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Thoughts on Facebook groups and the “everything’s pain” movement?

Horse Care
#1

I’m curious on people’s thoughts about different Facebook groups like: equine biomechanics, massage, and chiropractic. Hoof care and rehabilitation. Nobacknohorse. Nobitsh*t. Equine wellness and nutrition. Etc

I’ve been an owner for 15 years and never seen so many people online discussing/diagnosing pain issues. This seems to have blown up in the past few years but maybe I’ve been ignorant. The big ones seem to be ks, ecvm, ulcers, npa, pssm. It’s like no horse can have an ear back for a second, ever buck, ever not be in a perfect frame, ever not enjoy stiff brushes or be a young unbalanced ottb without people screaming there’s something horribly wrong. Along with many people arguing that vets/professionals don’t know enough about xyz or are wrong. Has anyone else noticed this?

Initially I found these groups to be so helpful but it became exhausting and discouraging. Is the equestrian world moving towards this new way of thinking? What if any “signs of pain” (or excitement, reluctance, etc) are acceptable? I am troubled because if I adopt this way of thinking I see everywhere then I should’ve never ridden any horse lol. Even the perfectly sound/fat/happy 4ft jumper I leased since he didn’t like being caught from the pasture and once in a while pinned his ears while I did the girth.

Curious about any of your thoughts!

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#2

Two thoughts

Everything on SM tends to go down a rabbit hole because the most prolific posters statistically are either the most uninformed or those with an agenda and a business, or those who discovered a thing yesterday and that’s all they want to talk about

So FB groups are generally a rush to the bottom.

That said, yes, I do believe after many years observing that most behavior issues are about pain. Different horses express it more or less. Some saintly souls will suck it up and keep trucking until the bad saddle wears an actual weeping sore in their back and other more self protective horses will say hell, no, about much lesser things.

In most lesson programs and many show training programs we get taught to kick on through “resistance” because horse is “naughty.” Because human goals can’t accommodate horse needs. So I think the emphasis on pain is new to many people and a valuable corrective for how many of us learned to ride.

That said, don’t diagnose your horse via FB or get into debate with some single minded body worker or child.

But just because these things get talked about in stupid ways doesn’t mean the ideas are stupid.

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#3

Balance. Balance is key.

In general, we know SO MUCH MORE now than we did 15-20-50 years ago. Both from a scientific perspective and from simple information availability. So yeah, there’s a lot of issues we would’ve “ridden through” or blamed on behavior in the past, that now have high correlation to diagnosable injuries or diseases. The internet has made training philosophy and general knowledge readily available to the average horse owner as well.

However, that same availability of information can be used to dupe people for money, create echo chambers of misinformation or misguided ideas, and puts emphasis on shock value, worst case scenarios, and quick “hacks” and fixes. You, as the horse owner, have to be reasonably competent and able to take a step back and see the ultimate goal of the information you’re consuming. Media literacy is a skill, and one that isn’t always easy to obtain, especially for people without a really solid research background. It’s easy to be taken in.

We in general know a whole lot more now, but the average owner has to wade through a lot of BS too. Horses have also become less like disposable livestock and more like pets, which has a big impact on how we handle them. Things have swung wildly from “the horse is just being an ass” to “every horse is lame”, but I think it’s possible as an owner to find a middle ground. Knowing how to handle information, fact checking, and being open to new ideas without immediately swallowing the Kool-Aid are great ways to find balance. There’s a big gap between “my saddle fits every horse and ulcers aren’t real” and “my horse doesn’t consent to being ridden so we just do weight shifts from the ground and feed treats”.

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#4

I actually am not a fan of Dave Ramey most of the time, but this quote really resonated with me recently.

“I think that the relentless search for perfection in horse health is mostly terrible. I think that constantly worrying about horses, spending hours on the internet looking for information about what might go wrong helps deprive a lot of horse owners of the joy of horse ownership.”

That’s not to say you should ignore clear signs of pain, but it’s easy to get sucked down the social media rabbit hole.

