Please someone tell me they know of a great product for my lad!!

My 10 year old spook monster is better so far on Equine America's So Kalm Plus, they also do a syringe paste as a booster for show days, there's 3 strengths of syringes I think. I've bought the highest strength one but haven't had a chance to test it out yet.
 
charlie55 said:
Before i kill him!! Well, before he kills me!

17hh Dutch warmblood, 11 years old, dressage lad. Complete and utter tart about everything!! He is the most spookiest horse i have ever known and its getting to the stage now i have to be very careful riding him. A couple of instances: sunday hacking down the road, a truck was parked in a field we had to go past, stopped, spun, tryed cantering off down the road, had this for 5 mins until i managed to cross him over the road and walk on the wrong side of the road to get him passed it.
Another was tonight, took him in the indoor school and someone had left a couple of jumps up, that means its the end of the world for Jack! Spooking every 5 mins as if the jumps were alive, then because he is such a sensitive lad and the jumps upset him, every noise was deadly. Someone shut their car door and we spooked 90mph to the side, spun and stood snorting! And to top it all off i sneezed :o god i thought i was going to die :/

He has always been a sensitive and spooky lad but the fitter he is getting the worse he is getting. Im actually dreading our first show on the 30th! Has anyone had this problem and found a fab calmer etc that helped? At the moment he is on:
Hi Fi good doer
Lo cal balancer
Joint supplement
Magnitude

We can no longer ride in the outdoor school as god forbid a birds flys out of a bush! Out hacking we only stick to walk and trot because if we have a canter and something at the side spooks him, he will charge sideways, runs blind and will go through absolutley anything to get away from these demons he keeps seeing! Nearly knocked himself out on a tree the one and only time we cantered on a hack!! Ive had hes eyesight checked and everything is fine.

I think he needs to get out for a couple of gallops, have fun doing some jumping and xc etc to make him get over himself but he is just too spooky and dangerous to do this. If i ever managed to get him near a jump to go over it, (which i dout will ever happen) that would be fab, but if he ever knocked a pole and it made a noise then i have no idea what he would do!

Please help me lol, losing the will to live at the moment with him!
Sorry its long! x
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Global Herbs Super Calm is fab, (interestingly partly because it settles the stomach, as I've had sort of half as good results simply from adding brewers yeast to the diet) although your real solution is to get him past this stage and even fitter to the point where he's doing sufficient work that he settles, or sufficient 'fun' work a couple of times a week. I find that two days a week of jumping settles my TB immensely - we do at least 3ft each time, she has a lot of fun, and proceeds to behave herself impeccably the rest of the time. A good blast out hacking used to to it too, but the jumping is safer and more controlled and I like it better lol!
 
I always seem to get spooky horses. Magnatude has been great.

BUT nothing beats turning them out in a field next to the min road (small enough they can't just stand at the opposite side, standing them at shows/spooky places with the ramp down waiting for hours until they chill out so they can go home - and by far the best - they holiday in a fieldsurrounded by the local monthly show ground, a pretty busy road and a busy railway on the other (please note the field is not the nightmare for safety and rubbish it sounds). I think if left to their own devices they work it out there system a bit. They all still spooked at scary things but were manageable.
 
i swear by NAF magic, really takes the edge off and once you have it in their system they only need a tiny bit per day to keep it topped up. my friends very spooky and petrified of everything thoroughbred is like a different horse on it
 
I think I would try to eliminate factors one by one.

Firstly if he is a good doer I would cut out all hard feed and just up his hay a little, I would do this for about a month and combine that with working him every day for at least 45mins each time. Hopefully he would chill out and concentrate more.

Then if I felt progress had been made and he needed hard feed I would start off with just basic pony nuts, make everythign high fibre and absolutely no added sugar and reintroduce a different feed one by one to see if I could pin point the trigger.

maybe get a 2nd opinion on the eyes?...

and maybe a 2nd opinion on the back, my boy always gets MUCH sppookier when he is a bit out behind
 
I have the same spooky problem with my mare, although your chap seems to have it worse. I tried steady up from feedmark, which is the only one that has had any real effect, in fact it made her lazy, but a lot more laid back about things. I have had her schooled twice a week by my instructor which has helped immensely, she is still sticky on her own but will follow another horse anywhere, this has given her confidence by going out with a reliable escort. More work, less food helped too, she gets a handful of chaff twice daily with the calmer in.
She has a real issue with birds too, especially if she is on edge anyway - she spins and runs the other way, which is a nightmare when out on the road, which I have stopped doing on my own!
Good luck, I know how you feel !
 
