What to do when your horse makes dumb decisions.

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BBP2

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I feel like I’m opening myself up to nomination for the worlds worst horse owner here…yet again… but…

Beautiful beautiful Arab mare makes some really dumb*** decisions. Mostly relating to where to sleep. So far:

She has got cast in the field shelter (I assume) and put her hoof through the chipboard. This has happened more than once.

She slept at the edge of the sand pit we built and got stuck on the sleepers around the edge and cut herself up.

She has come in with more cuts and scrapes than any horse I have ever met in my life, even when she is by herself, including a big slice across the top of her backside that I still to this day have no idea what she did it on.

Today she has taken the cake and done a proper doozie. I gave her access to the whole entire arena, plus an area of hard standing, a hard standing track, and a grass paddock. She has it all to herself at the moment as her ulcers are back and she gets food aggressive so I like to place her at the centre of all the other horses but where she doesn’t feel she has to compete for food. I give her the arena so she has a huge big safe sandy space to sleep in. Except it wasn’t. It has a gate, which is tied open to allow access. So today she has clearly slept right by the gate, rolled over and put all her legs through the gate where the diagonal and cross bars make a V, and had to fight her way out. She is a mess. Blood, skin and hair on the gate, and not so much on the horse.

My question is, how on earth do I keep her safe?! Stables she gets cast, fields she lies right up against fencing, gates, sleepers. She has the option of sand pits, grass, soil, thick rubber mats. She gets up perfectly well and easily. She just likes to roll right before getting up. Is she a candidate for a big straw bed with huge banks? Doesn’t help much when she makes equally bad choices out in the yard. Anti cast roller for the rest of her life?! I’m not a total idiot I promise, but I’m starting to feel like one. Why oh why did I not consider that she might get stuck in the gate?! Even BBP never did this stuff!
 
She needs a seasoned buddy who will guide her away from such monumentally stupid decisions.

I have one who used to do similarly stupid things. He once went to sleep by the fence, rolled to get up and in the process got under the electric, managing to reach out to the barbed wire he was fenced off from and cut his leg. Got cast in a stable big enough for two more than once. Got stuck in the actual fence three times last winter getting up. The last time it happened I arrived to repair the fence and found him sleeping in the MIDDLE of the field with his sister on guard. She had finally decided that he was too stupid to make his own decisions and he gets told where to sleep now…
 
maya2008 said:
She needs a seasoned buddy who will guide her away from such monumentally stupid decisions.

I have one who used to do similarly stupid things. He once went to sleep by the fence, rolled to get up and in the process got under the electric, managing to reach out to the barbed wire he was fenced off from and cut his leg. Got cast in a stable big enough for two more than once. Got stuck in the actual fence three times last winter getting up. The last time it happened I arrived to repair the fence and found him sleeping in the MIDDLE of the field with his sister on guard. She had finally decided that he was too stupid to make his own decisions and he gets told where to sleep now…
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I wish mine would give good life advice like that. I’m pretty sure they encourage her to lie somewhere daft. I don’t understand why after the first few times she hasn’t figured it out. I reckon she could be in a 20 acre field and she would still choose to lie right next to a fence/gate/electricity pylon/whatever hazard she can find.
 
Personally, I'd put an inner electric fence in every area she has access to except small areas like a stable as that would be cruel, and not let her have access to smaller areas if possible. I'd ensure the fence had an exceptional amount of breaking points though, which would release with very little force.
 
I’d look at each area she has access to, think about where the most idiotic place to try and sleep / roll would be and assume that’s where she’ll go.

I’d try and put wooden boards on any gates with bars / open bits she can stick a leg through, consider attaching thick rubber matting on things like your shelter walls so that she can’t put a foot / leg through the wood and yeah I would consider doing stupid banks on your shelter to try and encourage better life choices. Not sure there’s much practical you could do with the sandpit other than rounding off all the edges and corners of the sleepers if a possibility? And yeah would electric fence off (with break points) any hazards in field that she might be stupid enough to try and curl up near.

The Highland could be a bit stupid like this (in terms of zero thought given to his surroundings when napping / rolling sometimes). He did sometimes used to bring the bottom line of the fence down & I also once watched him put both back legs through a metal gate whilst rolling and then free himself & he did used to randomly injure himself sometimes in weird ways. He was a bit bulldozer like anyway and don’t think his body awareness (especially when his various issues were getting worse) was ever great.
 
