Horse acting really unsusual..

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WackyWelsh

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The last few days my (usually very placid) gelding has been acting really jumpy and anxious. He’s perfectly fine in the field and to catch and lead but when he’s at the stables and tied up he starts acting odd. Just fidgeting and looking everything which is really unlike him. We had the farrier today and he wouldn’t stand still, was snorting and shaking (but then it was raining and he was soaked.)
Has anybody else’s horses been acting weird with this sudden change of weather from hot to cold? That’s all I can put it down to...unless he’s suddenly missing his new field friends but he’s never been like that before.
 
I went through a stage like this with my mare last winter. She would suddenly start bucking and careering around her stable and kept looking at the back wall although there was nothing obvious. It happened about two or three times and within minutes and on one occasion seconds, she would be back to normal. Then one night she threatened to go over the door such was her distress, she nearly knocked me over trying to get out of the stable and I was genuinely frightened of her, it was like she was in a blind panic and came running to me and I had to defend myself from being mown down with a shavings fork and a growl - I'd never seen her remotely like this before and it really upset me. I tried her in another stable and the indoor school and she was a little better but when I went to lead her back to the stable it took three of us and a whip to get her in and she was very frightened - it was clear she couldn't stay in there. I took her out and called the vet as there was no way I was prepared to leave her there the night. She'd had the stable a few months by this point so was well used to it.

My friend got her back in again for when the vet came out so she could see what she was like and when she arrived she was no better. The vet thought she looked from her back end like she had colic but her front end was fine, i.e bright and alert. Vital signs great but heart rate through the roof. Vet injected her with a sedative but she was still very disturbed, snatching at hay but at the same time box walking over to us for reassurance, kept looking behind her as if she had colic but vet said she most definitely hadn't. She said the next day she would be fine and wouldn't remember a thing, but I was incredibly skeptical. Left her pulling hay out of her hay bar but still box walking a little bit before I went home to bed. Went up earlier the next morning before work and her rug was covered in shavings so she'd obviously laid down to sleep. Went up after work and she was stood with her back to the wall and seemed about 95% better.

I bought an oral sedative - sedalin off the vet to give her if such a thing happened again. It was most odd. Couldn't find anything, no wasp/bee activity, nothing to suggest foxes in the barn behind her, or cats/dogs/rabbits. No electric shock cause if wiring from lighting was faulty as had it checked out. Nothing moved or disturbed. The only clue - slight rat activity but at her age (early 20's) would expect her to have seen rats before so I doubt it was this. The night it happened a tractor put a load of hay at the back of the barn and because it was dark had its lights shining into the barn but I swore blind she'd not been in the stable then but outside on the walker. That was the only difference. Whenever the tractor came after that I would take her out and tie her up outside just in case, but I really don't think that was the reason.

Only once has she reverted back to this behavior and it was one evening after work and I caught her having a little bronc around the stable and again peering at back wall but that was it.

I never did get to the bottom of it. But the vet was right, that they live in the moment, and touch wood she's been fine since. I do hope you find a cause WW as it is very worrying, I was thinking everything from twisted gut to brain tumour and everything in between!
 
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hopscotch bandit said:
I went through a stage like this with my mare last winter. She would suddenly start bucking and careering around her stable and kept looking at the back wall although there was nothing obvious. It happened about two or three times and within minutes and on one occasion seconds, she would be back to normal. Then one night she threatened to go over the door such was her distress, she nearly knocked me over trying to get out of the stable and I was genuinely frightened of her, it was like she was in a blind panic and came running to me and I had to defend myself from being mown down with a shavings fork and a growl - I'd never seen her remotely like this before and it really upset me. I tried her in another stable and the indoor school and she was a little better but when I went to lead her back to the stable it took three of us and a whip to get her in and she was very frightened - it was clear she couldn't stay in there. I took her out and called the vet as there was no way I was prepared to leave her there the night. She'd had the stable a few months by this point so was well used to it.

My friend got her back in again for when the vet came out so she could see what she was like and when she arrived she was no better. The vet thought she looked from her back end like she had colic but her front end was fine, i.e bright and alert. Vital signs great but heart rate through the roof. Vet injected her with a sedative but she was still very disturbed, snatching at hay but at the same time box walking over to us for reassurance, kept looking behind her as if she had colic but vet said she most definitely hadn't. She said the next day she would be fine and wouldn't remember a thing, but I was incredibly skeptical. Left her pulling hay out of her hay bar but still box walking a little bit before I went home to bed. Went up earlier the next morning before work and her rug was covered in shavings so she'd obviously laid down to sleep. Went up after work and she was stood with her back to the wall and seemed about 95% better.

