04/03/2026
A tale of two ulcers
I worked with a horse who was recently diagnosed with grade four ulcers and put on meds to heal. I saw him about four weeks into treatment and was told that his owner wanted to start riding again. The trainer and I talked it through and agreed that that he needed at least two months off. We communicated this suggestion to the owner together, and after some push back about being disappointed that their teenager couldn’t ride for a bit, they agreed. Victory for the horse, and maybe some education for a young owner/rider about what putting the horse first looks like.
On a previous visit to this barn, I had seen another gelding who was in poor shape. At the time I did some ground work to help him settle as hands on bodywork was out of the question. The trainer and I both thought it very likely that he had ulcers. When I returned several weeks later, the vet had seen him and the amount of scarring and current bleeding ulcers told the story of years of untreated pain. I declined to work with him as I felt that he just needed to be given time to let the meds do their work. Frankly, this horse needed to never have anyone sit on him again. The trainer agreed, and was already laying the path for that to happen.
The first horse looked pretty good to the untrained eye - he would do his job (under duress given the severity of his ulcers), trying his hardest to comply with riding and training like so many do, moving a bit stiffly and stoically. The second horse, well, you needed to be blind to miss the fact that he was suffering. He was 200 pounds underweight, severely wasp-waisted, unable to stand still, and bucked off anyone who tried to ride him. In “horse”, he was screaming. But he was used up by a trainer at his previous barn in a lesson program until he’d bucked one too many kids off and then sold (don’t ask me about who would buy a horse in this condition, I don’t know the particulars).
Horses tell us time and time again who we really are. But do we want to listen?
What makes me saddest about the second horse’s story (in addition to his pain) are all the kids that were taught that it was okay to see a horse in that kind of horrible body condition and (attempt to) ride him - until he made that impossible. And then he was sold on without treatment or zero thought to his well-being or the safety of the next person that would own him.
If we are teaching kids that this is okay, what are we expecting they will be like as adult riders or professionals - or humans, for that matter? Instead of teaching young/new equestrians how to tune into the horses, sometimes we are actually teaching them to tune out.
Are you nodding your head thinking, yep, happens all the time. Maybe you’re thinking I need to get over it because it’s “just the way it is.” Can we please just stop. Stop and consider what we are normalizing? And let me be clear as we think “I’d never do that”: we are all complicit. Silence is complicity. Ignorance is complicity. Laziness is complicity. Sacrificing values to money, to winning, is complicity.
The trainer/barn manager mentioned above that I work with has a thriving lesson and competition program. Her kids learn groundwork and horse care. They created an actual charter together, an expression of their collective values that guides the work they do every day. They read it out loud together at the start of every competition and more importantly, they live it. She’s created a supportive barn culture of learning AND fun that supports the horse, first and foremost. Is it easy? Hell no. But the kids in her program give me hope, she gives me hope.
So don’t tell me it’s not possible. Don’t tell me that it’s just the way it is. The bad seeds are sown at the local every-day level - and so are the good ones. The change the horses need starts with us, not with the big names who are too cowardly to change because they think they have too much to lose - or they believe that they are insulated from accountability thanks to the false validation of fame and money.
Look around you. Start with your own horse. What do you need to learn, do differently, get curious about? Do something about that feeling that something in your training/barn culture/horse keeping isn’t quite right. Ask some questions. Get some answers - and if your vet/farrier/bodyworker/trainer/barn manager won’t have a conversation because they must always be right, stop being made to feel like an idiot or stepping on egg shells and find a new one.
We all have the ability to choose to be the person your horse really needs, backed by intention, commitment and action. Every day.
Drawing credit: from an equestrian affirmation deck developed by Katherine Lowry of Biomechanics