I agree with fivestrideline’s excellent post that it’s about balance.

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#5

Yep. Like a lot of things this pendulum has swung quite wildly the other direction.
Learn what’s normal for your horse. Be willing to learn how to see from both sides when making decisions. Most of all, be an advocate for your horse no matter what.

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#6

I think avoiding FB special interest groups is a good idea in general.

I also agree that we’ve made huge strides in the last 20 - 30 years in understanding pain issues.

I had a fabulous TB that I loved to pieces, but was difficult and quirky. I realize now, with he knowledge gained after his death, that there was about a 90% statistical likelihood he had ulcers, and would have benefitted enormously from ulcer meds and a more informed diet. Kills me to think about him now.

I could go on, but I think most horse people in my age bracket think back on horses in their past that had problems that would be readily diagnosed now. (I’m thinking of another “quirky” one that I now would recognize as neurological. EPM, tick borne, kissing spine, something. There weren’t tests for any of that when I had the horse, he was just “odd” and “not quite right”)

If a horse has a behavior problem, I think it’s wise to look for pain issues first and training and management issues second.

That said, a common feature of those groups is to diagnose every horse, including brilliant ones performing at the highest levels of sport, with whatever the diagnosis du jour is.

A horse that doesn’t want to be caught may just be a smart horse. A girthy horse can have ulcers, previous bad handling or just be sensitive.

My best advice is 1.) Stay off of FB 2.) Listen to your horses 3.) Be open minded about behavior being pain related 4.) Partner with good vets and farriers 5.) Let the rest of the BS go.

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#7

I don’t understand how people think zero pain is realistic for an athlete. Especially if that “athlete” is a pleasure mount getting ridden on an irregular schedule.

Don’t get me wrong, I 100% agree with the sentiment shared on this thread. Most problems truly are caused by pain. We are better riders today because we recognize that. But sometimes you need to work through that pain instead of running to the vet for thousands of dollars worth of diagnostics or retiring the horse because they were feeling a little stiff.

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#8

I agree with all this. How many of us humans live pain free days, let alone lives? I sure dont and I never have and never will unfortunately. Personally, I have gone down the diagnostic rabbit hole with my own health issues and have been diagnosed with a disease there is no cure for. Doing everything I can lifestyle wise helps the most, and it’s still not great.

I don’t think we should expect that to be any different for our horses. It’s also far more detrimental to me if I were to just be sedentary because I hurt or might hurt myself. I need some level of activity and what is essentially physical therapy type workouts.

Obviously I know how I feel and have to rely on often very subtle signs from my horse to catch if he is in any type of discomfort. And if there is, it’s a balance to figure out a plan to work through it or with it. This is why I started having him on a regular massage/body worker and chiro/body worker schedule even though he shows no signs of needing it; I figure if I miss something, they may catch it and catch it early. Same thing with running metabolic blood work since he’s a high risk breed even though he’s young. I want to know our baselines. I have a little advantage since I got him young, and know his history. He was a clean slate vs a horse that has been with multiple owners and has unknown chunks of their history of nothing else.

I think it’s worthwhile pursuing diagnostics, but having a realistic view of it. Some things you could chase forever and there aren’t always miracle cures if you do find something.

On the Facebook group topic, I think it depends. I have found a select couple of groups that have been as valuable as COTH has been. Others I have left due to the lack of science/fact based evidence and koolaid drinking. I had a friend try to save a metabolic horse of hers for way too long imo; lifetime horse owning family. The more I got to know about IR/PPID and the like, I realized she still seemed to be living in the dark ages about basic things like hay testing. I would have gone about that situation very differently based on what I have learned here and on Facebook both. The groups I do follow on Facebook have the same mentality for the most part as the advice often given here.

COTH is just a smaller version of groups like the Facebook ones and it’s easier to get a feel for the posters that really know their stuff due to the size and the familiar posting faces.

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#9

Thinking about how I manage my own body.

It’s really important to know when you have “good exertion,” when you have pathological pain, when you have stiffness you will work out of. Working or exercising into a real injury causes worse damage, like when your knee starts to go.

