Not getting a diagnosis for my horse and your opinion on Horse Whisperers

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RedVendetta

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Not sure if I should have posted this in Veterinary but thought I should put it in here due to the horse whisperer question.

I really need some positive help with my horse.

There is definitely something not quite right with him even though he has been winning all season and on his most recent outing (nearly 3 weeks ago) he won an open working hunter class.

Symptoms -
Sometimes when I tack him up he panics a little and arches his back like a cat - absolutely no issues with tacking up other than this and he is fine when I get on him, no issues with mounting. he has only done this since April when he was tied up to the trailer and his saddle slipped forward (as he was nodding his head to try and get some grass and the girth was really loose) and when he put his head up again the saddle was on his withers, which, coupled with him being a sensitive horse, probably hurt him somewhat as he panicked and bucked like mad until my husband managed to calm him down and get the saddle off - I was walking a sj course. He then went onto win the class, and he was not lame or in pain.

Since April he has been winning various SJ and WH classes at local riding clubs, but although I can't quite put my finger on it, he just doesn't feel right, and seems to drop his shoulder slightly when ridden, very lazy to ride and still occasionally panicked a little when tacked up, but still jumping, no refusals.

So what have I done about it?

I got the saddler out - saddle (which was made specifically for him 2 1/2 years ago) was reflocked and I have it checked very regularly, so ruled that out.

Then I got the physio out - she couldnt get near him, he wanted to kick and eat her (he is very grumpy anyway with vets and anyone who wants to put their hands on him, but I have never seen him like this before) so she referred him to a vets.

Went to horse hospital for an overnight stay where they put him in stocks and vet said 'he hurts all over, from ears to tail' and said he couldnt lunge on a circle, it was more like a hexagon, and put him on very expensive anti inflammatories and pain killers. However physio thinks the pain is in his withers/neck/shoulder area. Grrrr so which is it?

So since the pain killers he has improved considerably - I lunged him yesterday and the day before and he has even improved dramatically in that time, but then he is on painkillers! Last night a very experienced instructor and another friend (whose opinion I very much trust) said he looks good, just a bit pottery in front and tight through his neck - not unusual for my horse, who has tied up in the past and is quite stiff due to old injuries anyway (he's 13), and they suggested maybe its a trapped nerve.

I keep torturing myself that he will have to be retired or worse still he has Kissing spines or something incurable.

So, physio is coming back on Thursday - what if she can't get near him again? Do I get another physio out (who I know is not scared of him) or do I refer him to the vets and get a load of X Rays done?

I just feel like no one has a clue whats going on, least of all me, and maybe it's time to get a horse whisperer in or someone who does holistic work, so we can maybe work out where the pain is and how bad it is. It could be nothing, but on the other hand it could end up with my horse never being ridden again.

I'm really sorry this is such a long post but its the first time Ive dared to post about this recent problem as I am so worried that someone will say he's got something awful

Please can you guys give me comments on what might be wrong with him and where to go next? And what do you think of horse whisperers?
 
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To my mind you haven't exhausted the vet route yet and this would be my first port of call.
I presume you are insured? I'd give your insurance a call and ask for him to be worked up at a decent equine referal practise.
 
horses have nerves under there armpits (in that kind of area) it would be possible that he has trapped one in the original incident,

Im not a physio/osteo but next time you tack him up give his front legs a real good streatch out and see if that helps him atall. Personally id go with an osteo to look him, explane his issues and maybe pay for double her time so she can stand and have a coffee and let him get used to a bit before goin gup to him and plonking her hands on him.
 
I agree, i think the vet needs to do more to suss this - xrays may be the only way forward, especially if kissing spine has been mentioned. I do hope you're insured, ring your vet for a quote, but a friend mentioned £500 to have the back done. Don't orry about grumpiness - they are sedated for the xrays I think.

Keep us posted ! sm x
 
It's difficult when the vets can't diagnose anything but clearly, if the painkillers have improved how he goes then he is certainly in pain. Was he absolutely fine before this saddle incident?

I would still query if the saddle does fit to be honest - sounds like it could be pinching his front hence the pottering gait and the soreness as he will be tensing. There are many instance of specially fitted saddles that actually do not fit!

Also I would try another physio - a different technique. Ours (McTimoney) is brilliant. I do not know what type of physio you are using but it may be a different technique needs to be used.

