Fainilting Horse

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adamg874

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Long shot here but has anyone had any experience with your horse fainting? When tacked up and stood for a few moments mine is glazing over and almost fainting, literally his legs fall from under him, my vet is baffled so we are on the search for any first hand experience out there......
 
A horse I worked with would collapse if you saddled him in his box and get up as if nothing had happened when you took the saddle off. He was autopsied by his owner's husband who was a vet and was found to have arthritis in a hip joint some years later. Probably not what you wanted to hear, sorry. I have also known a couple of horses who fainted when they felt trapped, one was a pony who had rolled under a post and rail and had to be dragged clear and the other caught a hind leg on a wire hidden in longish grass. The second one actually stayed prone during the time it took me to run back to the house to fetch the wire cutters, then got up once I got the wire cut. Unbelievably lucky as it would have been horrific if he had struggled. I have had a cold backed Arab who would be wobbly for a few steps sometimes after being saddled and was normal again after a short walk in hand but never looked like fainting.
 
The tacking up might be the key thing here. There is a nerve (?) that can be affected by the pressure or tightening of the girth, and as I recall this can have various effects including sort of collapsing. I've heard of this several times and come across a couple of horses where this was an issue. A good horse vet ought to know, it's not such a rare thing.
 
[QUOTE="JackFrost, post: 15013170, member: 148728I've heard of this several times and come across a couple of horses where this was an issue. A good horse vet ought to know, it's not such a rare thing.[/QUOTE]
Yes I've heard of this too, even read of it on this forum.

See links n my reply below.
 
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Some horses can suffer from severe sleep deprivation and get narcolepsy-type symptoms. Might be worth asking your vet about but it's quite hard to diagnose and deal with.
 
DabDab said:
Some horses can suffer from severe sleep deprivation and get narcolepsy-type symptoms. Might be worth asking your vet about but it's quite hard to diagnose and deal with.
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This might be more likely given that the horse described in the OP's post was stood tacked up for a few minures before 'fainting' and the action of fainting didn't appear to be directly related to the girth being done up.

A friend installed a camera in her horses stable to find out the reason it wasn't lying down. It had knee arthritis.

Maybe you could install one in your stable to film it doing what it does to have more evidence for the vet to see as it may have nothing to do with being tacked up.

Watch some videos of narcoleptic horses on Youtube and see if yours resembles this.
 
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adamg874 said:
Long shot here but has anyone had any experience with your horse fainting? When tacked up and stood for a few moments mine is glazing over and almost fainting, literally his legs fall from under him, my vet is baffled so we are on the search for any first hand experience out there......
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The eyes glazing over sounds like he's falling asleep to me. I would suspect sleep deprivation due to a problem that is stopping him from lying down.

Your vet should have known about this and the nerve issue mentioned above. It might be time for a new vet.
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DabDab said:
Some horses can suffer from severe sleep deprivation and get narcolepsy-type symptoms. Might be worth asking your vet about but it's quite hard to diagnose and deal with.
Click to expand...

This happens to mine when I switch to overnight turnout. Two years in a row now she has gone down standing up and gone head first into the stable wall, injuring herself quite badly. It happens on about day 3 of overnight turnout.
 
My old horse went through a phase of something like this due to sleep deprivation. She never fell over, but she came close a couple times. The barn she was living in at the time was like a concrete bunker with no windows. When the YO shut the doors, which she did every night, sometimes as early as 7pm, it was like a cave. Not sliver of light to be had. You could not see your hand if you held it in front of your nose. I never knew for sure, but I suspected that being plunged into total blackness stopped my horse from feeling relaxed enough to sleep. When I moved yards, and she was in a stable that recieved plenty of natural light, the problem went away.
 
Sounds like sleep deprivation to me if it was due to the girth being done up and affecting the nerve the horse would collapse immediately, one of mine has nerve damage and won't tolerate the girth being done up tight straight off, his reaction can be as soon as you lift the girth to fasten it.
 
Probably not much help but our TB did it once when being shod, just keeled over whilst the farrier had hold of a back foot.

We got the vet out who did bloods which came back as "not quite right". Redid them after a while and they were fine and it never happened again. He was an odd lad though so nothing really surprised us.
 
JackFrost said:
The tacking up might be the key thing here. There is a nerve (?) that can be affected by the pressure or tightening of the girth, and as I recall this can have various effects including sort of collapsing. I've heard of this several times and come across a couple of horses where this was an issue. A good horse vet ought to know, it's not such a rare thing.
Click to expand...

This happened to my friend's horse when we were both teenagers. Scared the life out of us. She had just tacked up. I remember reading about a nerve that runs along the girth that can get pinched. She never done it again after that one time.

My boy done in while on box rest. I thought he was having a heart attack. I think it was related to the pain he was in though.

What about sleep apnea? Is he definitely lying down to sleep throughout the day?
 
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