Also emotion and mood have an impact. Once you get excited and the adrenaline is flowing you can work through discomfort and even through pain that is a symptom of something worse. But you can also be low energy and bored before you warm up even if you are healthy

With horses we need to manage all this without being able to actually ask. Horses get stiff and sore and bored, they get excited and hot and push through when they shouldn’t, and they also get chronic strain injuries that can be career ending.

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#10

I think everything should be taken in moderation and for people to think objectively about information stated on the internet. FB isn’t the only place for misinformation; blogs can be a terrible source of information, and even articles in the standard print magazines.

The Nutrition and Wellness page has a great many highly educated admins and participants. As well as many small-minded, dark ages morons. Probably at the same ratio as you find those types of people in every day life.

I would agree that there are topics that many (or what I find to be many) vets these days are uneducated. Nutrition and parasite control, namely. Look at how many people come here and FB stating that their vet prescribed fill-in-the-blank antiquated deworming program. The literature has been out there for many years (decades?) that scheduled deworming is harmful in that it has created resistance. Yet the old mindset is still subscribed to…

Nutrition knowledge is sorely lacking as well. I’m not one to scream that you should never trust what your vet says. But I acknowledge that there are incompetent ones out there, ones who specialize in particular areas, lack up-to-date information, etc. Hell I had a good quality all around large animal vet tell me there’s no such thing as a test for IR and looked at me like I had an appendage growing out of my forehead. I go to my repro vet who specializes in endocrinology and whoda thunk, she has an IR test available. I think it’s important to know what your vet is capable of and when you have a situation that is beyond their scope and ability to handle. Just because their name has “DVM” after it doesn’t make them an all-knowing God of sorts. Many of them come damn close, but not all.

As far as pain goes, we have come a long ways in understanding and diagnostics. I still maintain that horses can off days and just be a shithead for the sake of it. But those would generally be a one off. Trends obviously warrant further exploration. Not everything is pain. My nose-flipping broodmare doesn’t whack me in the face with her face or cowkick at me while avoiding being caught because she’s in pain. She does it because she’s sassy, mildly quirky, and probably a touch feral from a lack of handling. I’m sure some FB groups could turn in it in to her being “Lymes” (seriously, if someone calls it Lymes, I just bypass…) or EPM or laminitic or something like that.

Really not everything a horse does requires a reason or reaction. But some of those groups are a wealth of information. So I’ll just wade through the crap until I find the info I need, from the people/sources I trust.

10 Likes
#11

There are 2 sides to this:

A LOT more awareness needs to be put on how comfortable a horse is in general. Way too many horses are clearly (to those who understand it) unhappy in their work, even if they aren’t resistant to doing the work. Why? Poor fitting saddles, poorly trimmed feet, poor bit/bridle fit, and flat out poor riding. Sooooo many horses are unsound despite not limping.

The fact that we know a ton more about ECVM, EPM, PSSM, ulcers, and more, and are starting to understand how much more common they are than we thought even maybe 5 years ago, much less “the good old days” that people like to use as excuses for why these things don’t exist, means we NEED to at least keep them in the back of our mind when trying to evaluate why a horse is struggling. But the first place to start IS by looking at the rider and tack. Assume it’s our fault first, because honestly, those are the easiest things to fix and will be a permanent fix if we do it right.

But it’s also not fair to look at single pictures in time, see a horse who isn’t 100% singing in rain, and declare that problems exist. Anyone who actually works out - not just going for 30 minute walks once a day - anyone who WORKS in their exercise, knows full well it’s sometimes uncomfortable, and I guarantee you make faces that reflect that. Imagine how weird and ridiculous it would be to take snapshots of those faces of 100 people doing healthy exercise, and declaring that they aren’t doing it right :roll_eyes:

One of these posts I have seen this week has been admittedly taking stock photos, putting them into a collage, and declaring how rampant pain is. Most (that I recall) appear to be upper level horses in hard work. STOCK PICS. Zero context around that split second in time. But people lap it up because they have no idea what it takes to properly evaluate things, even if it’s only enough to know “there’s not enough info to declare anything”

As with so many things, this is a pendulum that has swung too far to the other side, and it’s going to require those who are actually objective about it all, to help bring it back to the middle.

