Wild Wobbler - Experince / Opinion

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pukkapony

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I rescued a mare a few months back, she's clearly had a tough past which I know almost nothing about... bought her as I felt sorry for her & wanted to give her a better quality of life.

All of this information is to the best of my knowledge; she is around 7yrs, had a foal summer 2011, she is about 13.3hh, new forest cross probably.

We first noticed as she was walking down hill in the field she had her head & neck twisted at almost a 30° angle - nothing odd that I noticed about the legs then again I was looking at the head very puzzled. This was probably 2 or 3 weeks after we got her, the second time we noticed her looking a little odd was when she came over for her breakfast one morning she looked 'drunk' but only in the hind legs and corrected herself after a few mins. The third time we noticed was this morning & she was completely uncoordinated in the entire back end, was physically shaking (but not cold) and was stumbling all over the show, we called the vet immediately but inbetween calling & arrival of the vet she picked up enough to have a bit of a walk and almost walked it off... The vet was quite confused, gave her an anti-inflam/pain killer injection & said to monitor her - the vet has said she would like to come back at a later date & look into the issues further, but it's hard as she only has small unpredictable "episodes" of wobbling :-S

The other issue with this particular mare is she is very very nervous, can't groom any more than neck and definately can't pick up feet etc. The plan was to couple farrier with a vet trip & sedation for safety however now she's possibly a wobbler sedation could be out of the question too. She's a known kicker & I don't doubt she is capable of launching an attack on a human (definately a vet!), but all the touching issues could well be related to pain - but we have no real safe way to check. She's a genuine friendly sweet mare and will come over for a fuss - head and neck only.

Wondered if anyone has any experience of either intermittent wobblers, or "wild horse wobblers" I don't want the worst case scenario to have to happen so would like to explore any possible options for this sweet little lady :'(
 
Please see my reply under the 'prognosis of neck injury' post in the veterinary section some above yours.

I can't understand why the vet didn't do a neuro examination of your mare to determine if she did have ataxia or not. ~Maybe she is planning on doing this at a later date, and its easy enough to do you could do if if you wanted to, but the problem is you wouldn't know if she was ataxic due to wobblers or something else, so it wouldn't really give you much help.

If you want to do it yourself get someone to lead your horse away from you whilst you stand by its hind legs and pull on its tail towards you at a right angle, i.e face your horses bum from the side and pull its tail to the side towards you. Normal horses will sway slightly towards the direction of tail pull but then rectify themselves and continue their forwards course. A wobblers horse will not be able to continue forwards on its course and will be easy to pull towards you or even pull over (be very careful, do this on a soft surface with hats on and mind the horse doesn't fall on you or you don't get kicked). This is called a sway tail test. Try it with a 'normal' horse first to get the jist of what I am saying, then try it with your mare.

My wobblers horse was also very wary of you grooming him other than his neck area, I always assumed it was due to him being very fine skinned and ticklish. Hate to say it but you could really do with a referral to an equine hospital for a proper diagnosis so you know where to go from there. Finadyne stabilised my horse enough to allow him to travel although on the day of the visit to Liverpool he was still extremely ataxic.

Wobblers is more common in very young geldings/colts with long necks, and in breeds such as Quarter horse, WB and shire horses so it may not be wobblers that your horse has it could just be something else that is causing the ataxia (wobbliness).
 
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id be reluctant to do anything without your vets advice, and if shes a nervous mare and known kicker someone could get hurt. if your vet wants to come back to do a proper exam she may well be off to investigate the possibilities of whats wrong and come up with a sensible plan of action, with safety mind and to avoid stressing out your mare. i hope you get to the bottom of it. fingers xd shel be ok.
 
callmelucky said:
id be reluctant to do anything without your vets advice, and if shes a nervous mare and known kicker someone could get hurt. if your vet wants to come back to do a proper exam she may well be off to investigate the possibilities of what's wrong and come up with a sensible plan of action, with safety mind and to avoid stressing out your mare. i hope you get to the bottom of it. fingers xd shel be ok.
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I was only suggesting pulling on her tail as the mare was walked along to see if she was easy to pull towards her. I don't think pulling on a tail for a few seconds is going to stress out the OP's mare too much. She could hardly kick out when the OP would be standing four foot away at right angles to her body.

Its up to you OP. I personally could not wait until the vet comes back to find out if there was a problem with my horse I'd want to know straight away.

The sway tail test is a pretty standard thing for owners to do and is part of a standard neuro test. http://www.ehow.com/facts_5504921_wobbler-syndrome-horses.html
 
There's no way the sway tail test can be performed safely on this mare, she's very nervous & will lash out at any movement behind... The only way we can get close enough to safely groom her beyond her withers is to barricade her in with bales of hay (which she dosent mind so much given its food content!) and picking feet etc is a dangerous 3 person job with hats & body protectors, we're yet to suceed at having her hinds trimmed but were hoping she will eventually begin to trust us and we wil be able to have her trimmed before they become overgrown (we sedated her to travel & managed to get farrier to do her feet in the horse box before we unloaded & she came round) but with her being a potential wobbler I'm now concerned about the option of sedation as the plan B. I think the vet simply came out stabilised her and moved on to the next emergency as I had the on call vet & everywhere was a few inches in snow at the time so not practical to be performing a complete neurological examination. I more wanted to know if anyone had any experience of either trying to work with a wobbler horse who was/is wild like this girl and how they got around things... But also if wobblers is/can be an intermittent thing as 95% of the time she is ok & looks perfectly normal but seems to go through "wobbly" phases, however I have noticed her struggling a lot more on the frozen hard ground which is a worry :-(
 
The vet will be able to sedate your horse safely prior to it travelling as my wobbler horse had to be sedated at Liverpool and I specifically remember the consultant asking his students what drug he should use for an ataxic horse (to see if they knew the answer) prior to him having xrays.

Wobblers can be intermittent, insomuch as the ataxia can vary from day to day and hardly be present one day, but much worse the next.

My horse was bad on and off through the winter, and on his good days was jumping double clears in BSJA discovery classes and on his poor days was very ataxic. Of course we didn't know then that he could have wobblers. He had three ataxic episodes that were very bad. It took to the following May before he was diagnosed with CVM. He was jumping up until 6 weeks before he was PTS with no problems at presenting at all.

He was stabilised prior to travelling to Liverpool in the June with Finadyne for three days before travelling, which helped his ataxia so he could be travelled. If I were you I'd ask a large firm such as Nick Sarson transport to travel your horse in a single box with no partitions in case he goes down. You will be reinbursed to a certain amount on your insurance policey for travelling costs.
 
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