Accident Prone Horses?

Question

I have a 12 year old OTTB who is seriously the most accident prone horse I have ever met. This week though he really out did himself. He developed an abscess last Wen. and we got the vet out to open it. He started getting better but on Sunday he was lame again. The anscess had re-developed or something. He was 3-legged lame. Then today we found a huge gash on another leg. So now he has two functioning legs.

Do you have an accident prone horse?

How do you (attempt) to keep him safe?

What was his/her strangest accident?

Answer 1

Horses become "accident prone" when they are not fully present and connected with their body. Many OTTBs are accident prone once they leave the track because their life was so structured that they never really learned what it feels like to walk around in a relaxed body or be aware of their environment.

On the track, their whole job is to ignore what their body tells them and just run when asked. After their first year of life, they're brought from a pasture into a box stall with little to no natural stimulation, no encouragement to explore their world. Nobody at the track is doing the rehabilitative work that helps horses realize that they are connected to a body that will communicate dangers to them.

It's not just TBs that experience this - really any horse who, for whatever reason, has chosen to tune out the danger signals given by the body can appear to be "accident prone".

You can help these horses with relaxed, regular grooming sessions, where the goal is a relaxed body, not a clean one. When you approach grooming from a perspective of friendship rather than a task to perform, your horse can feel the difference. It may take a few sessions before the horse is willing to tune into his body - the whole reason he's not connected is because somewhere down the line his sense of survival told him to disconnect. Coming back in can feel threatening, just as if we were facing our own fear of heights.

A talented equine massage therapist can also really help a horse be more comfortable in his/her own body. If you can find someone who also uses Reiki energy in their massage, even better. Here, too, the goal is not necessarily to work out the kinks, it's to invite the horse to be comfortable enough in his own body that he slows his mind down and notices his immediate environment.

If you are willing to communicate more deeply with your horse, a session with a talented communicator can make a tremendous difference. There are many subtleties to why horses tune their bodies out - we can invite them back in, remind them that their true nature is to be relaxed in the body, and shift their perspective so they literally begin to see the world around them differently. I can help with this...

Answer 2

Hello,

My input:

YES, we now have 2 of these accident prone horses!!!!!

Our original has been with us for 5 years now!  She always gets some good gash that needs to be bandaged about a day or two before we go on vacation!  And I mean gashes that need bandage changing!  It happend on our last 2 planned vacations!  AND she is one of our top performance horses (1D barrel horse)...  She is always nicked up!

NOW, we have had a new horse for 1 month and he started his stay here with his first night nicking his leg and being swollen on it for 10 days!  It healed up, and we rode him, he is awesome!!!  BUT, he has nicked him self a couple more times....  AND to top it off today, he punctured himself and has to go to the vet tomorrow...it's deep and you can see the tendon!  Our vet had us wrap it and he goes in a 7 AM tomorrow!  I think he stepped on a branch and it flipped up and stabbed him!

We don't really keep them in padded rooms, but they probably should be!  Most of their cuts, and nicks haven't been too bad, but they get way more than our other 9 horses!

We just look them over good and they stay out in pasture with their herds...

But, JD the one that was hurt today, wins the freakiest accident, stepping on that stick and having it stab himself!

UPDATE>>>  JD is still at the vets, he will be there until Mon. on IV antibiotics.  They cleaned up his injury, but cannot tell yet if it went into his joint!  WISH I had a time machine to speed things up for him.  I MISS him, he is such a big hearted guy, he already stole my heart.  HOPE he gets home soon...  TOO bad he seems so accident prone~!

Answer 3

I am always concious of my horses safety and look carefully at their environment for things they can hurt themselves on.  If you have junk or stuff piled inside their enclosure then remove it.  If there are sharp edges on anything, get rid of it.  If the fences are in disrepair then fix them.  If your barn is unsafe, fix it.  Look around with an eye for things that might cause an injury if a horse bumps against it, walks over it or through it.  Then fix, remove or repair.  I am convinced a horse can hurt himself in a padded room but why not look around and fix the obvious stuff anyhow?

Answer 4

I have a TB who is an amazing eventer, etc etc, but seems to go out of her way to hurt herself.

The worst was when she decided to have a good roll right near the fence, and got her front leg under the wire. She ripped the equivalent to a horses armpit on the wire, which ripped a gash about 6 inches long. When I went down to feed her, I saw her laying on the ground, and didn't even attempt to get up when she saw me, which never happens. When I got closer, i saw that she was lying in a pool of blood (excuse the horror movie expression), and as you do, I freaked out. When the vet came, he obviously had to clean the wound, and had his arm up to the elbow INSIDE my horse. It took her over 3 months to fully heal, and is now back to hurting herself on a regular basis.

The best you can do to keep them safe is make sure there's no barbed wire fencing, no sharp water troughs etc, and no shrapnel lying around. Our fences are all wooden railing, paddock is as safe as can be, but I've come to terms that I have a hella cumsy horse.

Answer 5

One of our newer horses used to be like that. The first day we got him, overnight he got a large gash on his nose, which has left quite a scar. Three days later he cut his eye-lid pretty deep which required  alot of attention and then a week later he cut above his hoof. He is past that stage of damaging himself (hopefully) but we still like to keep a close eye on him. I know, not as bad problems of other people's but it's as good as I've got. As for keeping him safe, put a stack-hat on and wrap him in bubble wrap : P.  

Answer 6

I have one.  I don't think there's much you can do except make sure your fencing is safe.  I just turn him out and hope for the best.

His strangest accident was the day he strolled in to be fed with a hole in his head.  Yes, right in the middle of his forehead was a hole, including broken skull bone, that was about 1 inch long and 1/2 inch wide.  He couldn't care less - he just wanted his breakfast and had no other symptoms besides the hole.   I called the vet out later, thinking he should have some antibiotics or something.  The vet tried to remove the jagged bone fragment but it wouldn't budge.  I have no idea how he did it, and nothing ever came of it, but now he has a slight depression on the edge of his star.

Answer 7

I HAVE ONE!

oh god,  theres nothing you can do about it..  He just came to a new pature that wasnt babyproof, there were a few nails here and there.. 4 horses had been living there for 2 years and not one scratch.. but within the first 4 days he found every nail, and got gashed!  I went out and searched for hours and found as many as i could...  

Answer 8

Yes...I own one...or rather, my husband does.  IT'S HIS HORSE!!  The one I talk about...Bones.

We actually called him "Vet Bill" the first two years we owned him.

As a long yearling, he charged the gate in the arena...knocked me into the mud, and cut the inside of his front leg on the gate somehow...and exposed the bone.

The real doozy...he was in his paddock.  We were petting him.  He reached over and grabbed the latch.  He bit on to it...and jerked his head up, like he was trying to bite the latch off.  He ended up tearing out one of his teeth and the piece of bone it was connected to.  It looked like a thumb sticking out of his mouth with a tooth attached.  Vet 'created' braces for him.  The tooth and bone healed...but when he lost the baby tooth...no new one grew in...so he has a gap now.

That was the weirdest one.

The worst one...was he bolted and went through two fences...down the road, crossed another road, flipped over the neighbor's fence at the corner where it was braced with 8 inch round poles, and raced around a pasture full of garbage and scrap barb wire.  By the time he was caught...lacerations from nose and ears...to buttocks.  6 inches of bone showing on the back cannon.  Thought we were gonna lose him for sure.  Hmmmm...sound as can be today.

Abscesses, cuts, scrapes, huge welts from tearing a hornet nest out of a tree...this horse continually tries to kill himself!!