, to no avail on these cold days. She’s been in 6 days/week work most of the time I’ve owned her, and lately it’s been 4 days, then 5 bringing her back from the vet stuff, and back to 6 this week. She seems to do better with more work than less, historically. She’s in a stall with a 25x50’ paddock, no pasture, but she gets out for at least hand-walking every day (except when on vet-mandated stall rest). Most of her life has been spent in just a stall, with turnout in a similar sized paddock only in good weather/footing. I tried to get her to adjust to a situation with pasture turnout at one point, but after months of not settling, and causing a few incidents that endangered her pasture-mates we made the hard call to put her back in the kind of environment she was used to. Anyway, she was moving less than usual during the injections/ulcer flare, but otherwise has similar work and more access to a rolling/bucking/moving space than in previous winters.

JB: I like the way you think. I haven’t pulled a new Lyme titre since end of Oct. and had planned to discontinue my regular testing after that since we’ve moved to an area that hasn’t had any CDC-confirmed Lyme cases in years. The warm weather lasted a few weeks longer than usual this season, so it’s not impossible that she could have been exposed to ticks in the meantime, but given her housing and the locale I expect the Lyme risk to be very very low. The vet who pulled her fall titre actually thought I was a little crazy for testing Lyme in this region. Could chronic Lyme from a years-ago infection cause such issues? Could a chronic Lyme flare up happen over the course of a couple months?

Her diet is a mixed grass hay 2x/day, with 1x day supplements consisting of 1c soaked alfalfa pellets, a multivitamin supplement (Accel), a glucosamine/chondroitin/HA supplement, 10k mg MSM, and Magnesium 5000 (the last bc she has tested WNL for ACTH and glucose tolerance, but is a wee bit cresty even at fighting weight and had a laminitic response to vaccines once). She’s been on ‘just hay’, as far as forage, for basically her whole life, although her feed regimen has changed at barns she’s been at, sometimes including beet pulp or pelleted feeds, or free-choice hay (which I prefer, but isn’t an option in current location). Vit E is a good idea. We’re in a moderately high Se area, but I suppose it’s no use to her if the E in her multivitamin isn’t enough… Will put that on the list of things for vet follow-up.

@LadyB: Is a heating blanket a specific horse blanket, or like an electric blanket for your bed? I’m intrigued…

[JB]

So it doesn’t sound like Lyme is high on the list, but still it’s worth a re-test. It is possible - how probably I don’t know - that the stress of moving activated something - maybe?

There are horse-specific heating pads/blankets.

What’s your time like when having it to work her? Where I’m going is - is it possible to do her grooming, then take her for a hand walk in whatever getup is comfortable for her, 20 minutes or so, then tack up and get on right away? If so (or make the time for a couple days to see) then that might be a way to get through this.

Do you ride in the morning or afternoons? If “it depends” have you noticed any pattern or better/worse based on time of day?

I’d definitely start keeping a journal - temp the night before, whether it was windy or still, damp or dry, time of day you worked her, her attitude, etc.

[FoxyandFritz]

I also use just a people size heating blanket…my mare gets stiff in the shoulders and we find that letting her warm up while grooming helps a lot. It just a cheap one from walmart and she falls asleep while wearing it. I am in Ontario and it can get brutally cold here.

[CanteringCarrot]

Hm, you could try a heating blanket, then saddle and quarter sheet while riding/warming up. Maybe that combination (from heating blanket directly to saddle and quarter sheet) would help warm and loosen her muscles if it is indeed just cold weather.

Do you canter quite a bit in an attempt to get her to warm up? I don’t know if this holds truth or is anecdotal, but I have heard others say that a few good canters assist in loosening their horses back as opposed to just walking and trotting.

[Ready_To_Riot]

CanteringCarrot, is ironically right! My horse has always been weird with regular type warm ups, so we go for a gallop. Been doing it for years and she always settles right into work after. More recently (up until she just broke with no explanation!) I’ve added leg stretches pre-gallop, post gallop, and after my ride. Yes it’s time consuming, but with her aging, I’m not taking any chances. I do front and back legs. Stretching both forward and backward and front legs from side to side. I also recommend a heating blanket. My chiropractor told me to use one, but when I got around to purchasing one, my horse broke (I think she has ulcers. )

I think you’ll see a big improvement if you try all this. Good luck!

[LadyB]

OP, they’re just a basic heating blanket you can get from Walmart.

https://www.walmart.com/ip/Sunbeam-Microplush-Electric-Heated-Throw-Blanket-Assorted-Colors-Patterns/136744392

This seems to help my guy when I’m grooming, I put it on his back, and along his neck, he absolutely loves it. You can find cheaper, but its your basic heating blanket that any human would use

[specifiedcupcake]

Was it frosty? My horses go apeshit… frost makes the grass really sugary and I definitely notice more nerves/reactivity when they eat the horse equivalent of gummibears all day before I get on…

[findeight]

All my older horses had trouble with tightness in cold weather when they hit late teens, and I’ve had 3 in their teens and 1 in its twenties, 3 leased, one owned).

Barn had overhead infrared heaters in the groom stalls, the 15 minutes under them grooming and tacking helped tremendously. I always lunged, not because they were going ballistic ( tho that did happen too), to stretch and warm the big muscles.

When I got on, went right to an easy trot on light contact. No walking or poking around, I avoided stopping altogether or walking for longer then needed to catch breath. Got a cooler over horse and saddle as soon as I hopped off, untacked under the heaters, hand walked under cooler to allow the muscles to stay relaxed.

If you don’t have the overhead heaters, I should think an electric blanket would do along with the lunging and modified schooling routine.

