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

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charlie55

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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
 
I don't think there's a miracle cure to that one :o

I'd go back to basics and get some respect and trust on the ground and slowly reintroduce the scary stuff. If that doesn't work then I think you'd be best off getting some help

sorry if that sounds mean but you don't want to risk injury for either of you

:D xx
 
My 8 year old is similar, but not as extreme as yours sounds! He's so busy looking for things to be dangerous, if something catches him unaware - like a pigeon flying out of a tree, he almost goes into orbit! He's also quite inattentive on a hack, getting fixated on a tractor working 3 fields away or a man with a dog in the distance, so he doesn't look where he's going and trips over! I've found he's quite a lot better since I've been feeding him Winergy Equilibrium - I use the low energy one which claims to "promote positive behaviour", mixed with the medium energy when he's working hard - and also NAF Magic Liquid. I tried stopping the Magic for the summer, but in the last couple of weeks have found that he's reverting to being silly again so have been and bought some more.
 
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...
 
I use Top-Spec just to take the egde off my little man... I can see a difference in him but I think your problems are definitly worse than mines. I don't think a calmer is what you need, IMO you need to get experienced help before you end up having a serious accident. If its getting worse as he gets fitter, he'll obviously become faster and stronger when he's tanking off. Good luck x
 
It might be worth having a chat with Malcom Green at Equifeast, manufacturers Winingegde, Cool Calm and Collected, plus more. He has given us alot of help with various horses of ours, he is very approachable , phone no is on the Equifeast website.
 
I have a very similar Selle Francais cross - really really spooky - even when in the field by himself - someone slammed the car door on the yard, he leapt, took 3 strides of canter and jumped out of his field :O

I don't think he's scared, I don't think he's got any physical problem - he's just very over reactive to stimulae, when a normal horse would flinch, he leaps!

The best calmer I've found - and it really does work on him for both dressage and hunting - is the Horse First RelaxMe at maximum dose

Tried magnitude a couple of years ago and it didn't do anything - I think it's far too mild for these reactions

Nupafeed is also good and it's really easy to fine tune the doses for competitions etc - I found it takes longer to get into the system though with this horse
 
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...
Click to expand...

I would be inclined to go down this route too, especially if things are getting progressively worse with no obvious cause.

How much turnout is he getting? How long have you had him? :)
 
Relax Me by Horse First. I swear by it for my 17.1hh KWPN 10 year old biggest wuss in the world. It doesn't make them a dobbin, but it does just take the edge off, which is all I want as he really is a comp horse, but without it he is ridiculous to hack as there are tigers EVERYWHERE. He doesn't spin or piss off, mine plants and shakes LOL. I have just run out so he hasn't had any for 2 days and this morning, leading in from field, something that happens every day at the same time, he decided the big blue silage tanks were the scariest thing in the world and planted, for the first time ever going up there. Tomorrow I will be ordering some more!
 
Some horses are just very reactive or over reactive! I think I've read somewhere that ulcers can cause this sort of heightened reaction in some horses.

You could try plain mag ox.
 
I'm a Nupafeed gal myself!!

And I KNOW it works!! Took mine off it for a week and at went to a comp at the end of that week and he was just standing up the whole time, managed to get ok tests out of him, but now he is back on it he is fine, hasn't been spooky out hacking and hasn't stood up since I put him back on it!!

Relax Me makes him go silly! I found he became really spooky on it, but that might just be him!!
 
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...
Click to expand...

I'm another who goes along with this.
If there's nothing wrong, I'd be sorely tempted to do what any good nagsman would do - take him into the middle of town, village, car park wherever you can and just stand there with him for hours so he gets so bored and and tired, he couldn't give a fig if a bomb exploded beside him then repeat it somewhere else the next day; he has to learn to not be a total tart. Can you tell, I'm a kill or cure kinda girl! :D

Also you could do worse than try brewers yeast, it works as a calmer on some horses and doesn't cost a bomb.
 
i've got my very nervy one on Barefoot Basics calmag and am really impressed with the results, and the fact that it's not expensive.
i've had a few horses like yours though and it's a bit of a nightmare really, i know.
my trainer reckons they're like this because they're tight over the back (therefore they feel more vulnerable, therefore they're spookier) but i suspect it's maybe the other way around, that the spookiness makes them tight etc... not sure. certainly IF you can get the horse absolutely concentrating on you ("he can look with his eyes but he can't turn his head" (to boggle at something), is a good mantra I was told ages ago), channelled between two legs to two hands, working positively forward, this can really help. use shoulder fore or shoulder in to get past spooky stuff if necessary...
i'd second getting his eyes checked though if he's being utterly ridiculous, a vet can check them easily and it's one less thing to worry about...
 
I know you said your vet checked his eyes, but, and only you know how good your vet is, if he checked the eyes thoroughly. We have a dutch warmblood mare who is sometimes terrified of a killer blade of grass in the corner of the school. When we had her vetted the examination showed that she had an unusual marking in her eye, really small and unusual,( it is sort of like the marking that Madeleine McCann has). It doesn't cause our mare any eyesight problems as we had it thoroughly checked out. Our vet has often used it when he comes to see her for the usual things like innoculations to see if the students notice it without him telling them and even when we had another vet come to us he didn't pick it up either.

