What could cause a horse to be girthy...

If it helps, my girl was always fine to groom in her sensitive areas, because she "got" what grooming was about so put up with it... she was only reactive to hand palpation / saddle / girth.

If you're getting a scope there's no harm in getting on and doing what you need to do to give the hind gut the best chance. Better to make one set of changes than potentially make adjustments for the stomach and then having to make more once you start thinking about the gut :)
 
Out of interest what has your horse been given to cure the hind gut problems. Been looking all over the net, and tbh seems a bit pointless in buying any supplements until I know whats going on.

My vet does appear to be an approved supplier of Suceed though...
 
Thanks for taking the time to type all of that out for me, interesting reading.

I believe that the increased tetchiness of my horse could possibly be caused by the removal of digestive supplement from her diet (she gets it two or three times a week, when I feed her. It's supposed to be fed every day, but current yard wont really feed suppliments. She also gets Baileys outshine 2-3 times per week.) She should currently be fed Pure Easy and sugar twice a day, although I suspect that she might sometimes be given the standard yard feed of sugarbeet and barley. She gets haylage whilst in at night.

I have sent an email to my vet, highlighting the symptoms/reactions I have found, and asked them to look into it next week. Hoping my poorly pony can be fixed!
 
Ouch, barley is not good for tetchy guts or starch sensitivity. That's really stressful, when you suspect they're ignoring your instructions. Some of them do forget that we're the customers sometimes!! Grr.

Good luck, I guess it may help if your vet agrees your horse should be on xxxx feed with no barley for example as then you can reassert how you want her fed by citing "the vet says"... You're peeing in the wind a bit trying to treat it with supplements if the probable dietary contributors can't be excluded. Pure feeds are great, and unmollassed sugar beet's about as gut friendly as you can get.
 
Re the barley... Not been done on purpose... Just depends on who is feeding. It doesnt really matter, she's being sent away for schooling soon.

In regards to supplement, it's one called aqaucid. Relatively unknown, however it's had all kinds of scientific reports produced, not just the type that say we tested it on five horses and three appeared to improve.
 
Sorry I didn't mean no point using existing supplement, just that it gets to be a false economy if you're then also spending on another for the hind gut but the diet's still adding to the burden :)

Completely agree re supporting science. There's one v expensive supplement which proudly links to a paper, which is about a handful of horses and if you read properly actually seems to suggest it doesn't actually make a difference in most realistic cases ??! Not quite sure if they think we'll just go "Ooh, science, brilliant" and not actually read it!
 
The aquacid is an interesting one. It has papers that show it could help with: calming the horse; increasing bone turnover and helping to reduce muscle soreness; then I think both stomach problems, and hind gut... So its def one I intend to keep her on as it is supposed to do a lot, which at least has evidence to show it works! However will do what I can in the mean time and hope that the vet can give me a diagnosis with something!
 
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