Do you have a horse that sometimes is reluctant to go forward? Or perhaps doesn’t really want to work?
One time, my client Steve’s horse not only was reluctant, but he would NOT go forward. It was crazy.
Top three reasons a horse won’t go forward when ridden:
- ulcers
- sternum misalignment
- saddle fit problem
In today’s episode of Horse Mysteries Solved, I share how you could figure out which of these three is the problem, but also — how YOU could figure out these are the top three issues.
Summary:
Summary by AI:
In this episode of *Horse Mysteries Solved*, Renee discusses a common issue: horses that won’t go forward. She identifies the three most common causes as saddle fit, sternum misalignment, and ulcers. Through a case study with a client named Steve, Renee demonstrates how to investigate this issue. Steve’s horse would not go forward despite attempts at rest and medication, which ruled out soreness or injury. Renee uses a process of elimination to narrow it down to either sternum misalignment or ulcers. After asking key questions, she eliminates saddle fit as a cause and checks the horse’s sternum alignment. Finding it fine, she concludes that ulcers are the problem. Renee explains that mild to moderate ulcers can cause reluctance to move forward, even without the severe symptoms commonly associated with ulcers. After Steve treated the horse for ulcers, the problem was resolved, and the horse resumed normal movement. The key takeaway is to ask a lot of questions, rule out potential causes, and perform simple checks to find the solution.
Transcription:
Renee (00:00:01.9900)
Hello, friends, and welcome to today’s version of Horse mysteries Solved. Today, we are going to talk about the horse that will not go forward or is very reluctant to do so, and also how to be the detective who solves that problem. So if you have a horse who won’t go forward and you want to know the answer, I’m sure you want it right now. So you know what? I’m going to tell you. The three most common causes for horses that won’t go forward are saddlefit and sternum misalignment and ulcers. In no particular order, could be any of those three. Okay. So if you stick with me, I’d like to talk through a case and how First of all, how would I know those are the top three causes? And then how do you rule those out? Because let me tell you, you don’t learn those top three causes in vet school. There’s no class on that. You have to think through it. So I’d like to share that with you so you know how you can think through it, too. Okay. Once upon a time, I had a client named Steve, and he had a warm blood gälting.
Renee (00:01:09.72000)
So Steve called me because his horse would not go forward. Now, I don’t hear that very often. Usually, it’s reluctance to go forward or the horse doesn’t really want to work. But Steve was very definitive. The horse won’t go forward. So I show up, find Steve, and he comes over to me. He’s like, Hi, Doc. I have the horse ready. He’s all settled up to go. So you can see what he does for yourself. Well, that’s unusual to have the horse all settled up, but that was cool. But I did say to Steve, Okay, Steve, that’s awesome. But can I have five minutes to ask you some questions. I like to ask questions before I look at the horse, so I don’t prejudge things. So Steve understood that, and he’s like, Okay, cool. So I asked Steve lots of questions. And the key to being a detective is asking the questions. And so based on what I’m thinking for those three probable causes, I try to think of questions that would go along with that. So I said, When did this start, Steve? Well, Doc, that started last week. Okay, cool. So all of a sudden, or do you think it had any hints of that?
Renee (00:02:26.84600)
Well, Doc, now that you mention it, I think Yeah, he was hard to go forward for a couple months, maybe, but you just kick him into it, and then he’s fine. Okay, so it’s been a little bit gradual, not night and day. He’s like, No, now that you mention it, it’s been there for a for a while. Just now, he won’t go at all. So that’s very helpful information. Then I asked him, Well, is it only when you ride the horse? Now, at this point, Steve, who was very tall, 6 feet something, He looked down at me because I’m pretty short, and he had this look on his face like, Are you an idiot? And I caught that look. I was like, Steve, I just want to know, can you lead the horse out of his stall and back? Is he fine for that? He’s like, Okay, Doc, yes, that is all fine. It’s only one you ride him. Okay, so I asked him a few more questions such as, Is he annoyed when you tag him up? He said he’s fine. And he knew tack change, saddles or pads or girths, anything like that.
Renee (00:03:38.45000)
He said, no. He says, Are there new riders? It’s still just you. Yes, it is. And then he wanted to know, what has he tried already and how did that work? And Steve said that he had tried rest. I thought maybe he’s just muscle sore. Fair enough. Came three, four days off, but he was the same. Then he tried some Butte. That’s a very strong anti-inflammatory for you guys aren’t familiar with that. And he said, gave him two, three days of that, and that didn’t change anything either. So with just those questions, I’ve ruled out the saddle fit. As you said, it’s still him riding, so it’s not a different load on the saddle. He didn’t change the saddle or the pad or anything like that. And the horse was fine for quite a while with this saddle since he’s been using it this whole And then it’s been a gradual getting worse. So that’s more than likely not the saddle. I rule that out of my mind. Okay, so that leaves us with sternum misalignment and then the ulcers. Now, at this point, I did watch Steve’s horse go, and it was really quite stunning, really.
Renee (00:04:54.34200)
Steve got on the horse and give him a little squeeze, and he didn’t go. He refused to go. Steve even showed me gently, okay, it wasn’t a big deal. He hit him lightly with the crop a couple of times. Nothing. But the horse would back up. The horse will back up forever. The horse will also go laterally. He will not go forward. It’s so curious. So this leads into, how would I know in the first place what the top three causes are? Like I said, it’s not in med school. So So what you want to do is have a little knowledge of anatomy here, and I’ll share that with you. But you also just want to put on your thinking cap and say, Well, okay, what does the horse have to do to go forward? I know you’re thinking that is a stupid question. Okay. For the horse to walk, he uses his legs. Renee, what the heck? Okay, listen. Yes, the horse uses his legs, and we already know the horse’s legs are not broken, so we can rule that out. But you want to think, what else does the horse have to do when he’s carrying a rider?
