Odd Tail Issue - Anyone Seen This One?

[EqTrainer]

I have a mare here who is very defensive about having her tail bone messed with. She clamps it down if you handle it. If you continue, she will eventually let you have it but tries to clamp it back down at any movement on your part. I can eventually manipulate it but she never quite "gives it up".

It does not seem to be an attitude per say, but more of a "I cannot do that" type of thing.

When she is out and gets wound up, this is interesting - her tail flags in a U shape with the very END of the bone flipping up. So it is STILL somewhat clamped down. When she is out and moving on the hills and using her topline, she does the same thing but not as dramatically.

Anyone seen this? She has had some other issues that have been sorted out but I was really hoping to see this one go away, too. It seems very odd to me, rather than being a "that's just her" type of thing.

[twofatponies]

An old guy told me once they judged the worth of a driving horse by lifting up his tail. If he clamped it tight, he would be no good - prone to kicking. If he just let if flop up with no resistance, he would be no good - too lazy. But if he resisted just a tad, then relaxed, that was perfect.

Anyway, my horses are always a little suspicious if you lift their tail - who knows, you might be about to do a ovary inspection or other icky procedure! I always rub the haunches and top of the croup to give them a head's up that I'm working in the area, then scratch and rub the top of the tail briefly, the pet it while getting a hold, and then lift gently. So it's not a "WAH, what's going up my butt?" moment, but just a grooming kind of moment. If they are a bit stiff, I wave the tail gently side to side and round and round a few times.

Yours sounds like it may be weirdly muscled or have an old injury though?

[Chall]

What her is her breed. For example, is she part Arab?

[EqTrainer]

Quarter Horse.

[FlashGordon]

No relation to her heat cycles?

Is she Impressive bred? I've had some Impressive bred horses do weird things and have strange musculoskeletal issues. Impressive-bred project pony whom you have heard me speak of many times was real weird about his tail.

Wait... no chance her tail's been blocked at some point?

[MelantheLLC]

Tail clamping and resisting manipulation are signs of normal neurological reflex, whereas a limp tail you can do anything with is a sign of neurological deficit, possible spinal cord damage.

Extreme clamping, I dunno. But if you've got a choice, you'd rather have it clamp than flaccid. ;)

[mroades]

I am with FG on this one, bet her tail has been blocked

[EqTrainer]

I would agree that her tail has been blocked.. in fact, that was one of my first thoughts - but her owner has good reason to believe it has not been.

How would I test it anyway?

FG, that is so interesting.. that was the horse that reared, right?

[FlashGordon]

Yes that was him. He had all kinds of weird twitchiness. Always a live wire. Sometimes it was a dull buzz, sometimes a loud roar! He was funny about his tail and it was always clamped. I figured it had been blocked or something at some point and he had damage, who knows. I had quite a bit of body work done on him but he hated it with a passion and eventually the therapist couldn't get near him.

I also had an Impressive-bred mare that I got as a weanling. She too had weird muscle issues, muscle "vibration", at least one episode of acute ataxia. HYPP N/N. She was not unlike the gelding, but she had good training and handling and never had the insecurity or fear factor the gelding had. She did best on loads of turnout and low grain diet. Also high doses of Vit E. Pretty much "normal," unlike the gelding who was NQR despite multiple diet and environment changes.

Loved both those horses, but will never have another one that is any bit Impressive bred at all.... I'm convinced that even when they are N/N there is something odd going on there.

[Catersun]

hubby's impressive bred QH mare holds her tail like an arab.... and does the same floaty arab movements to match.... it's like watching a body builder do ballet (Thankyou gettingback) I'm a little stressed out tonight, it's apparently taking it's toll on my brain)

[GettingBack]

Ballet? :)

[FlashGordon]

hubby's impressive bred QH mare holds her tail like an arab.... and does the same floaty arab movements to match.... it's like watching a body builder do ballet (Thankyou gettingback) I'm a little stressed out tonight, it's apparently taking it's toll on my brain)

LOL Cater that cracked me up. (and, hope you are ok! ;) )

I will say both Impressive horses were looovely movers, despite the weird muscle stuff they had going on.

[morehorses]

Hi Gayle - you may remember my young paint horse who you helped me with several years back (I was a friend of AS). He also clamped his tail...I had never seen anything like it at the time, and there was definitely no way his tail was ever blocked. And when I say clamped, I mean NO ACCESS. It was almost comical - the more I attempted to do something with it, the more he could clamp it. He was never pissy about it. I always attributed it to extreme muscle tightness - he was incredibly tight and possibly sore/uncomfortable. No Impressive in his breeding. He could never really flag his tail either. :confused:

Good luck!