My horse has been similar before but, like yours is a genuine soul so just tends to get on with it even though you know something's not right. I had one physio for mine as couldn't get a quick enough appointmemt with the other (i think that was the reason anyway). My horse was obviously in pain as when she worked over him he too nearly bit her as he reacted so violently to something she did. He NEVER bites either and I think he shocked himself! She did help him a bit but it as more of a massage treatment and didn't get to the rout of the problem (although he was evidently a bit more comfortbale) so I had my usual guy in and the change was remarkable. Horse was back to his usual self.

Oh, my horse had actually done the injury himself by crawling under a fence that he really was far too big get under!!! So, there can be numerous reasons for your horse being in pain - it doesn't have to be something major, just a bad tweak. I imagine if it was something very serious he certainly would not be very keen to jump.

I hope you find the answer. You could maybe contact the physio I use - Tim Jarman (just google his name) he is a little too far away from you but he may be able to recommend someone in your area?
 
It's a costly one, but I wonder if a scan would show anything? It does sound like he's damaged himself in that original saddle slipping incident. It doesn't sound like kissing spines from the cases I've heard about. They tend to produce much more extreme reactions, but I guess like anything, severity varies.

Have you thought of having a Shiatzu Practitioner out? It's a very gentle form of massage and an experienced one will be able to tell if some of his muscles are tense due to spasm/compensation for other weakness.
 
Thanks so much for your help guys, really appreciate you taking the time to read my post and try to help me out.

I am insured, and I will do anything to get my boy right, he is the best horse I have ever had the pleasure of knowing, let alone riding or owning and is as honest as you get. Which is probably half the problem - in his attempts to please me it has taken a while to work out something is wrong.

The physio is going to come and have a coffee and see him lunged and work her way up to getting her hands on him on Thursday, She is very good, Im just concerned she is a little frightened of him. (He is horrible to vets/physio, which is why he's called Victor Meldrew, but he's lovely to me so maybe I don't see it and he's strangely lovely to the farrier as well). Im not sure what techniques my physio uses, but I will ask, and she comes very highly recommended.

KS is only something I have thought it might be myself, no one has mentioned it but I am torturing myself with my various self diagnoses - it is not helping him!

After the physio has been, if we are none the wiser I will take him back to horse hospital for scans or x-rays, whatever they suggest. I am feeling very impatient and worried, and torturing myself in the meantime, hence this post!
 
I can understand your situation having been through something similar with my horse. He wasn't quite right and went to the vets for diagnosis and had physio treatments monthly and having spent over £6k plus on all this for 18 months we still couldn't get to the bottom as to why he wasn't using his left hind correctly and was crooked despite schooling to correct and physio treatments.

I got to the point where I would try anything to get him right. He had similar issues with his saddles and we went down the route of M2M and many saddle fittings and still no change. I tried a distance reading with Margrit Coates, then had the physio check out for pain in the areas Margrit said he hurt. To no avail. He was still the same.

Another grasp at trying something else to help him, a friend on the yard was having a craniosacral lady out to treat her horse who showed symptoms of headshaking. This was Julie Houghton who came and she treated him, very interestingly everywhere that Margrit said he hurt was where Julie had a pian response whilst she was treating him with the craniosacral treatment. He had one session and he levelled up and I have never had such good work and movements out of him. If I hadn't have seen how well he responded with my own eyes and witnessed the change in him then I would not have believed it could have worked.... but it has and I now have the horse I wanted and we are going from strength to strength.

I do hope you can sort yours out and wish you luck in finding a diagnosis.

If you want Julie's contact details then PM me.
 
Quite agree with all the good sense about continuing down the diagnostic route... Scintigraphy might be appropriate? It was the chiropractor I used who found my horse's kissing spines - not that I am suggesting your horse has KS - actually sound like something more acute and recent... I knew of one horse who was going nuts occasionally because of a heart murmur - throwing off clots from the heart which were then causing mini strokes, particularly when he was girthed up... scary stuff.

I actually wanted to ask - what do you mean by "horse whisperer" - because "talking" to horses isn't a natural horsemanship thing IMHO! They might give you insight into body language but I doubt you will learn anything you don't already know. Do you mean an animal communicator or psychic? *Treads carefully now* If there is underlying pain and potentially a serious issue, then vets, physios and other professionals are a far more sensible use of money than someone who may tell you a complete load of bunkum which then results in you being even further from an accurate diagnosis...
I have had some good results with Equine Touch, Reiki and Shiatsu, if you exhaust other options, and these are pretty holistic in their approach. Jury is out on reiki for me - I can't understand it which means I remain highly skeptical but it has helped both me and my horses after injuries !
How about Gavin Scofield (?sp) - he did amazing things to my injured pony that the vet, physio and chiro had written off as permanently damaged - she drags a leg after going over backwards...
 