Oh that's a good point about covering over gates so they can't get their feet through - even old rugs can be helpful there temporarily if you do them up around the lower rungs tightly so any flailing legs just bounce off the rug and aren't able to go through the gaps between rungs. Obviously there are better permanent solutions, but temporarily a tightly done up rug has worked for me in the past. I still feel safer if there's electric fence between them and anything with any even remote potential for injury though!
 
I will definitely be covering that gate. I had done some others that BBP liked to bang on and try to put his feet through, but not this one. Sometimes it takes an accident to make you realise how dumb you are.

We were already talking about matting the shelter walls for her. Basically creating her a padded cell. I tried bringing her in to the Shetlands stable overnight, as it has proper boards inside rather than chipboard and I can bank it fully up the walls but she wasn’t settled so I need to do a bit more acclimatising for it or just pad up a field shelter.

After she got stuck in the sand pit I spent a few hundred £ making it a lot bigger and removing some of the containing beams. Then I gave her the whole arena thinking that would be even better.

She definitely isn’t a horse made for track living, but even in a big open space she likes to sleep in dumb places.

I’m thinking putting her in one of those zorbing bubbles with an air hole to breathe and eat through.
 
We do have one who lives in an anti cast roller unless he is in one particular field. He is in the roller at all times when in an enclosed space. When in said field he still rolls too close to the edge but the fencing set up (with electric tape inside the P&R) means that so far he hasn't caused chaos there.
We also have another who has to travel in an Equivisor - which looks like a horse version of a rugby scrum cap only a whole lot bigger - as no mater what vehicle she is in she manages to arrive with cuts all over her face despite never seeming to move her legs...
It does get us some interesting looks at events. She has to have it back on between phases as even 10 minutes in the lorry is enough for self harm. Cries of 'where is Lucy's helmet' from the back of the lorry as she comes back from dressage...
 
I had a friend who actually made the decision to keep her horse in after it came in injured every single day for absolutely ages. I’m absolutely not advocating that. I very much disagreed with the decision. It got to the point that she just couldn’t deal with it anymore or the cost of it. He was actually very chilled in weirdly.
 
One of the contributors to a lack of proprioception is not feeling entirely safe, and so often we can eventually find a way to help them emotionally regulate, change the environment a little etc.
 
I was wondering if she's getting close to the edges from a feeling of safety/being less exposed/vulnerable. Has she paired up with any of the rest of your herd that you could put her in with (with plenty of food and all spread out if she's food aggressive), to help her feel a bit more secure maybe? Or if you're still considering sending some of yours away, could she be a candidate (to the right place for a while and they'd obviously have to be aware of what she's like)
 
I sympathise as I seem to have acquired a rather daft 2.5 year old who chooses to roll right under the electric fencing, rather than in the various big open spaces that he can choose from....

Baggs my 20 year old has taken on the role of chief babysitter and will guide him away from any danger zones, but on occasion I have watched Baggs stand there and let Rabbit do something stupid, purely so that the daft idiot can learn a lesson.....

Rabbit's most recent daft moment was rolling too close to the electric fencing, getting himself tangled up in it and then lying there whilst looking at Baggs and I to come to his rescue. Luckily I worked extensively before this happened, with having things around Rabbit's legs and him standing patiently whilst he is untangled etc, as I've seen far too many nasty injuries from poor horses panicking when they're stuck. Since then he rolls in a different part of the field that isn't close to the boundaries but he has tempted fate a few times when rolling....

I would say things like gates and fences that have the possibility of legs going through/getting caught, I would pop some rubber matting or something similar to lessen the chance of it happening x
 
Sorry to hear this hope she gets right soon

I use electric fence at the height of one meter in a complete circle. No access to gates etc, with a strong current trains em to look what they are doing alright
 
sbloom said:
I'd suspect a serious lack of proprioception and tackle it that way, at least in part.
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Started writing the below reply after I saw your first message, then got distracted by the vet, and now just seen your second and a couple of others similar so what I was writing agrees:

I think it largely links to a lack of feeling of safety and belonging. She still hasn’t really found her place in the group. I had finally cracked it in the summer, her ulcers were healed, she was no longer sleep deprived and she was feeling happy and safe with the others and making better choices, but then we changed the hay due to the liver issues we have, her ulcers came back within 2 weeks and because of how she acts when she has ulcers the others push her out again. I’m hoping as the ulcer treatment works things will settle again. I would like to get her more friendly with the Shetlands as they have such great well regulated temperaments, they are just friendly happy chilled little guys, but their dietary requirements are so different. The rest just aren’t gelling as a group unfortunately and have their own health issues we are working on. I imagine them all having liver disease is probably making them all feel a bit rubbish and intolerant of each other.
 