[Catersun]

LOL Cater that cracked me up. (and, hope you are ok! ;) )

I will say both Impressive horses were looovely movers, despite the weird muscle stuff they had going on.


she is a gorg-ious mover.... she FLOATS... and she can jump... She moves better than my TB... which I HATE to admit since she is so horribly down hill. but she randomly falls over when stressed- infrequently... but it's happened enough that I wouldn't want to ride her, so she is a pasture puff that my hubby occasionally takes a nap on.

I am ok... just stressed out about work. Crossroads time... open my own office, or where I'm at needs to get serious about marketing. Meeting tomarrow with the director. Wish me luck.

[EqTrainer]

Ah yes, I remember that horse, he WAS stiff in his topline.. so was this girl, but not now. Maybe this will shake out..

she could be Impressive bred, I don't know, I will ask. But to add some haha to this pot, my big white horse is Impressive bred and he has no muscle quirks and is a 10 mover in all three gaits. And he knows he's goodlookin', which adds a certain.. mmmmmm... shall we say distinction to him.


Catersun, best of luck. That's a lot going on w/a new baby, too! How is the little guy doing?

[Catersun]

Ah yes, I remember that horse, he WAS stiff in his topline.. so was this girl, but not now. Maybe this will shake out..

she could be Impressive bred, I don't know, I will ask. But to add some haha to this pot, my big white horse is Impressive bred and he has no muscle quirks and is a 10 mover in all three gaits. And he knows he's goodlookin', which adds a certain.. mmmmmm... shall we say distinction to him.


Catersun, best of luck. That's a lot going on w/a new baby, too! How is the little guy doing?

The little guy ain't so little... 4 months 26 1/2 inch and 17 lbs. He's doing great... which is why I'm back to business at work. Thanks for asking :)

[FlashGordon]

Ha ha... I thought White Horse was Impressive bred!!! :lol:

But I know he is lovely, and so I won't lump him in with my other Impressive horses. I think here in WNY we have a lot of "interesting" ones because I believe he was local at least for awhile, so everyone and their mother was breeding horses to him....

Aww Cater can't believe Little Cater is 4 months already! Good luck with the work situation.....

[BornToRide]

Yes that was him. He had all kinds of weird twitchiness. Always a live wire. Sometimes it was a dull buzz, sometimes a loud roar! He was funny about his tail and it was always clamped. I figured it had been blocked or something at some point and he had damage, who knows. I had quite a bit of body work done on him but he hated it with a passion and eventually the therapist couldn't get near him.

I also had an Impressive-bred mare that I got as a weanling. She too had weird muscle issues, muscle "vibration", at least one episode of acute ataxia. HYPP N/N. She was not unlike the gelding, but she had good training and handling and never had the insecurity or fear factor the gelding had. She did best on loads of turnout and low grain diet. Also high doses of Vit E. Pretty much "normal," unlike the gelding who was NQR despite multiple diet and environment changes.

Loved both those horses, but will never have another one that is any bit Impressive bred at all.... I'm convinced that even when they are N/N there is something odd going on there.Could it have been simply EPSM in both cases?

[onelanerode]

She is not Impressive bred. Here's her breeding:
http://www.allbreedpedigree.com/majestic+red+star

Anything is possible, but I do not have any reason at this time to think her tail was blocked. She was bred by a man who has a TB stallion and turns out a few Appendix and draft cross babies every year. She was started at that farm, going Western, in the fall of her 3-year-old year and then turned out over the winter. She came to my last trainer, an eventing trainer, in January, and I bought her in late February.

AFAIK she was never slated to do WP and she did not have any training to that end.

[shawneeAcres]

I seriously doubt that this horses tail has been blocked, usually that causes the tail to become very limp and the horse doesn't have a lot of muscle control. One of my students has a horse that had been blocked prior to their purchase (they didn't realize til after buying it), she doesn't have a lot of muscle usage in her tail. I have seen horses like this one and just think it is the horse and probably won't have any "affect" on the horse other than I don't think I'd be putting a crupper on this one!!

[FlashGordon]

BTR, quite possible it was EPSM.... at least in the mare's case, as I had put her on a "low carb" diet and essentially she did very well. I had no idea what EPSM was back then, it just seemed she did best on pasture, grass hay, minimal grain and Vit E. So it is very plausible that she did have EPSM. The gelding, who knows.