Just another thought - but it may be worth trying the magnetic patches that you sew into a rug - much cheaper than a full magntic rug. But of course you need a diagnosis first. sm x
 
Not similar to your horse, but im having on/off lameness issue's with one of mine after he hooned around the field on day back in April also. Ive only just managed to get him reffered to Leahurst for MRI's & workups, but im still waiting for date.

However in the mean time ive decided to get Thermal Imaging done by Equiscan there coming tomorrow. Might be worth while in your case also???
 
When I said horse whisperer I meant one inparticular who has been recommended to me - she calls herself an 'animal communicator' and Ive heard good and bad things.

My vet thinks its something acute but it may be on top of an old injury which he is now compensating for.

I will see what happens on Thursday with the physio and then look at scans, x-rays etc and possibly other routes.

I am interested in holistic therapy because I do have an inkling his problems are the kind of problems which holistic therapy would help - he gets so tense sometimes and takes a long long time to warm up. He also has a HUGE scar on his bum which would suggest he has been in a fairly horrific accident at some point, but I have no idea what happened and neither did the person who sold him to me (although she had owned him most of his life before me) and he has a false curb on one of his hind legs and scars on his body when you clip him. He hates tall men in caps (but is fine with everyone else) - I do think something bad has happened to him in the past.
 
dressagecrazy said:
Not similar to your horse, but im having on/off lameness issue's with one of mine after he hooned around the field on day back in April also. Ive only just managed to get him reffered to Leahurst for MRI's & workups, but im still waiting for date.

However in the mean time ive decided to get Thermal Imaging done by Equiscan there coming tomorrow. Might be worth while in your case also???
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that sounds really interesting - is it Equiscan that do it or do you need vet referral?
 
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I agree with what others have said with regards to additional vet diagnosis, as you are insured there are many more procedures/investigations that can be done. I would assume your vets will want to do a check up of your horse following the results/feedback of the painkillers and they should help you take things from there.

I am however a big fan of physio too and if you can get one near him I would def recommend that.
 
http://www.equiscan.co.uk/index2.html they where recomended to my by Taylored Equestrian who sometimes posts on here.
Apparently there the only one's with a Human grade Camera a girl called Sophie comes out then the image is sent off to other experts to look at it.

No refferal needed but you should be able to put it through on Insurance.
 
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dressagecrazy said:
http://www.equiscan.co.uk/index2.html they where recomended to my by Taylored Equestrian who sometimes posts on here.
Apparently there the only one's with a Human grade Camera a girl called Sophie comes out then the image is sent off to other experts to look at it.

No refferal needed but you should be able to put it through on Insurance.
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Brilliant will look into that thank you
 
Numpty's question but having owned horses for 7 years, I have never ever made a claim (I guess Ive been lucky) - do I need to inform my insurance company now that something is going on?
 
NO chiro, physio, massage, back person or ANYONE other than your vet is allowed by law to make a diagnosis.

Save your therapist visits until AFTER your vet has told you and the therapist exactly what the injury or problem is. You could be doing untold damage both physically and mentally by fiddling about.

You need your vets to do a more though exam, xrays and scintigraphy, and then follow THEIR recommendations for treatment and aftercare.
 
no therapist worth their salt will go near him without permission from your vet, it's illegal, and invalidates their insurance if they do so.

it's always worth getting another saddler in.

get the vet to do a proper lameness work up done-most 'back' problems are caused by undiagnosed lower leg lameness. ask the vet if they can recommend an experienced chartered physiotherapist
 
I do hope niether of the 2 last posts where directed at myself, my horse is under my Vet & has had 4 lameness workups. He is now reffered to Leahurst, the TI is an additional help & all info from this will be passed onto my Vet & Leahurst.
Also they do not offer any diagnosis they just give information as to where the problem may be, it is then upto the vets to do more examinations.
 
dressagecrazy said:
I do hope niether of the 2 last posts where directed at myself, my horse is under my Vet & has had 4 lameness workups. He is now reffered to Leahurst, the TI is an additional help & all info from this will be passed onto my Vet & Leahurst.
Also they do not offer any diagnosis they just give information as to where the problem may be, it is then upto the vets to do more examinations.
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no :)
 
Just a suggestion, would acp help settle him pre-veterinary or other physical examination/treatment.

Sounds like either he did something 'that day', or the reaction to the saddle slipping put the tin lid on an older injury.