BBP2 said:
I feel like I’m opening myself up to nomination for the worlds worst horse owner here…yet again… but…

Beautiful beautiful Arab mare makes some really dumb*** decisions. Mostly relating to where to sleep. So far:

She has got cast in the field shelter (I assume) and put her hoof through the chipboard. This has happened more than once.

She slept at the edge of the sand pit we built and got stuck on the sleepers around the edge and cut herself up.

She has come in with more cuts and scrapes than any horse I have ever met in my life, even when she is by herself, including a big slice across the top of her backside that I still to this day have no idea what she did it on.

Today she has taken the cake and done a proper doozie. I gave her access to the whole entire arena, plus an area of hard standing, a hard standing track, and a grass paddock. She has it all to herself at the moment as her ulcers are back and she gets food aggressive so I like to place her at the centre of all the other horses but where she doesn’t feel she has to compete for food. I give her the arena so she has a huge big safe sandy space to sleep in. Except it wasn’t. It has a gate, which is tied open to allow access. So today she has clearly slept right by the gate, rolled over and put all her legs through the gate where the diagonal and cross bars make a V, and had to fight her way out. She is a mess. Blood, skin and hair on the gate, and not so much on the horse.

My question is, how on earth do I keep her safe?! Stables she gets cast, fields she lies right up against fencing, gates, sleepers. She has the option of sand pits, grass, soil, thick rubber mats. She gets up perfectly well and easily. She just likes to roll right before getting up. Is she a candidate for a big straw bed with huge banks? Doesn’t help much when she makes equally bad choices out in the yard. Anti cast roller for the rest of her life?! I’m not a total idiot I promise, but I’m starting to feel like one. Why oh why did I not consider that she might get stuck in the gate?! Even BBP never did this stuff!
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No idea how you deter her from all the other antics, but ‘traditional’ gates, or any with diagonal spars that create lethal little triangular spaces, are a serious hazard for horses - always have been, OH changes them in any fields we put horses in before ever turning them out. We’ve had enough cattle get trapped, too, so very few left on the whole farm, now. Wooden gates need those diagonal bracings, they look classic, but are heavy, splinter, need maintenance, are potentially hazardous. Years ago, my Dad would staple small mesh across the bottoms of our gates for that reason.
Galvanised gates, decent weight, horizontal spars with sufficient space to get a hoof back out, with three vertical bracers, but ideally choose gates welded with small galvanised mesh to about one third / one half the way up. I’d recommend removing any spring-trigger latch mechanism, too, just fasten with a chain and hook or clip around the stoop.
If you think she’s inadvisably rolling, the anti cast would make any rolling difficult (unless she dislodges it round her sides and gets caught on something else!), but sounds like she really likes to go down where she feels ‘enclosed’, which is unusual.
hope she recovers, hopefully she’s seen the error of her ways, but sounds unlikely - so good luck!
 
I guess what I'm saying is that feeling safe isn't just behavioural, it can be physical, and if it is behavioural at least in part then this whole emotional regulation piece can be important. I recommend TTeam bodywrapping for direct proprioceptive issues, The Equine Documentalist has some great content from Dr Gellman on proprioceptive inputs to posture and movement too. Then there's tackling any physical aspects (of posture, compensatory movement) that make her feel a little compromised, vulnerable, and they can look very mild but affect the horse significantly.
 
sbloom said:
I guess what I'm saying is that feeling safe isn't just behavioural, it can be physical, and if it is behavioural at least in part then this whole emotional regulation piece can be important. I recommend TTeam bodywrapping for direct proprioceptive issues, The Equine Documentalist has some great content from Dr Gellman on proprioceptive inputs to posture and movement too. Then there's tackling any physical aspects (of posture, compensatory movement) that make her feel a little compromised, vulnerable, and they can look very mild but affect the horse significantly.
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Thank you, I’ll look into that. She is one who from the day dot I intended to do a lot of postural work with to improve her biomechanics, as she has the club foot which generates a whole host of compensatory movement alone, without anything else. You can see and feel a lot of the areas that are compensating. But the last year has not gone the way I planned. Its been a vicious cycle of not being able to do anything with her (even the most basic of groundwork) due to her aggressive and erratic behaviour, which then meant I wasn’t helping her feel better in the orthopedic aspects of her body, which helps meant she is more prone to the reoccurrence of the visceral issues. In the summer I finally had a window where she was open and happy. I had spent months post ulcer treatment just on regulating her nervous system, doing sleep therapy etc. She was gorgeous to work with, just an absolute joy. And then we got the liver flare and change of forage, lack of grass, high iron, low copper, fluke etc etc etc and we are back to nearly square 1.