Renee (00:06:06.4500)
Because he can be led back and forth with no problem, but carrying a rider, not so much. So think of it like this. And you would figure this out by trying to use your imagination, put yourself in the horse’s place to feel it out. If you think of carrying a heavy backpack, so not super heavy, so you got to bend over carry it, but heavy enough where you feel it, 20, 30 pounds, depends not, of course, on your size, but a heavy backpack. Well, immediately you feel it and your muscles tighten up in your back and in your abdominals, and also you feel it around your shoulders where the straps are. Okay? You can probably imagine that. So for the horse, when they’re carrying a heavy backpack, which would be a rider, their back muscles tighten up, their abdominal muscles tighten up, and there’s the strap, which would be the girth in this case, right across the sternum. So the sternum is that breastbone of the horse. It’s the bottom center of the bear, right where the girth goes across. I know the girth goes across the whole middle of the bear, but I’m talking about the center.
Renee (00:07:21.36000)
There’s a center bone there called the sternum. So that’s why I think, what does the horse have to do to walk forward forward with a rider? They have to tense the back muscles, tense abdominals. And when you tense your abdominals, you can even try it yourself just right now, however you’re standing, even laying down. If you tense your abdominals, you squash your stomach a little bit. It doesn’t matter if you’ve eaten or not eaten. It still gets tense around the stomach area. And then, of course, with the girth being on the sternum, that might be affecting that. Those were the three things that I looked for when horses wouldn’t go forward in my history of being a holistic veterinarian. And what I found is it’s true. It’s either ulcers because the stomach that’s going to have ulcers the whole time, but when you squash it because you have to tighten your abdominal muscles, they start getting agitated, and the horse will act up because when he goes forward, he’s got to tighten the abs and it hurts. Same with a sternum misalignment. There’s been plenty of times horses have been super girthy, for example, and all you have to do is straighten the sternum out and the horse is fine.
Renee (00:08:43.34200)
So things can be confusing, but it’s just step by step asking a lot of questions because there’s many variables, but you can get rid of variables by asking more questions, even the dumb ones, like how does a horse walk forward? Okay. So what the next thing I did with Steve’s case is checking the sternum, because with Steve, we had either the sternum was misaligned or the horse had ulcers. No other signs that Steve had noticed about ulcers. I will say that most people think of ulcers. They think of a really, honestly, severe case where the horse has got bad ulcers. They have black poop, and they have an angry expression, and they might grind their teeth, and they might eat their food or they eat their food. They try to eat. It’s just they’re not right with their eating. They’re not comfortable and relaxed. People think of those things. Those are when the ulcers are really bad. Okay? So the horse can have mild to moderate ulcers and not want to go forward. Okay, so in Steve’s case, all I needed to do was check the sternum alignment, which I did, and it was fine.
Renee (00:09:55.67500)
So Steve’s horse then had ulcers. That was the first thing we did. I didn’t even bother aligning the horse. You know why? Because when a horse has ulcers, their whole system is only interested in fixing the ulcers. They don’t care how the bones are misaligned. If I ever run into an ulcery horse, I say, I’m sorry, you need to treat this horse for 30 days with ulcer treatment and get back to me. And that’s what they do because there’s just no point in really trying to align a horse with ulcers. So Steve did the ulcer treatment that I recommend in my ulcer report. That’s a PDF report that’s available. I’ll put the link in the description. Okay. And then the horse was fine. I didn’t even need to come back. He was perfectly fine going forward once the ulcers were taken care of. All right. A couple of things. You might wonder, well, how do I check this term? Okay. That is in my book, Where Does My Horse Hurt? It is also a free video in my Taster series of videos, I’ll link below. So you can check your horse for sternum alignment. Pretty good.
Renee (00:11:05.18900)
So that’s in summary, if a horse isn’t going forward, you’ve got saddle fit potentially or ulcers or sternum misalignment. And how you figure that out is ask a lot of questions to rule as much in or out that you can, and then do some basic checks, like the sternum alignment check, and figure it out from there. Most importantly, just keep asking questions because there’s always an answer out there.
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2 Comments on “Podcast 63: 3 Reasons Your Horse Won’t Move Forward”
Totally off this subject, but I noticed, when my farrier was trimming my 18 year old Percheron, that he was unable to lock his stay apperadic, while a hind foot was off the ground. I checked the sesimoid bones, but are not sure if they were moving, or just the skin. I also checked the two ligaments beside the cannon bone, and they felt good.
I can’t find anyone in VA, and not sure what else I can do for him. The shaking, is in both front legs, it does not matter which hind is lifted.
Do you have any suggestions or advise to offer?
Thank you for all you do, to help out the ” little guy” trying to do right by our horses!
Kathryn Saunders
Hi Kathryn,
My only suggestion would be to check the sternum. I say this because it is both front legs, so it’s more likely to be something they have in common.
The sternum Checkup is shown in the Taster series videos (free). The link is here: https://www.tuckerbiokinetic.com/#taster
If you find the sternum to be misaligned, some animal chiropractors and some alternative therapists can fix it. Lastly, some TBT practitioners do distance work. (see practitioner page this website). This means they’ll work on your horse from a picture. It’s weird, but definitely worth a try when you can’t find someone local.
Best regards,
Renee Tucker, DVM