Yes. Although the illness and perceived pain often make the horse behave apathetically and withdraw, sometimes a horse experiencing pain tries to defend itself by biting and kicking. Especially if we do not understand the horse's subtle cues that it feels pain, the horse must use more aggressive ways to communicate about the pain and defend its body. Moreover, pain also causes negative emotions, such as frustration and anxiety, which can then increase aggressive behavior towards people and other horses.

As the name suggests, neuropathic pain arises from damage to the nervous system. For horses, neck and spine injuries, damage to the nerves of the limbs, laminitis, osteoarthritis, and diseases of the nerves in the head can cause neuropathic pain. Sometimes, nerve damage can happen during surgery.

Pain originating from the internal organs is often reflected on the horse's skin. It is quite common that intestinal inflammation, for example, caused by blood-sucking internal parasites, manifests itself as a strong sensitivity of the skin of the hind legs.

Your friend is right. Although, of course, your horse's behavior may be caused by pain somewhere else, the symptoms you describe are very typical of a horse suffering from toothache. Putting the bit on often worsens the pain, as does moving the bit in the mouth. Moreover, when the horse tries to reduce the pain felt in the mouth, it often turns its head to the side and moves sideways. In particular, if any observed difficulty in eating accompanies this type of behavioral change, the animal's mouth and teeth must be examined very closely.

Yes. Laminitis is often a very painful disease, often accompanied by neuropathic pain and strong sensitization to pain. The pain your horse is experiencing can also manifest as sensitivity to loud sounds and, for example, cold and windy air. A sudden onset of sound sensitivity or fear in a horse or pony is always a reason to contact a veterinarian.

Your mare is likely experiencing pain during the heat, especially in her back. Pain arising in the uterus and ovaries is unpleasant and distressing and can radiate to the skin of the back. That is why touching the back when brushing, saddling, and riding causes pain. You should make an appointment with your veterinarian to find out how to make your horse feel better during the heat.

Some animals experience things that are usually only slightly painful as more intense than usual. There could be several reasons, and we don't even know all of them yet. Often, a horse or pony that reacts strongly to vaccination is sensitized to pain, for example, due to an inflammatory disease during foalhood or severe pain experienced at some other stage of life. In this case, it also reacts strongly to other things that normally only cause minor pain. For example, cleaning wounds can be very difficult. It may also be that your pony has muscle and fascia pain at the vaccination site, in which case the vaccination causes more pain than usual. It is also likely that your pony is afraid of the vaccination situation. When an animal experiences anxiety, it tenses its muscles, and the brain produces a pain experience stronger than usual.

Yes, the pain in the back burdens your pony and causes suffering, even if it is not ridden at all. Children riding the pony also intensify the pain; after all, a child is as significant load on a pony's back as an adult would be on a big horse. Contact your veterinarian so that the cause of the pain can be quickly determined, and your pony can receive pain relief. The longer the pain lasts, the harder it is to treat. Therefore, we need to hurry to find and treat the cause of the pain.

Pain in the mouth quite often causes the horse to change its way of moving. This often results in an abnormal load on the muscles. That's why it's good to map out and treat probable pain in the muscles and fascia.

An anxious individual anticipates a possible future threat. Therefore, in an anxious horse, the attentiveness towards the environment and the state of the body has increased. The whole body, including the pain-sensing nerve endings, are in "alarm mode" and the brain, which anticipates problems, takes all signs of danger more seriously than usual. So are pain messages. Therefore, anxiety usually worsens the pain experience.

Different facial expressions are created depending on how the muscles in the face tense up or relax. Stress, pain, fear, anxiety, and other negative emotional states cause the animal's facial muscles to tense up and the expression to tighten. In calm and pleasant situations, on the other hand, the muscles relax, and the expression is soft. That is why facial expressions often reveal the pain an animal is experiencing, even if it tries to hide its problems. Pain face is of great help in identifying and evaluating pain in horses. In particular, they help identify mild, hard-to-perceive pain and, for example, evaluate the effectiveness of pain relief. Moreover, pain face is increasingly used in research settings to evaluate pain and pain alleviation in horses.

An anxious individual anticipates a possible future threat. Therefore, in an anxious horse, attentiveness towards the environment and the state of the body have increased. The whole body, including the pain-sensing nerve endings, is in "alarm mode," and the brain, anticipating problems, takes all signs of danger more seriously than usual. Including pain messages. Therefore, anxiety usually worsens the pain experience.