It's only a thought as I said only you know how thorough your vet is.

Mind you it might just be a warmblood thing - our mare is terrified of stupid things, but when a Harley Davidson roared up to her backside she didn't flinch one bit, lorries, tractors, stupid kids in cars behaving like loons not a problem ...... but that killer blade of grass - if the wind blows on it she is terrified.
 
I have a Danish warnblood that was virtually unrideable for similar reasons and my solution was to take him SJ and XC jumping. That has made him 1000% more confident with going out on hacks etc etc. We had some 'interesting' moments with this cure but it has been worth it in the end.
 
valerian root - it is not competition legal but may help to bring his adrenalin level down.
really works -and you could use it to get him calmer generally then introduce him to new stuff. Obviously take him off it before a comp
 
If he were mine i would stuff his ears with foam or cotton wool every time i ride him and add quite a few drops of Rescue remedy to an apple which would be given to him half an hour before work and keep on riding him as if nothing was happening ignore anything that he throws at you if possible keep this up every day for a week and then see if there is any difference .
oh forgot to mention 24 hr turnout !!
 
I can highly recommend Global Herbs,my mare is on the Thoroughbred Calmer by them as she reacts to calmers that contain magnesium! She was the same as your chap before she was on it,a total nightmare she also has been on their Supercalm in the past and that also worked,i know other people with fab results from that one.
 
Hi everyone, thankyou for all the response, if i forget to answer someone please ask again as there are alot of replies.

Hes is out 7am till 5pm, he cant stay out 24-7 as he is too much of a good doer. (poor mite has 2 sections of soaked hay to last him all night, nasty mummy!)

When i bought him, (year and a half ago) he had hes eyes checked by their vets, i had them checked again by my vets 2 weeks ago when he had hes teeth done as that was my first thoughts too, i think my vet is brill.

He has hes back done every 4 weeks

Saddler every 4 months

Just had a reply to this thread in new lounge 2, that her boy went nutty and more spooky on baileys lo cal, he has only been on this for 3-4 weeks and has been worse in the last 2 weeks, i thought it was since he is getting fitter, maybe its the lo cal? But im really shocked by this! Has any other horse reacted to that feed this way? Surely it hasnt got alot of sugar's etc in it....

If i have to change hes feed, what do i feed him? I put him on lo cal balancer because he doesnt get fed enough of anything else to get the goodness he needs, hence the balancer...

x
 
I know I mentioned opthamology in my post beofre, but it is worth saying that however good your regular vet is, very few actually know about opthamology properly because it is such an intercate thing that takes a specialist to notice every change.

However, if all is okay I would say that 24 hr turnout is the best thing. All of my horses (competition to dobbin!!!) live out. My baby came particularly stressed and spooky as well as angry and dangerous on the ground. After 6 months of living in a field and only associating humans with a bucket of food she is much better. She is the safest hack and sweetest horse as well as a top class young competition horse. I would say that you would see much more of an improvement from l,iving out than and supplement.
 
studentvet said:
I know I mentioned opthamology in my post beofre, but it is worth saying that however good your regular vet is, very few actually know about opthamology properly because it is such an intercate thing that takes a specialist to notice every change.

However, if all is okay I would say that 24 hr turnout is the best thing. All of my horses (competition to dobbin!!!) live out. My baby came particularly stressed and spooky as well as angry and dangerous on the ground. After 6 months of living in a field and only associating humans with a bucket of food she is much better. She is the safest hack and sweetest horse as well as a top class young competition horse. I would say that you would see much more of an improvement from l,iving out than and supplement.
Click to expand...

He cant live out sadly, he is a very good doer and isnt allowed out on grass 24-7, and he rubs he's face raw with a grazing muzzle (sp) x
 
Weezy said:
Relax Me by Horse First. I swear by it for my 17.1hh KWPN 10 year old biggest wuss in the world. It doesn't make them a dobbin, but it does just take the edge off, which is all I want as he really is a comp horse, but without it he is ridiculous to hack as there are tigers EVERYWHERE. He doesn't spin or piss off, mine plants and shakes LOL. I have just run out so he hasn't had any for 2 days and this morning, leading in from field, something that happens every day at the same time, he decided the big blue silage tanks were the scariest thing in the world and planted, for the first time ever going up there. Tomorrow I will be ordering some more!
Click to expand...

YES agree totally i also have a Dutch Warmblood KWPN he is now 9yo but was a total spaz put him on relax me and works wonders did try and take him off it at one point and try a cheaper one and was very quickly running to the tack shop for more !!!

Everyone i have recommended it too has said how fantastic it is too !
 
oh I also feed mine a feed from Australia called Cool Stance with a chaff !! it is coconut husks it keeps his coat looking fantastic too x
 
Could be the feed?? My old comp mare, i couldnt feed her any type of mix feed as it would just send her loopy so she had to stay on basic pony mix and alfa a but then I added vits in like ProPell plus etc....

Also anything like haylage would send her nuts aswell, she was (is - broodmare now) ISH :)

If he is a good doer like she was, he could prob survive if you took him of the main mix for a while to see what affect it had?
 
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