I’ll get there though. Everything I do is focussed on bringing everyone to a happy well regulated emotional place, and their bodies to a functional place. I might not be doing brilliantly, but I am trying.
 
Roasted Chestnuts said:
Anti cast roller? She can’t roll over so therefore she can’t get cast?
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Iron arch, across the spine, fitted into a stout leather roller - deters them from rolling, unless the whole contraption slips round, creating an iron loop on the horse’s side. Could add a breast girth, can get complicated….horses love rolling, but don’t always do it safely.
 
My Arty was a complete menace for self-injury when she was younger. Literally every day she would come in with some mark or other on her. Her stable has always been block work walls so fairly safe, but she still managed to take out/come to grief with a wooden window frame, smash a drinker off the wall and terrify herself with the resultant flood (twice), get a hoof stuck in the solid wood door, injure herself with a soft plastic bucket etc.

She once set everyone free from the field by getting her rug stuck on the post and rail (so far so understandable), which left a section of p&r on the floor and the rug on the section next to it that was still standing, horse completely out of rug, rug intact with all straps still done up and over the fence rail in exactly the arrangement that it should have been on the horse. To this day I still cannot fathom how she managed that one, or how she got away with it with just a couple of cuts.

I took to exercising her every day before she went out because it was the only thing that seemed to help, but in the end she seemed to basically grow out of it.

Your mare does sound like she is looking for security. Maybe if you can make her a dedicated safe place to sleep then she'll stop using the inappropriate ones. It's so tricky when you have a self-harmer, the daily worry is immense.
 
Given that she's always had trouble sleeping, and I know we've talked at length about her not feeling safe generally since she came to you, could you stable at night?

Didn't she come from being stabled at night? I suspect she might be completely overwhelmed with the herd dynamics issues, the lack of sleep for a while, and now she's sleeping by tucking herself into corners and panicking when she gets up.
 
LadyGascoyne said:
Given that she's always had trouble sleeping, and I know we've talked at length about her not feeling safe generally since she came to you, could you stable at night?

Didn't she come from being stabled at night? I suspect she might be completely overwhelmed with the herd dynamics issues, the lack of sleep for a while, and now she's sleeping by tucking herself into corners and panicking when she gets up.
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She has always been stabled but is now outside, and isolated from the others?
Definitely try stabling in a saucer-shaped, thick bed of straw, right round the door, obviously no auto drinkers/ other projections, hay loose on the floor - treat her like an ignorant weanling and see whether some peaceful rest settles things. Good luck!
 
Exasperated said:
She has always been stabled but is now outside, and isolated from the others?
Definitely try stabling in a saucer-shaped, thick bed of straw, right round the door, obviously no auto drinkers/ other projections, hay loose on the floor - treat her like an ignorant weanling and see whether some peaceful rest settles things. Good luck!
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Good rest is definitely the key. She wasn't always stabled, she had a stable that then ran straight out to her field, so she could come and go, with horses each side of her. Which is exactly what she has here, only its a thick matted shelter, with big sandpit or arena, and then runs out to a field. She is also in with the other mares when she feels okay (only split now as the ulcers make her food aggressive and feels like she has to guard her food, so she is separate for a little bit so she can relax a bit around food).

We are working on a night-time stable for her, as I had the same thought about a nice deep thick banked up bed and feeling of security, acclimatising her to it, but she frets that she can't see the others, even with the two shetlands for company, so I can't just shut her in straight away. Annoyingly my stables face away from my fields, so unless everyone is in she can't see them and worries. She is a bit of a border collie mentality and wants everyone together and in sight all the time. So we are busy rearranging shelters and fields and horses so that she is in the spot she feels happiest, and can reintegrate with the mares as her treatment kicks in.

I think one problem she has is that she was kept in a field alone mostly since a foal, next to a young colt, so doesn't really understand social cues (as i assume the colt loved proximity and contact, and doesn't read the others asking for space. She is quite foal like in a lot of ways and always wants to tuck her nose into their flank as if seeking to nurse, which they aren't keen on. She has been improving, and they were quite happy grooming each other etc, until this bout of ulcers. She also has slightly weird proprioception when it comes to drinking, she stops her nose about a foot from the water surface and sort of chews and then eventually drops her nose to the water.
 
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