saw that too. Then I watched a video of a greener horse dropping into a water and out. And I watched the ears/expression. The horse came in, ears perked, cute expression. That was the horse’s expression 95% of the time. Occasionally it would flick it’s ears back - like “what ARE you doing back there” at the rider who did struggle/come against the horse for brief instances of time. So they weren’t PERFECT. Post the picture for one of those instances-OMG!!!. most of the time it looked pretty darn good with a happy/learning horse and a rider who was reasonably competent and working hard riding a green horse.
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This rings true to me. I’d also add EMS/IR, PPID, and fecal water syndrome to the list. I think we are in a place where we have advancing diagnostics to detect some of these issues, but the research about treatment is lagging the diagnostics. And, what anecdotally “works” as treatment can seem to be so highly individualized its hard to know what to do without extensive trial and error, even with a good vet involved.
I have a mare who was diagnosed with PSSM1 about this time last year because I happened to read a (rather tense and shouty) FB exchange where her grandsire was named as a likely P1 carrier showing up in a lot of horses testing positive. As far as I know, she’s been asymptomatic with me, but I tested because of that pedigree connection and she came back n/P1, which I found very surprising. There’s actually a small local cluster of recent n/P1 horses that my vet sees for regular annual maintenance, as the stallion in my mare’s pedigree is relatively popular in our breed. So even with the vet involved and well educated owners all going through this, there’s very little research we can draw on and we certainly do find ourselves sharing anecdotes and ideas about management.
So now, I admit, it’s hard not to see the world through PSSM-colored glasses after going down the rabbit hole of reading about potential symptoms and behaviors. In the absence of stronger scientific evidence, we are unfortunately at times left on our own to muddle through. I try to keep myself in check when reading posts on SM, and not be that girl posting to ask about PSSM status after reading through a list of disease-related behaviors, but I sometimes can’t help myself 
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I think too there are different agendas in conflict.
I’m in the camp of “I want to ride, how can we make this work?” I’m good at ground work and enjoy it, my horse is super talented at tricks, but ultimately it’s riding that gives me joy.
But there is a significant subset of horse owners who do not love or care about riding that much. They may have some anxiety or may have their own pain or fitness or skill or confidence issues. These owners are often happy to back off riding for real or imagined causes and just do ground work.
And then there is a definite trend of actual anti riding sentiment, much more in non owners or horse fans. They don’t really have the depth of experience to evaluate how horses go or what they are saying.
And then there are practitioners who prey on the riding anxious owners, the phrase I invented in another thread was Munchausen’s Syndrome by Clinician (or hoof trimmer).
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I don’t do facebook or other groups but I do frequent a trainer I enjoying watching on utube.
He brought up this very subject while doing one of his training rides. He said while it could be a pain, tack or health issue and that certainly should be addressed, too many people on social media giving advice jump to pain , ulcers etc when it is actually a training issue.
Owners can spend 1000’s trying to find a physical issue that isn’t there and could be solved with addressing the hole in your training.
I tend to agree. Many times on here people advise lyme, epm ulcers etc… when the first thought in my mind is " that sounds like a training issue". I think we tend to advise from what we personally have gone through. Makes it tough on the one who asked for advice to know what to do.
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EMS/IR is definitely something we have perpetuated by breeding for “easy keepers”, and for a certain look, such as a very round Hunter look without having to put a lot of work into the horse to get a “nice” crest (think smaller ponies). That’s the genetic side of things, but the HOW of how we’re managing horses is a huge contributor to bring IR symptoms to light. Obese horses is now as bad a problem as obese humans. Over-fed, under-nourished, and WAY under-exercised.
But PPID doesn’t have a dietary component to trigger it, not that anyone has identified so far. There are way too many PPID horses in vastly different management scenarios, all over the world, with PPID - easy keepers, hard keepers, only on grass, only on hay, no concentrates, lots of concentrates, poorly balanced diet, very well balanced diets, hard work no work, you name it. PPID is really just a horse thing - mostly over 15, but as young as 5 that I know if.
FFWS is such an interesting beast that we just don’t know enough about yet. Fixes are so all over the place that it’s hard to say This or That is the cause, though stress does seem to be the most common denominator.
You’re so right on the things like PSSM1, with so many hush-hush about who’s got the genetics in the breeding world. If those SO and MOs REALLY cared about the horse as a species, they could do the right thing and cull those from the breeding pool.
Yes. For Pete’s sake, spend some money on good lessons with a good trainer for a bit. The $1000 you’re willing to plop down for a treatment course of GastroGard could get you a lot of lessons on how to actually ride well.