Try not to panic or worry just yet (easy for me to say) but our mare suddenly became completely explosive under saddle. So uncharacteristic and consistent a reaction was this, I was almost physically sick with the anxiety and worry of what may be wrong.

Some physio and proper after care seemed to do it. To our knowledge and somewhat frustration, there wasn't a trigger we could pinpoint and although we did ask the vet for permission to treat via massage, we didn't go down that route straight away. And it was gentle and thorough muscle massage, not pulling and tugging of the horse's limbs and neck into strange angles. A point to note was although our horse flinched on light palpation of the sore area, she relaxed into the massage, so perhaps not quite the same.

I really hope you get to the bottom of this - I love 'Red'.
 
dressagecrazy said:
I do hope niether of the 2 last posts where directed at myself, my horse is under my Vet & has had 4 lameness workups. He is now reffered to Leahurst, the TI is an additional help & all info from this will be passed onto my Vet & Leahurst.
Also they do not offer any diagnosis they just give information as to where the problem may be, it is then upto the vets to do more examinations.
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Nope....OP.
 
I appreciate your situation as my boy has been intermittently lame since Christmas.

Personally, I found that the holistic approach was able to treat the symptoms and not necessarily the cause of his lameness so my best advice would be that you refer this to your vet. My chap has just returned from a full lameness investigation and scintigraphy and we finally have a cause which is not necessarily something than can be fixed holistically.

It is frustrating when you know that there is something wrong and I found it easier to be doing something rather than nothing and that involved the osteo, physio and chiropractor but at the end of the day, it does require veterinary intervention to establish what is going on so I would recommend that you save your money for now unless your vet recommends otherwise. With hindsight, I would have taken my own advice.

I really feel for you – call your insurance company and get the ball rolling. Keep the faith as it’s probably something very straightforward and easy to fix.
 
Please be very careful before you call your insurance company - you might find that they slap on exclusions onto your policy as a result of your query, even if nothing comes of it - I'm speaking from personal experience here where I had some accupuncture done on my horse, phoned up the insurance company to see if I could claim it back (on the advice of the vet doing the accumpuncture) but decided not to as we only needed a couple of treatments for stiff muscles. 5 years later when I tried to claim for Kissing Spine, the insurance company told me that they were putting a retrospective exclusion on for any back or pelvis related conditions and so refused to pay.

Just a warning to please be careful before talking to your insurance company or you might find in the process of trying to find out what is wrong with your horse you'll loose the ability to get him insured!
 
LuckyRed said:
Please be very careful before you call your insurance company - you might find that they slap on exclusions onto your policy as a result of your query, even if nothing comes of it - I'm speaking from personal experience here where I had some accupuncture done on my horse, phoned up the insurance company to see if I could claim it back (on the advice of the vet doing the accumpuncture) but decided not to as we only needed a couple of treatments for stiff muscles. 5 years later when I tried to claim for Kissing Spine, the insurance company told me that they were putting a retrospective exclusion on for any back or pelvis related conditions and so refused to pay.
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Sorry taking this slightly OT Unless there was a diagnosis of back or pelvis damage then your insurers were well and truly in the wrong and with confirmation from the original treating vet that exclusion should have been overturned.

Two years before she was actually diagnosed with Spavin in both hocks a couple of years ago my vet had been out to see her because she was cow kicking, leaping about and bucking intermittently, couldn't find anything definite and referred her for physio - it turned out to be a saddle issue....but on his notes he put query Spavins.
Of course insurers played merry hell about it and tried to turn down the claim, however the vet, physio and saddle manufacturer all wrote supporting my case and the insurers paid up without any further quibbles.
 
My vet has been working in conjunction with my physio - they were both at the horse hospital together so there is no problem there.

I will hold fire on insurance as I have a high excess.

Thanks for the positive help, will update Xx
 
spaniel said:
NO chiro, physio, massage, back person or ANYONE other than your vet is allowed by law to make a diagnosis.

Save your therapist visits until AFTER your vet has told you and the therapist exactly what the injury or problem is. You could be doing untold damage both physically and mentally by fiddling about.

You need your vets to do a more though exam, xrays and scintigraphy, and then follow THEIR recommendations for treatment and aftercare.
Click to expand...


This- saved me typing it.

I would explore every sngle option my VET threw at me before spending untold amounts of cash on physio and "horse whisperers".

I also wouldnt be lungeing him (with or without painkillers), lungeing is actually quite strenuous, which is why personally I wouldnt do too much of it with a youngster, or a horse coming back after injury
 
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