Basic-facts-of-pain-in-horses

Basic Fact of Pain in Horses

Introduction

Horses, unlike motorbikes, have nervous systems capable of feeling pain, fear and tension just like human beings. Imagine you worked in a physically demanding job and you had a sore back. Your boss just keeps pushing you harder and harder and, when you didn't perform well,he accused you of being lazy or stubborn- How would you feel ?

Horse owners must always be open to the possibility that :

Resistance behavior may be the horse’s way of telling you he is in pain.
Their horse may be in varying degrees of pain even they are not showing clear signs of lameness such as head nodding or an uneven gait.

Character of Horses

In the wild, the better a horse is able to compensate his weakness, the better the chance of surviving predatory attacks. Horses are masters of compensations and often this works against them in a domestic setting.

So how does one know a horse is in pain?

There are many ways of horses showing us that they are in pain. Here are only some of the many signs of pain.

Your horse doesn't like brushing him and gets angry when you put the saddle or bridle on. This works also for the girth.
Your horse goes very fast or very slow while riding. Maybe sometime only wants to go one direction.

Photo neck position

3. Your horse is running to fences or refusing to jump.

4. Your horse doesn't want to go up or down hill. Maybe refusing to backup, with or without rider.

5. Your horse might trip often while riding or lunging.

6. Your horse shows cross gait in canter or has difficulty in picking up the correct leads at canter.

7. Your horse doesn't relax or wants to stand still. Has difficulty picking up legs with the farrier.

8. Your horse doesn't allow you to mount when you want to ride him.

9. Your horse takes a long time to warm up every day.

10. Your horse doesn't want to put his head down and neck round while riding or pulls significant more on one rein than the other.

11. Your horse has overdeveloped muscles on the underside of the neck or underdeveloped muscles on the top line.

Somethings only happen in one way

Like I said earlier, these are only few of the signs. Maybe your horse shows different behavior for showing his pain.Just like human being, If you don't wait to long for getting into action, small problems will grow into bigger problems and those problems might not be cured anymore.