What to do when a horse or pony is not performing to its full potential?

This is a scenario we commonly encounter. The cause/causes can be simple or complex involving musculoskeletal pain, medical issues and behavioural problems or combinations of the above. Seeing the wood for the trees can be difficult, can take time, and may be a trial and error process.

The starting point has to be a clear evaluation of the horse in the absence of complicating factors. Trot up, lunge and ridden assessment on appropriate surfaces is a good place to start to establish whether the issue could be a lameness or musculoskeletal problem. The lameness examination area at Stables Equine is the ideal environment for this, offering safe, hard and soft areas for working on.

The nature of poor performance investigations, is such that the investigation could then go off in any direction and may lead to nerve blocking, X-raying, scanning, endoscopy, blood tests…. having the horse at Conkerfield Clinic means that we are best placed to pursue the examination wherever it takes us and either reach a conclusion or formulate an informed plan of action. Any treatments that needs to be performed can be done in the controlled environment of the clinic there and then.