I have a mare who is sometimes spooky and it is usually worse when a) saddle fitting issues or b) when she is having some sort of food that sends her this way. She is a DWB/han and I have tried giving her `extras` to help her in the every day life support ie, bone/joint supplements, vits/mins and I find that whatever I give to her, she tells me in no uncertain terms that she doesnt need it. Even the chaffs I have tried have alf alfa in them and this sends her very spooky and on her toes as well as any sort of mix, even the cool ones, even C and C sent her wappy and the allen and page hacking mix etc. Too many carrots can send her just over the edge of sanity. I have owned her for almost 8 years and in that time I have tried numerous different makes of feed and the only thing that she can stand is high fibre nuts. We have changed recently to a lovely chaff thats non heating etc but even that wasnt working so we`re now trying a new chaff with no alf alfa.
When I give her certain things, it brings her out in lumps, even the NAF range so I have come to terms with the fact that she doesnt need any supplements as this way she is easier to handle and ride. I even tried her on the magnitude but it doesnt make a difference to her, its just food in general...
I`m not saying this is the same but try giving him no hard feed at all or just a few nuts and see if this works. :)
 
Thinking about it, my Dutch gelding was spooky and silly on Bailey's Lo Cal, I just thought he was going through a phase! But when I changed his feed he did improve a huge amount. So maybe there is something about the Lo Cal that sets them off!

But having said all that, I doubt it is the feed with your horse. It sounds to me like he has you well trained, he knows that he'll get a reaction when he spooks and is using it as an evasion. I'd go back to basics, make sure he understands that he MUST be on your aids when he is being ridden, make sure he understands go and stop and NOW. Work him on the lunge or long lines to get him listening to your voice and transfer this to the saddle. Working him deep and slow might help, making him concentrate on pushing himself forward from his hind legs rather than looking for imaginary monsters! Lots of lateral work in walk is another good one, get him concentrating on you rather than his surroundings. Good luck!
 
I agree with Chloe_GBM, I have an ex-racehorse who was just off the track and she went dizzy with coming out of being racing fit and just being fed on something silly like "calm and condition" - wandered what the word calm stood for anyway i put her on molichaff calmer until she came down to earth and then only introduced hard feed as her exercise increased but still mixed with the molichaff which you could also use as the hay substitute, now a child could ride her she is so relaxed. Also don't forget to do some desensitizing - plastic bags, lead ropes dragging behind, music playing - it helps.
 
I have mare and when she was younger she was a total nightmare. She spooked at everything, took off regularly on the roads, would cart me in fields, dump me jumping, the works. I tried Steady up without too much sucess.

In the end I totally lost the rag at her one day. She spooked at the same tree she spooked at every single flippin day, and I'm afraid I rather lost the plot. I shouted at her, kicked her shook the reins, probably socked her in the teeth and shouted some more. She stood there ( as did the folk I was with) looked a little shocked, then seemed to shrug her shoulders in a 'Oh really, if you'd said it was that much of a problem' kind of way, and toddled in. Honestly that was about the last we ever had of spooking at silly stuff!

She was still a little devil in an open park, and would still sometime put me on the floor at a jump occasionally, but by then it was sudden run outs rather than the humongous spooks.

ETA - I didn't smack her, as she has never let anyone carry a whip on her, so it was just 8 stone of me on 15.2 ISH of her.
 
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studentvet said:
Just an odd one, but have you had the vet out? Becuase we saw a clinical situation just like this and it turned out that the horse had limited eye sight and the fact that it couldnt see clearly made it very spooky in many situatiuons...
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As Studentvet - probably worth getting him checked out sounds a bit more than over exuberance..
 
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