Advice Please: My Placid TB has had a personality transplant

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Frankeey

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I have a 6 year old ex-racer whom we were gifted about 18 months ago as he just didn't have any desire to win a race and was quite happy staying with the pack.

We have been retraining him slowly as is muscles (neck especially) were very large and on the underside which is fairly common for racers. He has been an absolute gem to retrain taking everything in stride, he was working really nicely on the flat, did some low key dressage around march/april time and getting mid 60 scores, with loads of room for improvement.

He then decided to go through a faze of pulling his front shoes off (approx every 2 weeks) and behaving like his legs were falling off and getting foot sore inbetween farrier visits, as you can imagine this was very frustrating as I couldn't get any consistent work in. He now lives in over reach boots which seems to have done the trick and his shoes have stayed on.

Now you would think all would be great and I could carry on building from what we had already achieved, wrong. His personality has done a complete 180, he used to be so laid back he was practically falling over. Now I cant get his rugs on or off without him attacking my ankles and stomping his feet. When he's being ridden there he almost completely refuses to accept a contact and soften into the hand. All the work I had done on his canter transitions has disappeared we can't get into canter without a lot of persuasion and a lot of bucking from him and when we do it isn't a pleasant canter.

He's had his teeth done, which were sharp, this didn't particularly alter his behaviour though, so we had the physio out, and her opinion was that he had some soreness round his wither but there wasn't really anything "wrong", he had 3 visits to loosen him up and just did some gentle hacking on a loose rein in walk trot, but there is still no improvement.

The only time he seems to be happy is if we go for a gallop and I can push him to canter no problem, he has his ears pricked and you can tell he loves it, but ask hims to work in the school and its just a battle.

I'm starting to run out of ideas now, I have read a little about Thermography, but I don't know of anyone who has used this service so not sure its a worthwhile treatment.

Any other recommendations of what I could try would be appreciated as I am rapidly running out of ideas !
 
Get out of the school, hack and do your training whilst out and about. You don't need to be in an arena in order to school a horse and if it is not pain related, it could easily be that he is school sour.

You haven't mentioned saddle fit though and given that there was soreness at the wither, I would be getting the saddle checked asap as horse can change shape very quickly. No point treating the symptom if you don't cure the cause.

xx
 
Frankeey said:
He then decided to go through a faze of pulling his front shoes off (approx every 2 weeks) and behaving like his legs were falling off and getting foot sore inbetween farrier visits, as you can imagine this was very frustrating as I couldn't get any consistent work in. He now lives in over reach boots which seems to have done the trick and his shoes have stayed on.
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This could indicate serious hoof balance issues. Long toes mean that the breakover is delayed, so the horse cannot pick the front hooves up quick enough, so the hinds catch the fronts. Don't accept any 'TB's have crappy feet, what do you expect?' rubbish, TB's can have wonderful, well balanced hooves with good quality horn.
 
He's had his saddle changed, to one that fits much better and is a lot lighter, all I have done for the past 3 months is hack out he's just as unresponsive to aids. I appreciate that all horses have their own quirks and get bored of routines, but he is literally a different horse, to what he was 6 months ago. It's not just his ridden attitude that's the issue he has become difficult to deal with in the stable/tied up, he never used to try and bite would stand quietly whilst tacking up whereas now he snaps at your ankles and legs whilst taking his rugs on and off which he never used to do.

I can deal with tempremental horses and bored horses trying it on, I have 2 chestnut mares but you know that its just nappy and being evasive trying it on type of behaviour. Its difficult to explain the change in him, he has no desire to move forward, he does work but grudgingly and nowhere near to the standard that he was. I'm not convinced that there isn't an underlying issue, because the change in him has been so drastic, there are still snippets of his personality that are there, for example he will jump whatever you put in front of him, he never stops and that hasn't changed, but I can no longer get a nice collected bouncy canter to come in to a fence on, so thats telling me that there is something wrong, but at the same time I have professionals telling me that there isn't. Which is why I was interested in the thermography scans.
 
Faracat said:
This could indicate serious hoof balance issues. Long toes mean that the breakover is delayed, so the horse cannot pick the front hooves up quick enough, so the hinds catch the fronts. Don't accept any 'TB's have crappy feet, what do you expect?' rubbish, TB's can have wonderful, well balanced hooves with good quality horn.
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I agree with this and if his toes are long behind you risk getting suspensory issues in the hind legs that might give you exactly the sort of behaviour you describe take a long hard look at his feet, if his toes are long address it straight away and your horse will last much much longer.
 