Vit E did help with two of them, made no difference in the others.

I can tell you my muscles are stiffer in cold weather and have been since my early 50s, there are changes as we age that need to be managed and accepted instead of throwing money into trying to fix but, like an NSAID for moi, they might benefit from one in cold weather, helps with the joints too.

[GiantSteps]

[QUOTE=JB;8997273]
So it doesn’t sound like Lyme is high on the list, but still it’s worth a re-test. It is possible - how probably I don’t know - that the stress of moving activated something - maybe?

There are horse-specific heating pads/blankets.

What’s your time like when having it to work her? Where I’m going is - is it possible to do her grooming, then take her for a hand walk in whatever getup is comfortable for her, 20 minutes or so, then tack up and get on right away? If so (or make the time for a couple days to see) then that might be a way to get through this.

Do you ride in the morning or afternoons? If “it depends” have you noticed any pattern or better/worse based on time of day?

I’d definitely start keeping a journal - temp the night before, whether it was windy or still, damp or dry, time of day you worked her, her attitude, etc.[/QUOTE]

Thanks, JB. I appreciate the input. Forgot to mention before that she’s always been a bit of a hot, sweaty beast in the past so she gets clipped for winter and blanketed, and this year we’ve started blanketing her more heavily (about 200grams more than we would have last year at the same temps). Temps are in the single digits now and she’s swaddled in 3 blankets and a medium-weight neck cover.

My ride times are all over the place. Sometimes before work, sometimes after, sometimes midday (on weekends and the occasional work-from-home day). Work meetings, barn hours, commute conditions, and avoiding certain boarders who tend to turn the arena into a circus all factor in. Mornings tend to be a bit more rushed, since I have to get to work. At first I thought it was a timing thing, but I’ve had both good and bad rides at all times of day – so far ambient temp seems to be the strongest correlation with tenseness.

I’ll definitely start tracking things more carefully. I haven’t had a lot of windy days and it doesn’t really get damp here, but maybe atmospheric pressure or feeding times, or some other variable is playing a role… will also be good to track results of some experimentation in the grooming/tacking/warmup regimen.

[GiantSteps]

One post and then the reply function breaks for me. Weird!

CanteringCarrot said: “Do you canter quite a bit in an attempt to get her to warm up? I don’t know if this holds truth or is anecdotal, but I have heard others say that a few good canters assist in loosening their horses back as opposed to just walking and trotting”

I do on the good days we do a lot of canter in the warm-up. On bad/cold days I can’t get anything close to a good canter warm-up. Back dropped, out of balance, it just gets rushy and never seems to come together. Her canter is her best gait and usually an important part of our warm-ups, so it’s alarming that it’s the least organized gait on these bad days and that she doesn’t seem to work out of it. I’ve tried getting in two-point for a couple of laps of the arena, then asking for some balance (nope – resentment once I coordinate seat and hand), and also doing a 20m circle, then bringing her back to trot to rebalance, then back up to canter for a few iterations. Not getting any suppleness in the back.

I do like this ‘heating blanket’ idea, though I’m not sure how to implement it. Nearest outlet is all the way down a busy aisle from my horse’s stall (all grooming/tacking happens in stalls) and my horse is a fidgety type who can’t be trusted to wear anything that isn’t secured firmly, especially if there are electrical cords involved. Our previous barn had grooming stalls with heat lamps (which I never used!), multiple wash racks, outlets every few stalls and in all grooming areas. I don’t miss our old life much, but the posh barn was nice!

[GiantSteps]

@LadyB said: "OP, they’re just a basic heating blanket you can get from Walmart.

https://www.walmart.com/ip/Sunbeam-M...erns/136744392

This seems to help my guy when I’m grooming, I put it on his back, and along his neck, he absolutely loves it. You can find cheaper, but its your basic heating blanket that any human would use "

Thanks for the link! I actually have the Target version of that at home. Would happily donate it to the horse if I can figure out a silly-mare-proof way to use it. Maybe pinning it to a cooler so it won’t shift much when she inevitably fidgets and moves back and forth? The cord is harder to figure – there really aren’t any outlets anywhere near her stall and she is historically stupid about “snakes” like clipper cords and hoses… Will look around the web and see if anyone has invented a battery version…

[GiantSteps]

@specifiedcupcake said: “Was it frosty? My horses go apeshit… frost makes the grass really sugary and I definitely notice more nerves/reactivity when they eat the horse equivalent of gummibears all day before I get on…”

Ha! I can imagine! Mine is in a dirt paddock, so all of her forage is in hay form. I don’t think it’s a daily sugar fluctuation thing unless someone is feeding her actual gummibears on the cold days (which is not entirely an unreasonable hypothesis – she has the puppy dog begging face absolutely perfected, and I’m sure it looks even more pitiful with frosty breath).

[JB]

she’s swaddled in 3 blankets and a medium-weight neck cover.

This may actually be part of the issue. 3 blankets piled on is physically heavy. It’s a lot of weight on the withers. It’s just a lot of weight, period.

On bad/cold days I can’t get anything close to a good canter warm-up. Back dropped, out of balance, it just gets rushy and never seems to come together.

The point isn’t a quality canter warmup The point is just to canter, as oppose to walk or trot, as the canter more or less forces more lateral movement of the body due to the footfall sequence.

TBs especially often do better being allowed to canter during the warmup phase, whatever it looks like, so that blood gets moving and muscle get physically warm, so that the proper work can then begin. But older horses also often do better being allowed to canter in whatever form is comfortable for the same reason. Not all, and if there’s a sticky hock, it may need to be one lead over the other.