Hello Everyone!

“Dear Audrey” will be part of my blog posts to help you as listeners with questions to hopefully help more horses. If you do not know who or what “Dear Abby” is, simply Google Dear Abby.

Here are the ground rules and boundaries for questions:
1. Just like the “Dear Abby” column, your question needs to be short and sweet. If long and in depth, I will not even consider it, look at it or read it.
2. I will not consider anything relating to general practice or realms outside of my knowledge. ONLY riding/driving/training issues, sports medicine, lameness and body lameness, equipment issues/fitting, rehabilitation, and physiotherapies.
3. Send your questions to: dearaudrey@declueequine.com
4. Title: Dear Audrey/Your Full Name/Horse Name/Where you live/Subject or Question
5. You may attach short videos or photos to the email. If long I will not look at or consider…not kidding!

If you do not follow the 5 rules above, you have wasted your time writing to me so please read the above rules again just to remind yourself of these 5 simple rules before you start typing or editing videos. MY TIME is valuable and I expect people to follow and adhere to the rules and boundaries. Also, I will not edit your words or descriptions. If you write it, it is exactly what I will post.

Here is a question that someone sent to my website just last week. I am going to format it for the first Dear Audrey blog post.

Help for my mare with Sciatica

DEAR AUDREY: I just listened to your podcast on sciatica in horses. I have a mare that is always kicking her stall, wringing her tail, and tight in the hind. I do massage on her, which helps, wondering what treatment is best.

DEAR MELANIE: I am sorry to hear that your mare is experiencing the typical clinical signs of sciatica. Because this is a peripheral neuropathy, meaning nerve injury due to impingement or compression, it can take weeks to months, sometimes even years, with proper treatment and rehabilitation. Gold standard treatment is ultrasound-guided injections. For acute sciatica clinical signs, one or two treatments, one month apart, will normally resolve the clinical signs and behavior the horse is exhibiting. However, and most importantly, a strict rehabilitation and exercise protocol is also required. Meaning that your horse may or may not be able to horse show or compete for that length of time. Chronic cases can take months to years for resolution of clinical signs with proper treatment and rehabilitation.

With gold standard treatment comes gold standard results, which means it costs money and takes patience and time! Literally, 80% of the chronic cases that I see WILL NOT BE FIXED QUICKLY. I am talking months to a year or more. Plus there will ALWAYS be flare-ups and reappearance of clinical signs no matter what. Don’t expect miracles. Don’t expect quick fixes. There is no quick fix or pill that will resolve sciatica, especially in cases with clinical signs greater than 6 months. Nerves heal less than 1 millimeter per day. It is a very slow process that takes lots of patience. Ask any person with sciatica. Not easy to fix or get rid of quickly. Same as horses, no pill or one treatment resolves clinical signs.

IMPORTANT FACT: NOT EVERY VETERINARIAN HAS THE SKILL OR KNOWLEDGE TO DO THIS TREATMENT! There is a huge deficit in equine veterinarians’ education on this topic, and I include myself in this factual statement.

If you do not have a veterinarian that can do the gold standard treatment, here is what you can do to help your mare. For common sense’s sake, it means DO NOT DO ANYTHING THAT CAUSES HER DURING EXERCISE TO WRING HER TAIL, PIN HER EARS, OR DO OTHER BEHAVIORS THAT INDICATE SHE IS IN PAIN. To me this is plain and simple.

I apologize beforehand, as I am going to slightly go off topic and rant for a paragraph or two. I am always completely amazed, actually astonished is the better word, that people do not recognize when a horse is painful during exercise. I include veterinarians, in general, also as a common denominator to the pattern of this continued problem. Strong statement, but true fact. If not, social licensing would not be a factor as veterinarians would have already taken a stronger stand with enforcement equally across all disciplines. One only has to observe a warm-up ring or exercise area at any horse show, no matter what discipline, and you will see people doing some minor to severe repetitive abusive “training techniques” to riding/driving horses. Yes, I know there are stewards; HOWEVER, the game of politics is involved, where eyes are turned away depending on who is riding what horse. It is getting better, but the game of politics and whom/what horse still is winning out at the horse’s expense even in disciplines where there are no stewards.