Faracat said:
This could indicate serious hoof balance issues. Long toes mean that the breakover is delayed, so the horse cannot pick the front hooves up quick enough, so the hinds catch the fronts. Don't accept any 'TB's have crappy feet, what do you expect?' rubbish, TB's can have wonderful, well balanced hooves with good quality horn.
Click to expand...

He has really great feet, when he keeps his shoes on, they do break up easily as soon as the shoe comes off though which is why he kept having so much time off. He steps through very well and just clips his heels we have another tb that does the same and she has her over reach boots on all the time too and her shoes have stayed on also
 
Have you considered ulcers? The behaviour while tacking up and changing rugs etc is indicative of ulcers and they can also cause ridden problems too. I have seen a lot of people recommending the herb Slippery Elm as a cheap alternative to the expensive medications for ulcers...perhaps you could try him on that for a while and see if it improves his behaviour, if it does you may then want to think about having him scoped by your vet.
 
agree with advice above, esp ulcers.
Another point: could you train him at the same time as another horse, with them taking the lead. It might be (from what you've said regarding racing) that it could go back to his happy reassuring place. Anything to give you a break... you must be as miserable as him and that's no fun.
 
Have you thought perhaps ulcers? I've seen a few horses who have changed personality wise whilst the rider is both on them and off them; that he's nipping at you whilst putting rugs on could be a sign that he doesn't want his belly area to be touched too much? He's your horse so I'm sure you know best but you never know, it may be worth giving him a small feed of chaff before you ride to soak up stomach acid and maybe try some gastrogard to see if it makes a difference? They do say a large proportion of thoroughbreds/warmbloods have undiagnosed ulcers, even if their condition looks fine (shiny/good weight etc).
 
Frankeey said:
He has really great feet, when he keeps his shoes on, they do break up easily as soon as the shoe comes off though
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If they break up easily without shoes and he's sore, then he really doesn't have great feet. If I were you, I would take his shoes off and concentrate on growing a decent foot. Is he on a foot friendly diet?
 
Frankeey said:
He has really great feet, when he keeps his shoes on, they do break up easily as soon as the shoe comes off though which is why he kept having so much time off. He steps through very well and just clips his heels we have another tb that does the same and she has her over reach boots on all the time too and her shoes have stayed on also
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He can't have great hooves if they break up when he pulls the shoes off. Either the horn quality is poor (so they crumble) or there is extra length there (eg toes too long and/or flare) which breaks away. If he's clipping his fronts with the hinds regularly, then that really does indicate that the breakover is delayed. I suspect (as I can't know for sure without at least seeing decent photos of the horses in question) that they both have hoof balance issues. Needing OR boots all the time is a HUGE red flag that all is not well with the hooves.

GS is quite right too, hoof balance issues can indeed cause problems higher up.

ETA - you can of course have both poor horn and poor hoof balance on the same hoof.
 
Yeah I think ulcer treatment is going to my next port of call, we have tried him on coligone, but he refused to eat it, it has quite a strong minty smell though, I have read into ulcer treatments quite a lot but it is a minefield of different treatments, We have tried a number of different low starch feeds but he wouldn't eat those either. Having said that he doesn't have a poor appetite as we will eat any "regular" feed ie chaff and competiton mix's etc no bother.
I'll definitely try the chaff before work and see if that helps until we find something that he will eat. I've never heard of Slippery elm as mentioned above so will try and read up about that.
 
My next port of call, as other have said and as you're clearly considering, would be to have him scoped for ulcers.

If you do think this is a likely cause, remember that he needs to be on a high fibre, low sugar, low starch diet. The feeding regime that worked best for my ulcer prone TB was 3 scoops of Healthy Tummy with 2 scoops (measured when dry) of Fast Fibre.
 
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Incidentally with regards to ulcers, my father has ulcers and diverticiulitis which would be similar to hind gut acidosis in symptoms. Obviously he's able to explain the symptoms which helps. And the side effects of the pharmacy medication weren't suitable for him.
He's been using Deglycyrrhizinated Licorice (DGL) with some good results. (No problems rugging him up now!)
Obviously a vet is your first port of call but it's another option if you exhaust all others.
 
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