Vets baffled - can anyone help?

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zoon

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For the last 4 weeks or so my horse has had very twitchy withers, shoulders and neck. How far the twitchiness spreads and how severe it is varies even over a matter of minutes. He cannot bare to be touched in those areas when it is at its worse - my nomally placid horse turns into a rearing, biting and kicking beast.

What baffles the vets is that you will touch a place and he'll be ok, you'll touch somewhere else and that will also be fine. then you go back to the original place and he will go mental, you then touch another place which may also be fine. Then you return to the original place which he went mad about and it'll now be fine! The affected areas tend to change and the severity also changes. Often he appears not to be in any discomfort but actually be anticipating discomfort. Let me add now that he is not currently being ridden so saddle issues can be ruled out.

Also just being near those areas and not actually touching them can make him go mad - the vet today just held his hands about 2 inches away from his body and moved them about and he threw a hissy fit (for some places and not others - and that varies over time!)

He seems to be worse on his near side and lighter touch seems to be worse - prolonged firm touch seems to be ok most of the time. It's as if his skin is hypersensitive.

A chiropractor saw him about 6-7 weeks ago for his annual check up and hs was slightly sore behind where the saddle would go. She treated him and returned 2 weeks later and he was fine. It was shortly after her visit that he started to be like this so I had her return and she said there was absolutely no muscle tightness/soreness and he appeared not to be reacting to pain and appeared to be very ticklish - although she did suggest xrays of his withers may be an option to rule out skeletal issues. She also suggested under a vets referral she could perform very deep stretches under sedation that may be appropriate.

The vets have done thorough examinations and conclude that there are no skeletal or muscular issues, but as yet have not done xrays to confirm this as he has excellent range of movement (beyond what would be expected - he can stretch miles for a carrot!), no lameness and more importantly no point(s) of pain can be pin pointed.

The only thing they can come up with is an allergy/intolerance. I recently took part in a clinical trial for a conditioning feed - it was around the same time that I switched from trial batches to the commercially available batches that this first started. So we have stopped this feed - replacing it with hifi lite so he can continue to have his supplements. I have been told to give it a week to see if it helps.

Can anyone possibly shed some light?
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Three suggestions:
1. get another back person to go over him.
2. try a muscle specialist.
3. get in touch with the feed trial company and speak to their vet and nutritionist.

Can he bear a rug on the affected area/s?

Hope something works and quickly!
 
yes, once something is on the area (say a rug or his saddle if I tried to put it on) he is fine, it is the initial contact that bothers him. With his rugs he twitches a couple of times and then is not bothered.

Both the chiro and the vets have looked at his back and both agree (completely independently) that his back is fine. I have to wait a week now before speaking to the vet againt o see if the exclusion of his feed makes a difference. It's excruciating having to wait
 
I agree with Mrs Mozart, maybe ask another chyropractor to have a look. Im not saying the one you have has done anything wrong, especially not on purpose, but if she did, I can't see a professional jumping to admit she has done it wrong which has caused these problems, she might have just tweeked a nerve or something.......
OR
the other option is the feed, depedning on the content of the feed there may be something that has agrevated his nervous system in it. If so then yes you might be right that he is hypersensitive, he will be anticipating you touching him and reacting before hand because it might hurt, tickle, irritate, who knows. I would definetly contact the feed company and ask if any other trialees have had similar problems, and if there is any neurodegenerative, or nervous system aggrevators in the feed...... (they might not be willing to admit this, so just make sure you are firm and expect answers!)

Hope it gets sorted!
 
Imagine I kicked you on the shin. Now imagine the pain you would feel of I touched you on the shin where you were sore....you would flinch away. Now what if I placed my hand flat on your shin and just left it there....you may still feel something but after a short while that pain would go away as your muscles and nerve endings calmed down.

I suspect your horse IS in pain.....finding the cause however I am not so definite about!
 
Absolutely DieselDog, could well be. I know these can make some horses that uncomfortable that you cannot handle them at all let alone go in the stable with them.
 