Onelanerode.... ah hah! So it is your mare that does the tail clamping. Well yeah it doesn't sound like she's been blocked, and not being Impressive-bred that blows my anecdotal theory. ;)

Maybe she is just tight in her back/hind end for whatever reason? Or was, at some point, and now the tail clamping is a habit?

[ThoroughbredFancy]

Maybe she had some sort of injury to the tail bone at a young age?

All my other suggestions were already mentioned.

[EqTrainer]

Maybe she had some sort of injury to the tail bone at a young age?

All my other suggestions were already mentioned.

This is one thing I have really wondered.. maybe some tail cranking as a baby? Although I cannot find a spot in it that seems to be damaged (usually that is pretty obvious IME) so it remains very odd...

[grayarabpony]

That was my thought too -- some kind of injury...

[chai]

I have an old QH who was kicked in the tail many years ago. The end of his tail has the shape you describe, and I believe it must have been broken at some point. Like your mare, he doesn't want to have his tail messed with. So we leave it alone. I do put Cowboy Magic in in to keep ticks out of it, but other than that, we just let him be.
When you think about how horses go after each other, rear to rear, it is very possible that your horse got into a little scuffle in the pasture and her tail was kicked.

[foggybok]

She is not Impressive bred. Here's her breeding:
http://www.allbreedpedigree.com/majestic+red+star

Anything is possible, but I do not have any reason at this time to think her tail was blocked. She was bred by a man who has a TB stallion and turns out a few Appendix and draft cross babies every year. She was started at that farm, going Western, in the fall of her 3-year-old year and then turned out over the winter. She came to my last trainer, an eventing trainer, in January, and I bought her in late February.

AFAIK she was never slated to do WP and she did not have any training to that end.

Way back when people used organophosphates for bots, my old mare had a strange reaction. After getting tubed with boticide (vet admited it was a slightly large dose), she started moving with her tail clamped between her legs. She also became sensitive to anything touching her sides from behind the girth back. It was an overnight change. She also started reacting to other substances (she'd break out in hives from something that never bothered her before). Took almost a year to get her back to normal. The last thing to go back to normal was her tail. Oddly enough she was a QH with a TB sire with very similar breeding to your horse....

We tried everything to figure out what it was at the time (nobody had scopes back then, so it would have been interesting to see if it was an ulcer issue). I still think it was some kind of pain related thing caused by a systemic inflammatory reaction to the OP.

Being that tight in the tails suggest something going on elsewhere...

Can you do tail pulls and tail circles? Massage the points at 10 and 2 o clock under the tail?

[JB]

I don't have the book in front of me, so can't look, but it seems like I recall Jack Meagher talking about this at some point in his Beating Muscle Injuries book.

I agree this isn't a result of tail blocking - that would cause her to not have (enough) control over lifting or moving her tail, so she couldn't clamp down.

Can you do tail pulls with her at all?

[EqTrainer]

I can do anything I want to, to it.. and she will let me... but she tries very hard to revert to it's normal position. And she keeps it that way all the time, like I said, even when she flags it, it's U shaped with a little piece that stays straight at the very end. Very stylish :D

I do remember that from the Meagher book but I thought - off the top of my head - that it was about tails that were to one side or the other. Guess I need to dust it off :)

[sk_pacer]

I always thought that was a mare thing. I have found most race mares tend to clamp their tails when you put the tail through the crupper....sitting here running a couple dozenish mares through my mind, and cannot think of a single one that didn't clamp her tail to some degree ranging from somewhat inflexible to so clamped you can't shift it at all and they are rarely as gracious about giving up that tail as a horse or gelding.

Clamped tails and kicking harness horses doesn't work - one of the worst kickers I ever saw had a fairly easy to manipulate tail, but he could kick a driver outta the bike so slick and fast. The limpish tail and no good is slightly more accurate - they have no try.

[JB]

I do remember that from the Meagher book but I thought - off the top of my head - that it was about tails that were to one side or the other. Guess I need to dust it off :)
I wonder if it's Dr Kamen's book then? It's one of those! I have Dr K's book, if I can find it, so I'll look that up.

[easyrider]

Although I've never worked with a horse with exactly the tail stuff you describe, I've worked with a number of clampers, and love the ttouch work to relax the tail: http://www.tellingtontraining.com/Print/tteamstart1.htm

After a while, they love it so much, all I have to do is touch near the tail and up it comes so I can work on it!