behavioural issues. When to call it a day?

[STRIKER]

if he was in our yard the boss would say put it back in to long reins and basically rebreak it and just take your time, and it must do everything in long reins that it would be expected to do with a rider on its back, except jump ofcourse. failing that try another schooling yard and if no improvement, personally i wouldnt pass on. so that leaves companion or pts for the horses sake.

Some horses in anothers hands can be like putty, its like people some get on and some dont, so worth a try with another schooling yard and just see. long rein in full tack.

 

[OWLIE185]

I would suggest that you have a highly bread and intelligent horse which is suffering from a pain issue and/or a brain tumour.
My advice would be to take your horse to a specialist equine hospital such as Rossdale's in Newmarket and get them to thoroughly check your horse out. Hopefully they will be able to determine what the issue is.

 

[cptrayes]

You need to carefully investigate via x ray AND nerve blocks and then riding to see if the KS is actually the real problem as many sound and happy horses shows KS on x ray but no issues arising from them.g

But a nerve block when riding is no good for an issue which shows only intermittently. For that you need the injections into the spinal process gaps, and to do those you need x rays. And no, it cannot definitively rule them in to do an x Ray, but it can definitively rule them out, and it beats me why people with a horse showing potential pain do not do them and set their own minds at rest about them, because until they do, they are always a possibility.

my vet actually said the same re SI/PTSD which is why its also important to nerve block these areas as part of the general work up to try and see if its a knock on issue, a real KS issue or not physical at all.

Again, a short acting nerve block will tell you nothing if the problem is intermittent. And a Bute trial will not, I am told, be effective for SI pain.

 

[cptrayes]

Ref better riders stopping horses from misbehaving, I completely agree and have made a lot of money from that in the past.

But I also think it is possible for a mentally and physically dominant rider to encourage a horse to continue to work through pain, particularly of the kind that causes bilateral discomfort. It is astonishing, for example, how many 'quirky' horses with bad feet improve in behaviour when their shoes are removed and the feet recover.

 

[Wagtail]

Talk to melanie watson at instinctive horse training.

My experiance is very very similar. I bought a 3yr old young horse who turned out to be a nightmare to break, several very experianced proffesionals (including NH) told me to shoot him he was dangerous. He bolted and I dont mean just running, I mean bolting blind, head first into walls with no regards for his own safety let alone his riders.
Melanie took the time to get into his brain, understand his history,
In 9 weeks she took him from a shooting case to a horse that happily hacked out but unfortunatly still had bolting issues in the school not every time and it was totaly unpredicatable for when he would do it
she told me to get him investigated as there was something wrong with him to cause this (he was lovely on the ground).
My vets did a full lameness work up and the horse could not be made to show as lame (normaly a vet can lame a horse by twisting a leg in a certain way), we xrayed his hocks, back and his neck and found nothing. the vets said nothing wrong, melanie insisted so I insisted on a bone scan which lit up like a christmas tree with a fractured pelvis!
Vet said the horse should have been on 3 legs and in agony not perfectly sound and getting 70% in dressage on a good day. but it did explain his behavior, when I asked him to take his weight back onto his hocks sometimes his pelvis got too painful for him to cope with (and boy did he cope with it at other times).
6 months box rest and a slow bringing back into work and he turned into a superstar
Melaine will tell you straight if you need to PTS she will not waste your money.

This is mine working with a fractured pelvis:

and without

That's just amazing!

 

[TarrSteps]

Talk to melanie watson at instinctive horse training.

My experiance is very very similar. I bought a 3yr old young horse who turned out to be a nightmare to break, several very experianced proffesionals (including NH) told me to shoot him he was dangerous. He bolted and I dont mean just running, I mean bolting blind, head first into walls with no regards for his own safety let alone his riders.
Melanie took the time to get into his brain, understand his history,
In 9 weeks she took him from a shooting case to a horse that happily hacked out but unfortunatly still had bolting issues in the school not every time and it was totaly unpredicatable for when he would do it
she told me to get him investigated as there was something wrong with him to cause this (he was lovely on the ground).
My vets did a full lameness work up and the horse could not be made to show as lame (normaly a vet can lame a horse by twisting a leg in a certain way), we xrayed his hocks, back and his neck and found nothing. the vets said nothing wrong, melanie insisted so I insisted on a bone scan which lit up like a christmas tree with a fractured pelvis!
Vet said the horse should have been on 3 legs and in agony not perfectly sound and getting 70% in dressage on a good day. but it did explain his behavior, when I asked him to take his weight back onto his hocks sometimes his pelvis got too painful for him to cope with (and boy did he cope with it at other times).
6 months box rest and a slow bringing back into work and he turned into a superstar
Melaine will tell you straight if you need to PTS she will not waste your money.

This is mine working with a fractured pelvis:

and without

Glad you had such good support and a successful outcome.

As I said up thread, any trainer who does a lot of remedial work will have stories like this. Just because it goes/improves, doesn't mean it doesn't hurt. You have to be open to the information though and most trainers will also tell you stories about the ones where owners made different choices.

Re blocks as diagnostic aids. I had a very insightful experience years ago. The short version - lovely, athletic horses but very tricky and inconsistent. After much pressing owners remembered an incident that might have resulted in a neck injury and FINALLY agreed to a more thorough work up, although, in their defence, two vets had seen the horse at home and felt it was fine. Vet at the clinic wasn't that convinced - horse passed neuro tests, moved well etc - but agreed to x-ray neck, mostly because I wouldn't let it go. Neck was a mess. Clear evidence of partially healed fractures. Vet was still not convinced it was affecting the horse that much but agreed to block the neck out while the horse was still sedated and, even thinking about it now I could cry. The change in the horse's posture, the clear relief as the block set it, was amazing and horrifying to watch. Even the vet was pretty affected. So they horse looked 'great' (when he should have looked sensational) but was in agony.

Someone who watches and sits on a huge variety of horses, especially a mix of young and 'problem' ones, so they have a great deal of experience with 'before' and 'after' and they've made a real study of it, can bring a lot to a conversation like this. They are tuned to see patterns and progression, or lack thereof. It's not about just having general experience with horses, it's about a very specific education.

 

[Goldenstar]

I bred a lovely horse who went 'wrong ' while away .
The story is a long and sad one we tried all sorts of diagnostics and found various minor issues .
In the end was I miserable the horse was not right and becoming worse I had thrown everything and mean everything at it it was over two years of hope and heartache in the end I could go on no more and PTS .
I will never know what it was I still can't think about it without upset today .
But sometimes you just can't make it right .
Try a long period of turnout if you have not .
Try working out of the field if you have not .
Try leading from another horse and working twice a day some horses need a serious amount of work .
Look at diet eliminate things try different things .
In fact there's hundreds of things to try but finally I know the feeling you are describing I am sorry you are there.