No they are stomach ulcers. They are very painful and can mean that your horse doesn't like being touched.

They can be caused by stress or food and other things. It is worth asking the vet if they think it is a possibilty. To diagonose they would have to scope him.
 
Pete (the vet) did mention ulcers as a remote possibility, but seems to think it is dietary.

I spoke to the feed company today to see if there were any formulation changes between the trial and release of the feed and there have not been which means that he's been on this feed unchanged for over 6 months now. He has 300ml of oil a day as well as the conditoning feed and garlic and supplement (the amount of feed I am giving is lower than the recommended amount so he has extra vits and mins) The feed company worked out that he may be getting too much selenium or possibly the high amount of oil has causes excess free radicals to accumulate in the system.

I told Pete this and he thinks that the amount of oil given to him is not a problem as small endurance horses often have more and this is a big 16.3 warmblood we are talking about. He did say there was a possibility of a mineral toxicity, but selenium toxicity does not produce these symptoms. But he's now decided to put him on a forage only diet with maybe some hifi lite or something to supplement this (mainly to keep to his routine of having a feed as he is very much a creature of habit)

I have contacted another local vet practice for a second opinion and one of the partners is going to contact me today. I'm planning to tell her as little as possible - I don't want to influence her decision over his diagnosis!
 
Given the direction your vet is going in I would certainly be tempted to scope for ulcers. If this IS dietary then this pain is coming from something and this may well be ulcers. Changing to a fibre only diet may well show some sort of improvement if there are ulcers but to really solve th problem you would need to confirm their presence and treat them as well.

Youd be surprised how many horses actually have hem and just how many are just considered a bit grumpy.
 
nope - he's a bright bay. a much better bright bay infact
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He let me wash his mane today after a little coaxing. But as they say one good day does not make a summer, so we'll see how he is tomorrow.
 
Yes much better - still slightly twitchy around the withers, but only slightly. He's now on a small scoop of sugar beets and 3 handfuls of hifi lite with ad lib hay. He won't eat the feeds - just picks at them and throws them around but they are stopping him box walking at feed time which he would do if he didn't have anything. I am speaking to my vet again in about a week and a half then if he thinks its ok I'll give one of the feed companies a ring and see what they recommend for him to be on. Its so difficult to keep condition on him (hence the high amount of oil!) - anyone recommend a comany to go with? My vet has recommended saracens equijewel (saracen are based just down the road from us hence why my vet deals extensively with them). Previously I was a fan of winegy feeds but I'd be reluctant to go bac to them incase it was that causign the problem
 
omg was you using winergy feeds when this occured?

If so thats real bizzare as I was using them when my horse had this real bad skin reaction, just like yours, he would go nuts putting the saddle or a rug on him, and if you went to pat him on his shoulder he would try and bite you, and sometimes he did. His skin was hot to touch, but more so on his pink skin than on his brown.

I contacted a lady called Ellen Collinson, and she gave me a special diet for my horse to get ride of all the toxins built up in his system, it worked fantastically. She recommends a company called Simple Systems.......they have all natural foods with no preservatives or chemicals used in them.

I would definately recommend talking to her about your horse, even if its just to hear her reasons.

My horse became very ill after contacting feed companies and swaping him on to their feed intolerance suggestions because it was too soon, and the system was still stressed. He is now intolerant to any feed that has been processed, ie maize, micro barley, micro peas.

You may be able to avoid yours becoming as bad as mine by speaking to Ellen first and taking feed changes very slow, her ideas are very old fashioned, but really worked and saved my horses life.......he started to show intolerances to grass!

Please let me know how you get on.
 
Well he's gone back to being impossible to touch again. So I'm figuring it's not feed related or if it is we're missing something! Someone has suggested trying him with piriton - what do you think?
 
vet today said he wanted to come out and see him vetted which means finally getting the wow saddle fitter out to fit my saddle thats been ready for ages - but how do we do that if we can't go near him?
 
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