What does this behavior look like to you?

[theresak]

I had a horse do this during a gas or entrapment colic - he went down in his stall and his eyes rolled back, tongue flopped out, and legs were stiff and jerking. It lasted about as long as yours did, I got him up and out of his stall, and he was trembling and agitated for a little bit and then fine.

I kind of think he had a vagal response either to the pain or he hit his vagus nerve as we went down (he had some issues with tightening the girth and going down the years before this).

My horse had a few more “gas” colic occurrences when the weather changed + I rode so I just stopped riding him those days. I also suspected he had some lipomas internally and they might have been twisting and moving.

[Bristol_Bay]

I emailed the videos to my vet today, so we’ll see what he thinks.

My horse has been just fine since then.

[Small_Change]

A post ictal period, that phase where they seem off, vacant, exhausted, or decreased level of consciousness after the seizure episode, is pretty typical. If your horse didn’t display any altered behaviour afterwards, I would wonder more about it being a spasm or something else besides a seizure.

Here’s a good article that describes the phases of a seizure in horses in good detail: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01652176.2012.744496

[Bristol_Bay]

Thank you so much for this.

Based on the information in the article, I don’t think it was a seizure.

“ The course of a typical generalised tonic–clonic seizure has three stages: the prodrome, the ictus and the post-ictal phases. The first stage is the prodrome . This period is characterised by an abnormal behaviour (Mayhew Citation1989). The most characteristic symptom is restlessness. Other horses may be more affectionate, hyperaesthetic or have a wide-eyed stare (Colahan et al. Citation1999; Rose and Hodgson Citation2000; Reed et al. Citation2004). The duration can be seconds or days. The second stage is the real seizure, the ictus . The muscles of the head, neck and face contract abnormally (Mayhew Citation1989). The lip retracts and the jaw clamps (Colahan et al. Citation1999; Rose and Hodgson Citation2000). The frequency of the muscle contractions increases and movement becomes more prominent. The contractions spread to the whole body, which make the horses movements unstable and uncoordinated. This worsens to the stage that eventually the horse drops down and loses its consciousness while the tonic muscle contractions start. Especially in the extensors hypercontraction appears. The tonic convulsions change into clonic contractions causing the whole body to shock violently. Foam can appear around the mouth as a result of hypersecretion of saliva. Also clonic convulsions of the chewing muscles, wide-eyed stare, urination and defecation may occur. Most horses sweat extensively. In the end the clonic contractions disappear and the muscles relax. The duration and intensity of the ictus differs among patients. The ictus can vary from seconds to hours (Rose and Hodgson Citation2000; De Lahunta Citation2001). In some cases the ictus evolves in a status epilepticus : because of the amount of energy that is lost during a seizure, the nervous system is unable to return to normal. This can lead to insufficient breathing caused by disturbed signal transduction in the brain. Some patients remain in the status epilepticus and die of hypoxia (De Lahunta Citation2001).

The last and third stage is the post-ictal phase . The post-ictal phase can last several hours or even days. With the start of the post-ictal phase the horse regains its consciousness, breathing is accelerated and the animal stands up. Most horses are disorientated, are uncoordinated, walk in circles, can experience insufficient visibility, walk into objects or explore the formerly familiar surroundings (Aleman et al. [Citation2006]”