18 Likes
#12

I’m an aging athlete myself and I know I can start out a little stuff and gimpy and work out of it 100%. I also know that I feel better if I move around and stay fit. If you asked me if I’d like to spend the rest of my life in one luxurious house and yard doing nothing, I’d say no!! I’m still quite capable of a day of skiing at a decent level and I enjoy it. I just need to stretch regularly, eat my vegetables and occasionally take some advil.

I also think that horses buck under saddle for a myriad of reasons, only one of which is pain. Napping/ anxiety, fear. laziness (they’ve learned it gets them out of work they don’t like to do), exuberance, natural reaction to other horses acting up nearby and forgetting temporarily they have a rider, playful horse that’s not well trained yet etc etc.

Having said that I do think that AI and the silo-ing of breeding is creating genetic problems at an unprecedented rate. It used to be you used the stallion down the street and you knew his offspring good and bad and how they turned out. And most people were breeding for all around horses or at least horses who could work hard. Once people start breeding for the show ring it all goes to crap in any species and that’s what we are seeing with horses. Add in the way young horses are often raised these days with little room to roam and no access to grass and you get issues.

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#13

First I am not on Facebook so I do not read these threads.

I ride elderly lesson horses. Of course they hurt, they are elderly and just like me at 71 they have twinges that do not feel good. My solution has been the Far Infra-red Therapy gear. The horses sort of look at it sideways at first, sometimes I have minor difficulties putting it on, but once the horses learn that this gear can help with their pain, twinges, head-aches, neck aches, back aches and rump aches a sullen plodding lesson horse can transform, with proper training (which most of them lack) into a pretty good riding horse that is not in much pain. The previous resistant horses start cooperating when I put the gear on, and I get quiet complaints of “Hey dummy, you forgot something” when I do not put it on.

Once I give the horse proper training and work on developing the areas of their bodies that were never properly conditioned they improve. Yes, they still need the Far-Infra-red gear to move well, but the combination of proper physical conditioning, not blocking the movements of the horse, and the appropriate extra gear I can end up getting good rides on horses that were at the bottom of the pile as far as being a pleasant horse to ride.

Even elderly lesson horses with aches and pains can improve without going down really expensive and time consuming rabbit holes. Is it perfect? No. But often these horses I ride improve so much that the good riding horse that was hidden beneath all the bad training and pain comes out and I can have really nice rides on them.

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#14

I lost one of my trains of thought, so here is the rest of it!

As caretakers of horses, no matter what we’re doing with them, we HAVE TO learn to read facial expressions. It’s not enough to see that ears are pinned, or not. Nostrils can be slightly wrinkled. Eyes can be slightly tensed.

Is he just hanging out and looks unhappy? That’s a red flag.

Is he being asked to do something? If so, then is there NO DOUBT he should be able to do this because he’s done it for 5 years without a single misstep? If so, then why is he worried about it now?

Or is this a new thing you’re asking him to do? Is he worried because it’s just new and he’s trying to figure it out and it’s different and is working his stiffer side? Or is he resisting/pinning because he can’t do it? This is a recognition skill that is so much harder to learn, and usually has to be re-learned for each horse because each has their current state of ability for X thing he’s being asked to do.

