September 2003

Tying Up: Protect Your Horse Before It Hits

The challenge is to find out why your horse may be vulnerable.

Tie Free contains glycogen loaders, an important fuel for muscles.

A horse who is tying-up is experiencing severe muscle cramping after exercise. It’s not a single disorder with a single cause, however. It may have multiple causes at its root, and determining the causes and the solution can be a challenge. The first step is to classify the problem as sporadic or recurrent.

Sporadic tying-up means the horse had a single episode, or long periods of time between episodes, rather than frequent repeated problems. With sporadic tying-up, there’s usually an external management-related cause, while horses with regular tying-up may have an inherent biochemical disorder. …