How to Assess Pain on a Horse

When assessing a horse for pain, the end of a pen can be rubbed along the horse's top line to see how it reacts and moves away from the pressure. Learn about preliminary signs of pain in horses with help from a horse riding teacher in this free video on horse health.

Maggie Connolly at Hawthorn Stables and we are going to I am going to show you how we are going to assess for pain. Taking a horse and assessing for pain does not necessarily mean that the horse is lame or off necessarily, but what we can do simply is by beginning at the pole of the horse which is the top on top of the horse's head, I just take the end of a pen and rub it down the top of the horse's top line. So that it is through its back and run back through here. Now you can see how the horse reacts and moves away from from the pressure, actually the horse moving away from pressure is indicative that the horse is feeling some pain somewhere. This is a horse that was brought to me that was not in a lot of work. He had been off for about two years just doing some light trail riding and then we began to put the horse to work because the horse is now for sale, so what has happened is just do to working the horse, he has developed uncultivated soreness. These are just things that you want to be aware of when you put a horse to work because the preliminary signs that a horse is in pain can let you know what further things that can develop as the horse is worked through what it is that you are asking them to do and can begin to create issues and problems and and gaining the performance that you are looking for from a horse. It is very simple to do any horse can do, I happen to use the end of a pen you can use your finger simply and run your thumb down the top line here, through the horse's back, and around the horse's croup. You can see that he is less reactive on this side than he was on the other side, so that shows us that you know the pain is asymmetrical, which is a lot of times the case. That is a simple adjustment just a simple touching the horse through the areas just to see a simple reaction, if you are getting a reaction it is not necessarily indicative as something major but it is a sign that the horse is perhaps the horse is uncomfortable in areas, and there are many ways that you can target that and take care of that. One sign if a horse is very reactive in its back area or wither area, which you can see this horse is not, if a horse is very reactive in this area of the back which we call a latissimus dorsi, horse has two sets of back muscles, we have the latissimus dorsi and the indigenous dorsi. If a horse is sore in this area of the back or in the trapezius muscles in this area it is usually indicative of poor saddle fit which is a big time problem and something that is often overlooked when a horse that is relatively uncomfortable. If a horse is reactive in its hind end, in the glute area, this is its muscle area it could simply be muscle soreness do to the fact that the horse has been asked to work and before it has not been asked to work, just like if you go to the gym and you do a little bit over at the gym and you want to get up the next day and you can't it is just simple muscle soreness. Putting the horse back to work light work can relieve can alleviate that soreness. The sorenesses that you want to be aware of that could be problems is if the horse is lame or if the horse begins to show the the signs here that will be saddle fit, or if the horse is is sore up in this main area here it could be indicative that the horses teeth have have to be done, a lot of problems that stem with horses and soreness are teeth issues, which we will cover, and saddle fit. But basically to assess how a horse is for pain you can just run through the the lines at the meridian like I have showed before, simple here, run down here, and then reactive in the area can just begin to show us where our problems may lie. And this is Maggie Connolly at Hawthorn Stables, and that is how you asses a horse for pain.