In other words, you still have to look well beyond the physical expression to determine why it’s there, and the Why is not always a reason to stop asking

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#15

I do think modern breeding practices have created issues, but disagree that AI is the problem. Mutations happen, thankfully I think the % of meaningless mutations is well over 99%. But they still happen, and when they also happen in a popular stallion, can be perpetuated faster. But Impressive is an example how AI had nothing to do with the explosion of HYPP in the breed. JC TBs are an example of how AI had nothing to do with the issue of ECVM

The real problem is the practice of thinking man-made aesthetics is a good idea. Just because something is good, doesn’t mean a more extreme version is better, and reality is, that’s usually worse (as opposed to benign, let alone better). The pencil necks and stick-straight hind legs of a stereotypical modern halter QH is evidence of that. Yes, breeding for the show ring, and a judge’s opinion (often misguided) on what’s cool, is a huge problem. It’s especially bad when the breed in question has zero breeding standards, like the QH and many others. But that doesn’t mean breeds or “breeds” (ie the WB) can’t have that problem as well, and I think we’ve seen that/had those discussions especially over in the breeding forum of giant-moving horses who are actually hypermobile in an unhealthy way.

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#16

Horses do have pain. They also have emotions and moods and preferences and personalities and pasts. We can only do our best to manage our own pain and emotions and moods and preferences and personalities and pasts to mesh as best we can with our equine friends. Read everything, take what seems relevant and practical and leave the rest. Hug your pony.

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#17

I’ll echo the balance point. I think the increased focus on common ailments and pain behaviors has led to much more empathetic, mindful horse ownership. That said, I have also been the panicked owner down the 3AM Google rabbit hole trying to find solutions for things which may or may not have been problems at all.

“A horse can look lame on any leg if you stare at it long enough.” is something that’s resonated with me. I’ve been striving to find balance between being attentive and careful versus a nitpicky, anxiety-ridden helicopter horse parent.

I wish the basic solutions like adequate turnout, correct hoof angles, proper tack fit, and correct riding were getting the promotion alongside the pain behaviors. In my personal experience it’s easy to get trapped in the “so and so says everything is wrong but how do I fix it!” game.

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#18

While I definitely believe we are much better educated now regarding why horses behave the way they do and how we can help them, I also think it’s gone a bit overboard lately. Something came up on my FB feed that showed expressions of the horse and what they meant. Every. single. one. had something to do with stress. If I were to go by that infographic, I would have to assume that my horse is always stressed because there wasn’t a facial expression that wasn’t on there. Goodness sakes.

That said, I have seen first-hand the effects of pain and nutrition on my horse’s physical and mental well-being. And it’s so nice to be able to pinpoint things and actually help him instead of just assuming he’s “nuts” or “being naughty.”

Now, there are some horses who are wired to be a bit…more to handle…than others. And I believe those require a professional training touch and expert riding. But for the normally docile, agreeable horse that suddenly starts behaving badly out of the blue…I think that can almost always be traced to pain or nutrition (or both). And I think both of those things need to be thoroughly investigated right from the start when behavior changes.

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#19

I think it’s good to keep mind while users of CoTH are more often very well educated and experienced, that’s not the case on Facebook. It’s a good way for uneducated or experienced people to get schooled on what might be happening rather than them just looking for new tack on issues that are pain related. While it may be obvious to us what’s pain and what isn’t, that’s not the case for the majority of horse owners on the internet.

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#20

It does occur to me that we quite often get posts from thoughtful relatively experienced riders saying “do you think this is behavior or pain?” And every single time it turns out to be pain, sometimes kissing spine etc that’s not obvious without diagnosis.

We also have a healthy subset of posts from coaches, riders or bystanders who say “I can see this client/friend’s horse is lame but the owners can’t see it and won’t consult a vet.”

We also have many posts that reference the bad effects of saddle fit.

Yes, FB attracts a certain portion of non riders (who may have horses) and people that over empathize with oppressed horses. There are certainly people with novice horse skills being defeated by their horses and moving to wondering about pain. But they don’t necessarily consider that bad riding is a source of pain too.

Anyhow, IRL I’ve seen people push through “lazy feet” and end up with a career ending suspensory tear, or buy unbalanced cheap saddles and create a balker and bucker. Etc. I myself took too long to see that my mare needed hoof boots on gravel, and I fought with her in stupid ways about that thinking she was herd bound not footsore. We’ve all got those shameful moments when we look back and say I wish I’d seen what was happening sooner.

So I think the new emphasis on pain is good. Idiots and novices can make any good idea seem stupid of course.

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