So she does have lameness issues. I would assume a vet would not inject a healthy joint. Does she have osteoarthritis in her hocks and stifles?
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I already answered this question her x rays are clean. There are NO bony changes.
She did flex a bit sore and the decision was made to inject with prostride to reduce inflammation and hopefully thwart irreversible bony changes.
She flexed sound at her appointment with the lameness specialist 3 weeks ago.
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I don’t profess to know all facets of pain but I do wonder if some pain related trigger-stacking is at play here. You’re right pain isn’t selective. It could be there is some minor pain that the horse can manage under threshold until a new stressor or trigger is added - in this case the trigger could very well be separation from the herd.
Sometimes the stoic horses have the worst herd bound behavior and they are doing so because they are masking a high pain. Stoic horses tend to be high-functioning individuals and removing them from the herd makes them feel vulnerable enough that they lose the plot.
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If this were a pain issue, it would be happening routinely under saddle? Wouldn’t she being doing it on the lunge? Or especially during flexions and her under saddle evaluations? (Our lameness vets do under saddle evaluations)
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I don’t know why (I suspect the OP will write me off) but I am going to throw out a few things from my experience with a difficult mare that had been written off.
- Depo injections (this mare did not respond to Regumate, but was a different creature on depo)
- Stifles (being loose or sore, consistent hill and cavelletti work helped, in hand/lunging/under saddle)
- Having the saddle fit for a sheepskin pad underneath (she was a delicate soul)
I would also be interested to try the experiment of lunging her, saddling her and then lunging her, and then putting a rider up on her on the lunge line. That would be an interesting exercise.
YMMV
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Hard to keep track of everything said in 86 posts. No need to be rude.
I would not be surprised if she flexed sound at a vet - adrenaline can often mask lameness. You can also have intermittent lameness with a multitude of conditions. That also does not mean that she does not have severe behavioral issues as well secondary to pain.
Regardless, she flexed sore previously and given the behavior, that would be a red flag to me. However, you seem bound and determined to deem the horse as sound.
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She was on depo before USEF banned it. It worked great for her but she also started to get bad reactions to it. (Hard lumps at the injection sites)
Her owner would love for her to do work on the hills if she could get her out there to ride on them.
She lunged with the saddle (no surcingle) and is fine.
I trust the top lameness vet in the country when he says he doesn’t see anything. She got looked over a few weeks ago (as I JUST told you) and the vets didn’t see anything wrong. Again, if it is pain; we have to push through until it comes up in some way. (Which we can’t do since we can’t find it)
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Maresy doesn’t sound USEF show ready so…why not continue if it helps? My girl also had knots after injection but those went down after handwalking/hacks.
Hills or cavelletti in hand? Lunge line if she is good?
How does she lunge with a rider then?
I regret responding already…
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Lunges with rider okay. (Last we tried in august) We have not tried in a few months. She could lunge on the hills if we ever dry out. I doubt she would want to lunge on a slick surface.
She got the huge allergic type welts at the injection site that lasted several days. Vet was concerned, especially with those horses dying from depo) Depo was stopped before usef banned it and the mare was actively showing. (Stopped using it back in 2018) She hasn’t shown in two years and because of her reactions, decided to not try depo again.
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OK! Lunging with a rider is 100% where I would start. If you are in a bigger arena you don’t have to stay on a 20M circle. You can walk your circle up and down the length of the arena, reducing the stress of staying on a circle while maintaining some control. I think that is a great starting point!
I wasn’t advocating for lunging on a hill. It sounds like handwalking hills is too much work for you all. 
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A friend had a mare with similar behavior. I also swore it was spoiled/learned behavior. She exhibited no pain signs under saddle but would just have complete meltdowns about going forward. Depo worked for her mostly, but she also got the huge welts. No diagnostics could pinpoint anything, although they did not go as far as your client has. Finally did blood work to check her hormone levels and her testosterone was almost quadruple normal. Mare has since been spayed and is a happy, sweet, normal riding horse. Ovaries also ultrasounded normal as part of diagnostics.
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Did I miss that this behavior happens at the same general spot every time? Can she be led past that spot with no reaction? I have a weird idea, but only if the answer to the first question is yes same general area and the second no she reacts to some degree even in hand.
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Hi all,
I’m the owner of this mare and figured it would be easier to answer questions myself rather than my BO.
The mare has always been quirky/hot/opinionated but never unsafe. After going to most of the clinics local to me, I took her up to NBC over the summer. I originally had the same thought as other posters that this a neurological manifestation. They decided it was not and did a full evaluation of her etc.
her two bone scans have not revealed anything remarkable.
We did inject hocks and stifles in June with PRP. She flexed mildly positive, and knowing how sensitive she can be, we decided PRP was the way to go over steroids. The x rays were clean. As her behavior escalated, we went back for more visits. Nothing came up on flexions or her bone scan in July.
Enter muscle biopsy (I have a PSSM2 boy) and hair sample for testing. Muscle biopsy came back normal and nothing for the variants as well as PSSM.
I hired an equine nutritionist to go through her diet and run allergy tests. She ended up being soy sensitive so we put her on Vermont blend, cool stance and orchard grass pellets. (She’s currently not eating cool stance as she is too fat for it).
I won’t go in to the details of her previous training, but she was sent home since she “basically didn’t want to be a dressage horse”. She came home in horrific condition. (She was so body sore, we ran the first bone scan and test for tying up.) I won’t discuss the details, but basically, trainer would fight with the mare until the mare scared her and she gave up.
