Detecting Ulcers in your horse with pressure points (Video)

A friend of mine Ali shared this great video this morning by Mark DePaolo, DVM on how he teaches us, the horse owner, on how to check your horses for stomach and intestine ulcers.

As has come to light in the last few years, a lot of horses behavioural problems have often stemmed from preventable and fixable things like looking after your horses teeth and having them checked regularly, having it's back regularly checked and also looking for tell tale signs that your horse may have ulcers.

Horses have complex stomachs, therefore they can get ulcers from a number of things such as the wrong type of feed, stress, not having enough food in their stomach before work (which can help reduce acid splash in the stomach that causes ulcers) etc

I encourage you to go out and check your horses like Mark suggests.
Recently B has been a bit off when brushing his tummy and sides and not that pleased with having a girth done up so it looks like these could be signs. We had him gastroscoped at NEH and low and behold he had ulcers. 2.5 on the scale of  4. 1 Being mild, 4 being Severe. We've changed his foot and he no longer has ulcers and his behaviour as gone back to normal. No more trying to bite, no more ears laid back, no more tail swishing, and no more angry faces..

Go and check your horse! See if this happens! I read that between 50 - 90% of horses have stomaches ulcers of varying severity. That is a lot! And often they're untreated and there behaviour is seen as naughty or malicous when in fact they're responding to pain.
Has your horse become weird about having a bit put in it's mouth or salivating a lot more than usual - Have it's teeth checked! It could have a hooked tooth, or one could be broken. 
Has it not been schooling or riding normally recently e.g. bucking, not wanting to respond to aids? - Have a physio out! Have your saddle fitting checked. Does your saddle need more flocking in it?

All these are simple things that can help your horse be more comfortable. They don't really cost the Earth and you're making your horse more comfortable and happy.

You would want someone to listen to you if you were in pain wouldn't you? Your horse can't speak so look at what they're telling you with body language