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Thank you!! I do know some very well-meaning owners that will do all the “restorative care” in the world for their much-loved horses, yet don’t recognize (since they rarely take lessons) that they regularly catch their horses in the mouth during upward transitions (for instance.) “Pain” can result from unaddressed physical issues and saddle fit – but poor riding also. I realize that this has been a traditional argument for horse misbehavior (beyond just “they just have a screw loose”) but I don’t see that mentioned on the many Facebook groups championing “connection” and “addressing pain.” Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater – sometimes it is the rider too (for under saddle issues at least.)
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My two cents: I think it’s good people are trying to be more aware of pain/discomfort issues. It is surprising to me even in this magazine how many experienced horse people seem oblivious to horse discomfort or unhappiness. Like the photos that get run, where you or I would say, don’t use that picture–the horse looks unhappy…they will run it anyway. But in the zeal to find a physical cause for the pain or discomfort, I do think there is a lot of looking past the most obvious answer, which many times is: the rider is not riding well. Out of balance, hanging on the mouth, leg moving, etc.
For example, they post still pics from our local hunter pace. Super nice group of well intentioned people. They probably give their horses better day to day care than the show barns, in terms of turn out, lifestyle, etc. But the riding can be so bad. If you click through the pictures, you may see 95% bad riding. If you love horses, it will make you cringe.
I am not saying this because the show riders are so much better–they have their own blind spots in terms of how hard they are pounding the horses, what a show series means for the horse’s day to day quality of life, etc. Bottom line is we all have to ask ourselves how happy/pleasant our horses are, but we have to take a holistic view that is not just veterinary focused, just riding focused, just stable management focused…we have to be open to the big picture, and not quick to shut down industry outsiders who don’t “know” as much as we do but can see the forest for the trees on whether our animal partner seems content or stressed.
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A few thoughts:
About a year ago I spent so much time obsessing over my young horse being a bit of an opinionated turd and in my gut I thought it was behavior but sucked all the joy out of riding wondering & going down pain related rabbit holes, etc. Turns out it was attitude & fitness related and consistency did him wonders.
On the flip side, I had a horse I loved very very much as a teen and I wish I knew then what I know now. I would have scoped him for ulcers and tested for EPM. He was always just a little NQR but so stoic.
I think a lot of other advice here is so, so good. We know a LOT more than we did even 10 years ago. I think the best advice is to follow your gut but keep your antennae tuned for pain. Largely, ignore the advice on the internet and go to your trusted trainer, vet, and farrier team. You know your horse better than anybody else. IME, the time & money you spend chasing zebras is better spent on lessons.
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Are you being sarcastic? I can’t tell from your comment.
FYI he never once said to send the horse to a trainer( himself included) or to not investigate any health issue. He also agrees that horses get ulcers and has his clients treat for it if it is needed.
You do have to admit that many look to $ 1000 of gastroguard as the wonder cure all and in many cases it isn’t – This forum is proof of that.
No, it wasn’t sarcastic, it was pointing to exactly what he was talking about. Stop jumping right to ulcers/pain/tack fit/health issues and start with some lessons. It wasn’t meant to say ignore those things, but I would bet sooooo many issues could be greatly improved, if not resolve, by just riding better
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As a coach with 55 years of experience I can pretty definitively say that riding better, and handling better, is a large part of the picture. I see the phenomenon in action all the time, and I think the problem with riding and handling better has partly to do with access to quality instruction, but also with how hard it is to learn to ride well, and to learn to pay attention to the horses ALL the time when handling and riding them. Focus is really hard, and then there’s physical difficulties attached to just doing the job well - fitness, willingness to work through discomfort, etc. There’s no question for me that physical health is important for the horse, as is mental health, but the same is true for riders and handlers, so it people would commit to the gym, and make concrete decisions about improving themselves they’d see a concomitant improvement in their horses’ wellbeing.
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At a previous barn, there was a younger teen with her first horse. Mom and teen knew next to nothing useful and “trainer” was very old school and largely ineffective. Horse came from an auction, started off ok and then turned very nasty within a few months. They were advised the vet route and the saddle fit route first and foremost. Horse didn’t have KS, no testosterone issues, no Lyme and amazingly no ulcers (unless it was hind gut).
What those of who saw the kid saw, was a teen that got on, didn’t warm the horse up at all, would gallop around for an hour THUMPING on his back. The horse was also a hair past green broke and the kid would get pissed at the horse when it didn’t do what she wanted and would do the cranking the mouth to back up and things of that nature.
At the time I left, the horse went to bite at the kid so hard in the stall it lost its balance and fell down. It seems more socially acceptable to recommend everything OTHER than working on the rider themselves.