I brought her home for some down time but realized the smaller barn scenario was not good for her. I have no one to put her out with and she was getting extremely herd bound. When it was time to get her under saddle, I brought her to GPS place.
With what she had been through, I didn’t know what I would sit on. At first, we did no arena work and kept everything to trails and fields. The happy stuff, just walking to keep it light and bring her back slowly.
In July, she started testing the boundaries, acting balky when walking away from the barn etc.
at first I just pushed her forward and didn’t make an issue. When she did the first spin and try to go back to the barn nonsense, I scheduled the vet appointments thinking someone was wrong. (Nothing was)
She has slowly gotten worse about the behavior. It is always leaving the barn. Walking towards home she can anxious and rush. (We usually don’t walk straight back).
In August, she caught me off guard by spinning and slipping in some mud which unloaded me. She galloped back to the barn while I walked in.
Since then, she will increase until she either unloads me or she ends up in a spot in the bushes where she has no where to go. When she ends up in a trapped spot, she will calmly walk out of the bushes until she’s at a place where she thinks she can get me back to the barn.
Off property she is okay as long as she hasn’t shipped with another horse.
I’m really wondering if there anything random that we haven’t thought of that would not necessarily be thought of. A team of vets doesn’t believe this is soundness and truly believes it is behavioral. BUT I’m wondering if there is some off the wall thing it could be (like Cushings posted above or a hormonal imbalance. Both of those are getting run when the vet comes next week)
I do have a trainer lined up for February who is willing to work her and me through the issues at home so I’m not fixing a problem for them to return when she comes home.
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Many years ago I had a mare who sounded much like yours. I regret to say that I was unable to solve the issue and finally donated her after she unloaded me with a resulting back injury. Worse than that was the consequence of a lifelong fear issue on my part. I’ve continued to ride and have owned several horses since then. But the fear never completely left. It’s been 30 years…
I once had a vet tell me that “some horses just need to be put down as they aren’t safe”. Sad but true.
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You’ve gone above and beyond what 99% of people would do to get to the bottom of her behavior. At this point, aside from euthanizing, the best we can do for horses like this is make them safe. And if we can’t, then the next best thing is to not send them on to hurt someone else.
So I don’t see any reason to not try a “cowboy” or colt starter type trainer. The best ones aren’t rough at all, they are just incredible athletes will great feel for when to stick on and when to back off.
I had a similar type mare, she just sat in s field for almost 10 years because her breeders were getting older but too proud to get someone else to back their last crop of babies. It took me almost 3 hours to load her on the trailer, and I learned that her go to move was to rear. This continued into groundwork and under saddle.
After many thousands in vet work ups and months of various drug trials and feed/supp/management adjustments, I sent her to a gentle grand prix dressage trainer, but this trainer couldn’t get through to her in several months. She cane back loading well onto trailer, and you could mount her safely, but that was about it.
So I sent her to a well regarded “cowboy” and I got back a rideable horse. Even he almost gave up on her after the first six weeks. He said the combination of her being smart and very athletic, and also used to just doing whatever she wanted for 10 years made her very difficult case, but then she had a breakthrough.
I’m sure some of the methods used are controversial to a lot of people, but at the end of the day he took a dangerous horse and turned her into a nice rideable one in 3 months. He did not beat her, but did employ hobbling and did separate her from other horses for a few weeks.
But at the end of the day, she’s a safe horse.
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This is very much my mare.
Trigger stacking is huge for her. When you hit that proverbial “straw that breaks the camel’s back,” she is DONE. She will kill both you and herself trying to tell you that. So when she starts losing her marbles, I just need to ask myself what triggers are present and what can I do to remove them. Sometimes you can’t remove all triggers, or even figure out what they are, but if I remove the ones I can control (like tack or my riding), she has more faculties to deal with the ones I can’t control in the moment.
A general statement (not directed at you in any way Beowulf): the pile on the OP in these types of threads bothers me. I would hope anyone who has “known” me on COTH would realize I’m sympathetic to my horses and agree that pain or human error creates most negative behaviors. But posters often become bullheaded about what the OP needs to do, insisting that the problem can easily be discovered and remedied by just calling the vet out and testing for XYZ. It’s not that easy. The owner of the horse sound like they have done a lot for this horse medically.
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To me this still really sounds like an anxiety issue, with a strong component of separation anxiety (herdboundness). There may be a physical component but you’ve already done a hell of a lot to find it, for which you deserve some kudos.
It’s great that you have a trainer lined up to work with you at home! In the meantime I strongly second the recommendation for Warwick Schiller. He has a lot of interesting methods for anxious horses that basically amount to guided meditation—teaching the horse how to reset and to bring their mind back to where their feet are. There’s no chasing them around or showing them who’s boss. He does have a lot of free videos on YouTube but I’d suggest you try the subscription because it walks you through his process in a clearer way and includes a lot of full-length videos. At $30 a month it’s a drop in the bucket compared to what you’ve already spent, and you can do a 10-day (I think) free trial first. I would start by working through the flowchart stuff, and he also has a “50-foot trail ride” concept that might be helpful down the line when you can do it safely.
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I know the mare has custom made saddles but actually sometimes custom doesn’t always equal well fitting. Have you tried other saddles besides those? Occam’s razor and all that
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I second (third?) either Warwick Schiller or the TRT method. If you do a search on YouTube you can find plenty of videos of what they do.
Then in the end maybe she’s just not a horse to do anything with. Maybe just turn her out and let her be a horse. They are big animals and I don’t think we should be fighting to make them do things they do not want to do no matter how much we want them to do it- even if this is just a toodle around a field.
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