To whatever day this is posted in January 2026, I cannot believe that there are veterinarians telling trainers and owners that a horse is behavioral! Knowing the difference between a training issue and a pain issue is very simple by being a horse person first of all. Secondly, it is understanding that most horses are more easily trained and compliant when they are not fearful, painful, or sore. This applies especially to trained horses that once were able to canter on their right lead and now cannot pick up the lead no matter how hard you hit it with a crop. Eventually we all have to look at ourselves and make the choice to change and be better, especially if we are repetitively not resolving the problems we are having with a horse. It took a long time and lots of frustration for Sue Dyson, a veterinarian that I have the utmost respect for, to get published The Ridden Horse Pain Ethogram (2021). It was because the veterinarians, yes veterinarians, peer reviewing the submitted manuscript could not see the importance in the subject matter. Every single person that owns, rides or drives a horse should read this paper. Here is the link; read it. https://doi.org/10.1111/eve.13468 Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

Ok rant ended. Sorry about that. Moving on…

Horses with sciatica prefer to trot more than canter, so trot if she is exhibiting behavioral signs of pain when she canters. Most horses prefer to walk because engagement of the musculature at the trot and especially transitions to canter pinch/impinge the nerve more. Why? Well, that will be discussed in the Case Study 1 blog on Severe Sciatica.

If you want to keep her in shape and working, you can make sure that you warm her up thoroughly (30 minutes of walking) before you trot. Putting on equipment, meaning saddle/girth/surcingle, makes it worse. Why? Because putting circumferential pressure around any horse creates restriction. This topic will be discussed in a later blog because it is extremely important and off-topic. So if you are planning on riding her, I would very closely examine your decision of your want versus what is best for her and her ability to heal and get better. This means lunging her on a lunge line to keep her in some kind of shape.

Physiotherapy is extremely important and can be done by yourself, or you can pay someone to do it. Hind-end massage is helpful but will only last for a day or two to a week. Think about yourself getting a massage. Helpful, feels better, but not going to cure something like sciatica, which is a nerve (the largest in the body) being impinged somewhere along its long path. It is like putting your cell phone on the roof of your car and driving off to the grocery store 5 miles away. Without Apple “Find My,” even with it, your cell phone may be lost. FYI, if this does happen to you and you have EarPods (sounds like I have lost my cell phone, eh?), just drive along your route to the grocery store with your EarPods in your ears. They will connect when you are close to your phone.

That went totally off topic, but it is the way my brain processes information for solving problems of interruptions of signals along a pathway or route and reconnection, even if it is related to lost cell phones. Sorry about that…

PEMF, Magna Wave, myofascial release, laser therapy, magnetic blankets, etc., are all extremely helpful, but again, like massage, only last a few days to weeks. Chiropractic/osteopathy may also help.

I have found that acupuncture, especially electro-acupuncture if the horse can tolerate it, really works amazingly in the right hands of the right veterinarian. Truly remarkable, but in the right hands of the right veterinarian.

Shockwave, or ESWT (electrohydraulic shockwave therapy by PulseVet), not Piezo, works also. I have had many horses with clients/trainers that have used Piezo with absolutely no results. ESWT is actually a high-energy sound wave and is used to break up kidney stones in humans. Meaning…it penetrates! It helps with pain, inflammation, and healing, along with penetration levels that are superior to any other unit out there. Not opposed to Piezo, just the wrong species (equine) and depth for results.

There are medications that your veterinarian can also prescribe to help with pain, muscle tension, and inflammation. Talk to your veterinarian. If they do not know, please direct them to this blog or my podcast on Sciatica.

Hope that this helps you with your mare.

AJD