This was also a family that had NO idea financially what they were biting off either. Mom started cleaning stalls at the barn to offset some of the vet costs they had in 3-4 months.
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that’s so sad, the horse suffers so much at the hands of the willfully ignorant 
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The flip side of this is you can spend 1000s on training trying to “fix” a pain issue while the horse gets either louder and angrier about being pushed while in pain until it eventually explodes and someone gets very seriously injured.
Or novice owner gets sucked into “it’s a training thing, you have holes in your basics” and follows some gurus program to do nothing but groundwork and rope shaking for years at a time. Now we have a NQR horse that’s also lacking basic skills.
Like many others have said, it’s about balance and being able to evaluate the situation in front of you. Unfortunately that can be hard to do for those who are inexperienced and don’t know what they don’t know.
FB groups can quickly become an echo chamber. Be critical about the type of content they contain, take what’s useful or interesting but otherwise keep scrolling!
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Too true. I think too many horse owners lack the basic skills to recognize pain or training issues until it has them going down the black hole money pit.
Meaning they don’t see it at first or are not capable of picking up the subtle cues there is an issue, until something is unmistakably wrong but by then it can be hard to know what it may be.
That is good. I thought he made perfect sense 
The irony is how often people get this wrong.
The goal oriented rider who pushes horse into full blown career ending chronic stress injury thinking it’s “lazy” when it’s a suspensory tear brewing up or hock arthritis or bad riding biomechanically breaking down the horse.
And the nervous novice owner who interprets all unwanted behavior as pain and finds backing off riding to be the easiest and safest move. Then goes down a rabbit hole of ineffective holistic cures with an increasingly bored and pent up horse.
I watch people get it wrong on both ends of the spectrum. I’m in a large self board riding club which is a wonderful microcosm of the directions DIY horse owners at all levels of experience sort things out for themselves.
Another category of course is people who ride their horses into chronic strain injuries but are free with the hock injections etc from a relatively young age. They see there is pain, but don’t moderate the workload or change the riding style.
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@Ridethroughit23 I love this thread. I’m not in those groups you mention on FB but I think we all agree that brief periods of an ear pin, tension, balking, spooking is normal. They are flight animals. But I doubt a “moment” here and there is what we’re talking about, right?
Leading vets like Sue Dyson showing poor behavior with pro and amateur riders but still showing something is wrong. Sharon May-Davis with her many years of research documenting the problems with C6 C7 - and getting death threats. You know you’re onto something when you’re getting death threats. 
The Eq-Soma Osteology and Anatomy Learning Center women who are composting and dissecting horses donated to them that had a history of poor behavior and finding horrific physical problems.
And yes, we’ve all seen riders who are the issue. Pulling on the reins, slamming on their back, saddles/bridles/bits that pinch. We see poor posture and movement. OMG imagine if every horse could get started correctly, handled and ridden well, lots of turnout and socializing, properly fed, and feet in balance.
I bought a mare 30 years ago who was GRUMPY. Didn’t want grooming, nipped for many reasons, irritated about any leg pressure, and lots of grumpy faces. Some people around me and even vets said “She’s just a mare, just a witch, unwilling, stubborn, just her personality.”
I’d grown up with happy horses and my gut knew better. Finally found a vet who asked if I’d had a dental specialist in her mouth. The local equine vet had done a thorough exam, complete with a speculum and said her teeth were fine. Well, hauled her to Dr. Tom Allen, DVM (RIP Tom) and he found a fractured molar. It had calcified under the gum line - she’d had it for years. We got that tooth out and guess who became the sweetest and most willing horse? Yep. She would do anything for me. I also found a Jack Meagher trained bodyworker and after that tooth was out he was working on her and she stretched down like a dog or cat does in the morning. Right during the bodywork. She had years of mental and physical tension to release. And she did.
I got a mustang a year ago and right from the start there were all kinds of odd behaviors. Didn’t want to be groomed. Walking away if I tried. Nipping at me if I insisted. Even just the flat of my hand stroking him was aversive. I’m still only using the very softest of soft Haas brush and still getting a no. And he bucked lots more often than normal. He also let me know he wasn’t happy if I got on him. In the back of my head was my mare 30 years ago. Something is wrong.
First found a bad tooth and extracted. Then a FEC of 2100, and now a recent PSSM2 dx, and the latest…needs a root canal on an incissor. He started shaking his head and holding his mouth open. Dammit. But, maybe this is IT. Finally. Because as you know trying to figure this stuff out is stressful. It’s exhausting at times.
Now, imagine if from the beginning I just said said he was lazy, stubborn and unwilling and sent him to someone to get a bunch of wet saddle blankets? You know, work it out of him. What if I hadn’t doggedly pursued WHY and WHAT could be causing them?