There are many emotions associated with the experience of pain, because pain activates the horse's limbic system. It is a group of different brain regions that regulate the body's involuntary functions, motivation, and emotions. Unpleasant emotional states, such as fear, anxiety, and panic, as well as suffering and a strong need to get rid of pain, are associated with the pain experience that arises in the brain. Since pain is a fundamental protective mechanism of the body, it has been appropriate in species development to make it as unpleasant experience as possible so that animals avoid pain, work to get rid of pain, learn from pain, and change their behavior and hierarchy of needs because of pain. The price of pain's protective properties is the unpleasantness of pain and the suffering it causes. We also know that pain itself increases negative emotions and causes pessimism. So, the oat bucket of a horse experiencing pain is half empty rather than full. At the same time, pain prevents experiencing positive emotions. It can prevent important, pleasant things like running or rolling. In addition, pain is known to cause anhedonia, i.e., problems experiencing pleasure.

The pain experienced by the horse activates the horse's limbic system. This set of different brain regions connects different emotional states to the physical sensations experienced by the animal. Especially smells. It is very possible that your horse associates the smell of iodine used as a disinfectant in hoof poultices with the memory of the intense pain he experienced due to hoof abscess. Therefore, the smell of iodine can cause fear in your horse for a long time.

A gentle touch calms, reduces tension, increases security, and releases oxytocin and the body's own painkillers, i.e., endorphins. Oxytocin is the hormone associated with nurturing, closeness, and love. It is released in the body during touch, sexual intercourse, foaling, caring for the foal, and nursing the foal. In addition, oxytocin effectively relieves pain. In addition, it strengthens social relationships, promotes attachment, strengthens the desire to nurture and protect, helps with foaling and nursing, and affects emotional memories. Oxytocin is also known to relieve stress and improve sleep. Endorphins, on the other hand, are the body's own strong painkillers. They make a horse feel good and help relieve anxiety and restlessness. Endorphins are released when the animal moves, does something fun or waits for a pleasant event. Massage or other touch also releases endorphins. In humans, the smells of vanilla and lavender, dark chocolate, and spicy foods have also been found to raise the body's endorphin levels. In scientific studies, the scent of lavender has been found to calm nervous horses. In general, pleasure and other positive emotions ease the pain.

Pain is not meant to last long. Pain is a protective mechanism of the body made to accompany injuries and illnesses that heal. The pain they cause is useful and adaptive. Because of the pain, the horse changes its behavior to avoid further damage and to heal the cause of the pain as effectively as possible. And when the horse then recovers, the pain also eases at the same rate, finally stopping completely. The changes in the horse's life related to short-term acute pain are aimed at how to get rid of the pain. Long-term pain, on the other hand, lasts and lasts and cannot be relieved by changing behavior. This is the main difference between short-term acute and long-term pain: long-term pain presents a challenge to the patient that must be dealt with daily. Therefore, eventually, the changes in the horse's behavior caused by long-lasting pain begin to focus on how to cope with the pain. However, these changes often start to cause problems in themselves. For example, the withdrawing behavior brought along by persistent toothache can, if continued for a long time, reduce the positive emotions experienced by the patient and increase negative stress and unpleasant emotional states due to difficult social situations. These, in turn, worsen the pain. In addition, long-term continuous stress strains the body, eats up energy resources, disrupts the functioning of the body's defense

forces, and exposes a horse to diseases. The resources the pain requires are taken away from everything else the horse must cope with. Pain also causes various negative emotions, which then, in turn, make the pain worse.

Animal tissues, especially skin, periosteum, connective tissues, and, to a lesser extent, the membranes surrounding internal organs, have many free nerve endings of nerve cells, so-called nociceptors, i.e., pain receptors. Each of these pain receptors are specialized to react to certain potentially dangerous things, such as hot, cold, chemical, or mechanical stimuli. Once these pain receptors are activated, the information about the impending danger is transferred along nerve fibers to the horse's central nervous system.

Myofascial pain refers to pain related to the fascia and the muscles.

Visceral pain originates in the internal organs and is distinct from, for example, somatic pain arising in the skin, muscles, and joints.