I bought an oral sedative - sedalin off the vet to give her if such a thing happened again. It was most odd. Couldn't find anything, no wasp/bee activity, nothing to suggest foxes in the barn behind her, or cats/dogs/rabbits. No electric shock cause if wiring from lighting was faulty as had it checked out. Nothing moved or disturbed. The only clue - slight rat activity but at her age (early 20's) would expect her to have seen rats before so I doubt it was this. The night it happened a tractor put a load of hay at the back of the barn and because it was dark had its lights shining into the barn but I swore blind she'd not been in the stable then but outside on the walker. That was the only difference. Whenever the tractor came after that I would take her out and tie her up outside just in case, but I really don't think that was the reason.

Only once has she reverted back to this behavior and it was one evening after work and I caught her having a little bronc around the stable and again peering at back wall but that was it.

I never did get to the bottom of it. But the vet was right, that they live in the moment, and touch wood she's been fine since. I do hope you find a cause WW as it is very worrying, I was thinking everything from twisted gut to brain tumour and everything in between!
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I’m glad you got it sorted! The only things that have changed are his field and his feed but those were both over a month ago and it’s only the last few days he’s been acting odd. He was fidgety on his stable block but when I took him out to the main yard was when he was really bad, he was looking at the fields and would not listen to anything I said. Tried to walk him round to calm him down but he had his head up, charging forward and still looking at the fields. Just very unlike him..
 
I had something similar once with one of mine years ago, it was a complete change to his normal behaviour, usually a very laid back cobby type. He was box walking, loose droppings and just wouldn't settle for a couple of days. I couldn't work out what it was and in the end called my vet thinking he was maybe feeling pain of some sort. Vet agreed very strange for him, he knew the horse quite well. Couldn't find anything wrong so just gave me some probiotic to settle his tum. I found out a few days later that some new horses had been introduced into a field quite a distance from us (maybe just under a mile, he couldn't see them from his paddock) and I think he must have heard them and got spooked by them. It took him a good week or so to settle and in the 11 years I owned him he never did anything similar again.
 
WackyWelsh said:
I’m glad you got it sorted! The only things that have changed are his field and his feed but those were both over a month ago and it’s only the last few days he’s been acting odd. He was fidgety on his stable block but when I took him out to the main yard was when he was really bad, he was looking at the fields and would not listen to anything I said. Tried to walk him round to calm him down but he had his head up, charging forward and still looking at the fields. Just very unlike him..
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If he is looking in the direction of the fields there must be something in his field or in the direction of his field that is spooking him, maybe a dog or kids snooping around (as its the holidays), or a wildcat (there have been a few sightings and photos of a black panther by us, as they were released into the countryside by idiots, when the 1976 Wild Animal Act came into being). Or maybe a noise that he is not familiar with like the weird noise the baler makes when bailing for example, or other farm machinery. Gosh I hope you get it sorted soon. Maybe it might be worth walking over the fields and see if you can see or hear anything amiss (from a horses perspective not a human one). The vet certainly didn't think there was any veterinary intervention in the case of my horse needed although admitted at the time that she had never seen anything like it before. Seems to be happy enough in stable now, in fact charges in when the staff get her in, in the morning and quite content to lie down so it's very odd. If only they could talk eh?
 
I had this with Jay Man, a few times. At first it was a total mystery, he would suddenly be terrified and be snorting into the distance, always the same direction. I would stand outside, and could not her a thing. He would be the same inside or outside, breathing, high pulse that I could actually hear from outside the stable, muscles like rock. He would literally tremble, but at the same time rock with the high heart rate.

I mentioned it to someone else in the village, and found that a child with a mental disability was visiting in a house in the direction where he was staring. Apparently the child would have meltdowns and scream in a fearsome manner.


It did help knowing what the cause was, although there was nothing I could do, obviously, about the frightening noise. One time he was bad enough that I took him out for the day on the box as I thought he might colic.


I thought the horse was being rather dramatic, until one morning they had taken the child out in their car and had a meltdown outside our house. It honestly sounded like someone was being murdered, if I had not known what it was I would have dialled 999. I can totally understand why the horse was beside himself, and I have the utmost respect for the family that were coping with a difficult situation.


So, one of those things we had to get on with, I could not think of a PC way to train the horse to be less scared. I do a lot of training with dogs, cars, bikes, lorries, umbrellas etc by carefully introducing the thing they are scared of, but the screaming, that one was beyond me.


I am glad I found out what it was though, it helped me understand that the horse was genuinely frightened.
 
Mine acted like this after a dog and come into this field and chased him. He’s still wary of that particular field which has a lot of bushes and trees and this was a few years ago.
 
Just something else to add into the mix for people whose horses behave oddly in stables - make sure your electrics are OK. Horses are much quicker at spotting dodgy electrical currents than we are..... (& used to give me advance warning it was about to short out!!)
 
A lady was telling me about her horse he was thought to have colic ,the vet also thought colic as he was rolling and looking round at his sides ,the vet did say his gut did not sound to bad ,the horse was later taken in to hospital as he seemed to be getting worse ,the next morning the lady was told the vets had seen no improvement over night ,still thrashing round the box and rolling ,a young trainee vet said could this be the same as a horse that had been treated a couple of weeks earlier ,the horse did have the same thing ,he had maggots in his sheath .
 
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