I still have a good chance at a horse that will give me his heart because I’ll figure this out and get him feeling good. And then…magic carpet rides. That’s my vision. He’s already demonstrated great willingness in many ways. Lunging beautifully with a saddle, noisy bags hanging on the side, a good feel in hand, and runs up to me in the pasture. VERY willing where he is able. I believe he knows I’m trying.
I wrap up with an awesome Ted Talk by Carl Safina:
He wrote the book, Beyond Words, and the middle of page 27 is haunting:
"Even the most informed, logical inferences about animals motivations, emotions, and awareness could wreck your professional prospects. The mere question could. In the 1970’s, a book humbly titled The Question of Animal Awareness caused such an uproar that many behaviorists relegated its author, Donald Griffin, to the fringes of the profession. Griffin was no upstart; he’d been famous for decades as the luminary who’d solved the problem of how bats use sonar to navigate. So he was a bit of a genius, actually. But raising the Question was simply too much for many orthodox colleagues.
Suggesting that other animals can feel anything wasn’t just a conversation stopper; it was a career killer. In 1992, readers of the exclusive journal Science were warned by one academic writer that studying animal perceptions “isn’t a project I’d recommend to anyone without tenure. It was no joke. Seriously.”
That’s our history. It’s time for change and it’s happening.
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Yep - this! I think that a big part of being a horseman is knowing when you need training and when you need a vet
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The more I learn the more I see that happy healthy horses really do not protest much and that work is easy.
The closest analogy I can think of are the couple I know that go on and on with how marriage is hard and it takes work and it takes all of these things. It really doesn’t when you have two healthy communicators with clear expectations who have worked through their own garbage first. In reality, a lot of us enter relationships without those things in place and thus the hard work is required.
It’s kind of awe inspiring to watch how quickly a balanced healthy horse in the right equipment with the right rider can progress. It’s darn near effortless. Like imperfect marriages, many of us take on horses with imbalances if not active pain, muddle through tack fitting, and work to offset spending most of our days in an office chair. It’s work because we are having to overcome so much. Why make it harder by not believing and pursuing pain first is a pretty benign mindset.
In my own life, quite nearly every horse I’ve known with an “attitude”, behavior issues, chronic cranky face, or a bad work ethic ultimately had noticeable pain issues. I’ve lost count of the “spooky thoroughbreds” with horrible ulcers, “rotten pony” with an awfully fitting saddle, “lazy horse” obediently going around on a partially torn suspensory. I retired my own at 11 for reasons that would make someone with the attitude of “we all have a little pain” roll their eyes. I’m now struggling to keep her going just in retirement. If still under saddle I’m sure behaviors would have escalated and been labeled as “evil mare” by many.
I think that the vast majority of horses live with a higher level of physical pain and body discomfort than a human would wish upon themselves. They don’t spend all day sitting at a desk pining to ride and taking the hit of knowing they’ll need an Epsom salt soak for the bum ankle. They are happy just living in fields and getting some attention. We ask them to work and historically have been ignorant and/or uncaring towards their physical needs.
I am thrilled by the broader shift. Worst case someone spends time and resources pursuing physical before behavioral or training. It’s really hard for me to see that as a loss or detrimental thing. Off line IRL many trainers much less owners still don’t know about the basics and push horses with obvious issues.
I remember a time before ulcers and KS were spoken about and a lot more horses suffered as a result. A really fantastic lameness vet recently told me “if we knew all the ways that they silently suffer, I don’t know if we would think it was humane to ride them at all”. That’s a specialist with personal performance animals. When we know better we do better. The bare minimum is believing that an animal that cannot speak may be in pain before we assume they are ear pinning or bucking because it’s fun.
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If work is always easy, then the horse isn’t ever being pushed outside his comfort zone. Fitness and learning only progress when the comfort zone is pushed a bit. Working in ways to strengthen a weak side, gain more suppleness on a stiffer side, is uncomfortable, not easy, and while some horses have a “whatever, I’m game!” attitude, others are a little more “this is weird, can I challenge you a little to not ask me to do it?” even with the best riders.
But getting to that “balanced healthy horse” means doing uncomfortable things, even if it’s just for a few seconds at a time.
The right person starting a horse from a very young age, before even 3 years of “just being a horse” has had time to widen the gap in imbalances between 3 sides, will always have a happier healthier horse all along the way, than the best handler taking a 3yo who has been hanging out in a field all his life with a worsening shoulder imbalance due to unattended to high-low feed. That latter horse has a lot harder work ahead of him to reduce those imbalances, and none of it will be comfortable.
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