Stall walking

Some barn managers and owners don't allow certain bad habits in their barn: cribbing, weaving, stall kicking, stall walking..., etc. Dino has turned into a stall walker and I'm not sure exactly why....was he bored?....did he have anxiety?....was he hurting in some way? The more I let it go on to observe him, the worse it got in he was losing weight and I had growing concerns with him over loading his left front. I was starting to feel helpless and knew I couldn't help him if I don't know the reason(s) behind it. So I started looking back at our short history to see if anything jumped out at me.

When he was boarded last winter at Sandy's Lilly Bug Farm, he didn't stall walk. He was in the first stall next to the tack room, the walls were solid and there were no windows.

Then Dino came home where he was again placed in the first stall, closest to the barn door. My walls are solid for four feet and then have bars another four feet. All three horses can see each other and it increases air flow. My stalls have windows. I use to have the typical small barn windows that I hated. You had to crank them open and close, and one cold day Angel's window got stuck. I went outside to see if I smacked the window frame if it would help close. Nope. My hand went right through the glass and I had an awful mess with the shattered glass outside the barn in snow and inside the stall with Angel, not to mention my bleeding hand. That spring we were replacing the windows in the house, so we took the top half of the windows, which are roughly three feet by two feet, and placed those in the stalls. In the winter time, the windows are in, a bar frame is placed in front of the windows to protect the glass from flying hooves and plastic weatherproofing for insulation against drafts. In the spring/summer/fall all is removed and the horses can literally hang their heads out their windows.

Left to right: Dino, Angel, & Sancho

Shortly after Dino came home, he started walking. He'd walk to the front stall to look out the big door. He'd walk to the back of his stall to look out his window. This went on and on and on. At first I thought he just wasn't use to having so much to see and he would settle in as he got used to it all. At first yes, now not so much.

In early July Dino went to the University of Findlay's western campus for dressage camp. He had a stall right in the middle of the aisle against the wall with solid sides and no windows. He didn't stall walk. Shortly after we returned home, the stall walking increased ten-fold. But his workload suddenly decreased, due to the weather and his banged knee.

I have taken this all into consideration and when I started searching the internet into the whys and ways as to help him. I found a great article off of The Horse in which Dr. Katherine Houpt explains that while many people think "[stall walking] is brought on by boredom [...] evidence has shown that this behavior is caused more by confinement, lack of interaction with other horses, and the lack of grazing."

I immediately thought to myself, "No way can it be caused by lack of interaction with other horses in Dino's case. He can see both Angel and Sancho, touch noses with Angel and he's turned out (weather permitting) with them both daily." And then I finished the sentence, "lack of grazing." Bingo. This summer has been unreasonably hot and humid with very little rain. The large pasture in the back, never even got open. The small one in the front that Angel and Sancho have access to, they ate down and has pretty much died. The even smaller one, with better fencing, that Dino gets, had the same problem. So unless they are being hand grazed for 10-15 minutes in the morning, they are all turned out together in the dry lot where they receive a bale of hay (roughly 60-lbs) a day. Days when it's too hot and humid, they stay in all day and are turned out at night.

In the article, Dr Houpt breaks stall walking into two categories, "the first one being frantic stall walking, where the horse is walking around rapidly and probably defecating. This indicates that the horse is extremely upset, commonly caused by separation. Separation anxiety is characterized by the horse neighing, which is an isolation call."

Nope, not Dino.

"The second type of stall walking is classified as a stereotypic behavior. This is generally a response to a poor environment, which some horses can cope with and others can't. This is seen with the horse walking slowly around the stall leaving a worn-down trail."

Yep, that's Dino. It's like he's taking a stroll. When he's outside walking, he's never in a hurry and drags his hind toes. He just has this look of indifference, he'll get there when he gets there and he knows you'll wait. He has the same walk in his stall.

Dr Houpt does little to appease my fear when she states, "These behaviors generally do no harm to the horse. However, the horse may excessively wear the floor of the stall or may wear his shoes or hooves abnormally." All my stalls have mats and my farrier hasn't mentioned any abnormal wear of Dino's shoes. Yet I still worry about the filling in Dino's left front. When my vet, Dr Henninger, came out for shots last April, he thought he could have a bone chip in there, some wearing of the cartilage, or just some normal wear and tear of being a racehorse. Dr H said I could get x-rays, if I wanted, but it was probably really just nothing. My trainer has assured me if Dino were to have soundness issues, we'd know by now. But I don't want to add more stress with his stall walking. I did place Dino on a supplement, Devil's Claw Plus, just as a precaution. In my mind, I couldn't help thinking that with all his racing and training, Dino's body must have aged much like that of a human marathon runner. You put that kind of strain and stress on your body, you're gonna be achy.

As I continued with the article, Dr Houpt suggests adding more than one type of roughage, like beet pulp. I can do that, I keep it on hand. I've also been considering getting some more timothy/alfalfa hay cubes, which Dino LOVES. She also mentions feeding more than once a day, I already feed three times a day and I don't know if I could feed more than that, and she talks about changing bedding type. Right now I have corn cob pellets in Dino's stall, having switched from wood pellets and it doesn't seem to make much of a difference. I don't want to use straw as bedding, so that's automatically out.

In the end, Dr Houpt does not believe stall walking cause "harm to the horse, and if he doesn't destroy the stall floor or his feet, then you may want to consider just leaving him alone. There are some horses which only exhibit these behaviors when people are around. So the horse may not be stall walking or weaving except when you are present. Other horses will only stall walk when they become anxious."

I know that Dino stall walks when no one is around, he's stabled at home and I see the walking ring in his stall. But maybe he does do it when he's anxious. Like he knows its getting close to feeding time or turn out time.

Dr Houpt closes with, "All breeds are susceptible to stall walking or weaving. The occurrence is more closely associated to the horse's use rather than other factors. Dressage competitors and racehorses exhibit these behaviors more often than do trail horses. It has not been studied yet why different uses make a difference in these behaviors, but it may be tied to feed, amount and type of exercise, and pasture time. Without further studies, there is no way to know if certain breeds are more susceptible than others."

And there went any hope that I could stop this from continuing. Dino's in dressage training, he's a retired racehorse, and he's not lacking interaction with other horses. My only hope lies in adding beet pulp and/or hay cubes to his diet.

And maybe do a rain dance.