05/24/2026
If you own a horse and you take the time to read anything. Please read this.
As equine professionals when we see slight changes in horses and we voice our concern. We’re not trying to over whelm you. We’re trying to prevent you going through what we’ve seen others go through.
"HE'S NEVER HAD LAMINITIS IN HIS LIFE"
He's twenty-three.
Been in the same field for ten years.
Same grass. Same routine.
Never had a lame day in his life.
Then suddenly — laminitis.
So what changed?
Usually, not the field.
The horse.
One of the most persistent misunderstandings around laminitis is the idea that it behaves like an acute toxin exposure. Horse eats rich grass, feet immediately fail, catastrophe follows.
Sometimes there is a clear dietary trigger. But most endocrinopathic laminitis — the form most commonly associated with insulin dysregulation — develops as metabolic resilience erodes over time. And that erosion is often almost invisible while it's happening.
A horse that coped perfectly well with a management system for years may not cope with it indefinitely. Not because the grass suddenly became poisonous overnight, but because the horse standing on it is physiologically different now.
Hormones change things.
Body composition changes things.
Underlying endocrine disease changes things.
The horse who once burned through spring grass without issue may now process carbohydrates differently. Muscle mass may slowly reduce while fat deposition increases. Insulin responses may become exaggerated. Metabolic flexibility may narrow.
And none of that necessarily looks dramatic at first.
A horse can still appear bright, happy, and outwardly healthy while important physiological changes are developing underneath. Still ridden. Still turned out. Still charging to the gate at feed time. Still living exactly as he always has.
Maybe he's just slightly rounder every spring than he used to be. Maybe the neck has become subtly crestier over time. Maybe the fat pads behind the shoulders linger longer than they once did. Maybe he takes a little longer to tighten back up after winter.
Owners often miss these shifts because they happen gradually. When you see a horse every day, slow change becomes normal.
Then one year the threshold changes.
The pasture may not even be objectively richer than previous years. Weather patterns may be similar. Turnout may be unchanged. What has changed is the horse's ability to physiologically tolerate the same environment.
That distinction matters enormously.
Because people naturally compare the horse to his own history.
"He's always eaten this."
"He's never reacted before."
"He's lived out here for years."
"He's always been a good doer."
Yes. And at one point his metabolic system was compensating adequately. Now it may not be.
Conditions strongly associated with laminitis risk — especially insulin dysregulation and Pituitary Pars Intermedia Dysfunction (PPID, a hormonal condition affecting the brain's pituitary gland, common in older horses) — can exist quietly for a long time before the classic signs become obvious.
Not every PPID horse has a massive curly coat.
Not every insulin dysregulated horse looks obese.
Some still look relatively normal right up until the feet become involved.
And the feet are often the first place the compensation failure becomes impossible to ignore.
That's why laminitis can feel "sudden" to owners while, physiologically, it often has a long lead-up. The horse does not wake up one morning and randomly decide to develop laminitis. Usually the metabolic and endocrine landscape has been shifting underneath for months or years before the feet finally reveal it.
And this is the difficult part:
Past survival does not prove current safety.
A horse tolerating a management system for ten years does not guarantee he can tolerate it in year eleven. The fact he "always got away with it before" is not evidence that the risk was never there. Sometimes it simply means the body compensated successfully — until it no longer could.
History matters.
But physiology decides.
