Hi Help....
May I suggest you speak with your vet about a regular deworming programm, with yearly changes of products, so the worms are not becoming immune to one type of dewormer. This is something that needs a professional.
Now please explain, do you use Join-Up as a regular excercise? If so, please try to understand, this is a procedure of comunication and trustbuilding, never an excercise! Should I have misunderstood what you wrote above, please don't be offended....
Items like coat and tail/mane could show that your horse still has some parasites, which succeed in escaping your dewormingregime until now. Brushing tales might be the cause of it being thinner towards the end, so try to entangle and maybe wash, but not too often.
Now gaining and loosing weight, most of all musclemass could be a sign that your horse doesn't have a regular excercise-and feedingprogramm. To build up musclemass you might need a routine of work and rest, that gives your horse the chance to process the feed and use the energy it supplies. Maybe she doesn't need more than good hay and regular training to find a balance.
Longlining with elastic side-reins could be an option to build up her muscles at the right place, but be sure you don't push her into a frame that's counterproductive.
You would want the right muscles to build up, so watch the lessons on longlining for horses that have been single-line-lunged, to make sure you help her in a positive way.
Miriam

In addition to Miriam's excellent advice, I would like to add that suggesting (hard) feed is pointless until you know what the hay you give contains/lacks in nutrition.
Can you get an analysis? Then you can calculate with your horse basic needs and go from there with adding minerals, proteins or whatever is missing, in accordance with the extra workload you give her.
What are her living conditions right now?
Is she on grass? Look at her field/fields she's in and what it/they give. Maybe you need to change location or maybe she is being changed around too much?
Is she indoors? Does she eat a lot of the bedding? Straw from oat contain more fat than other kinds of straw. Is someone giving her extra feeds of hay and at irregular intervals?
These are question only you can find the answer to as I have no idea what your regimen is. Maybe you have it under a 100% control. I'm just thinking it may be worth looking into.

Great advice from Miriam all of which I strongly agree with, especially the bit about Join Up!. I will just add a couple of points. I assume this is your mare that you are talking about? Or is this the Haflinger, or some other horse? (1) Can I ask what is wrong with "going up and down hill a lot"? How often do you exercise her? If this is the mare you were exercising her once a week, is that still te case?(2) Get a worm count done as part of what Miriam suggests re: worming programme (3)You know, I have noticed in the horse world that there is an obsession with horses tails!! :-) I'm not criticising here, it's a funny quirk I've noticed in the horse world and I'm sure there is a fascinating piece of reaearch into human psychology about this! Even when the rest of the horse is happily mucky the tail must be sorted :-) Am I the only one who has seen this? Anyway, back to yours..... "Big at the top and small at the bottom" is breakage rather than a growth issue: this fits with the dryness, the hair is brittle and breaking off. Watch for it getting too long and her standing on it (my boy has a fabulous tail but it grows so well that he stands on it and if I don't trim it he can soon reduce to a raggy mess). Excessive/rough brushing/combing will also make it break off.the tail is pretty much the same as human hair only stronger and thicker. Too much messing about with it is as damaging as no care at all. Nutrition plays a big part and if, as you suggest, this horse is struggling to maintain nutritional equilibrium then this may be part of the problem. What do you wash the tail with and how often? I don't use fancy horse products, I use a cheap but mild human shampoo and lots of human conditioner to detangle and then comb out gently (much cheaper: most equine products are grossly over inflated in price in relation to their ingredients just because of the word 'equine') Tip I had from a hairdresser: don't use human baby shampoo - ph is wrong and can interfere with condition despite it being marketed as suitable for adults.

Good questions from Kicki too....we must have posted at exactly the same time as that wasn't there when I started typing :-)

thanks for all of the advice, i do long line her but i never use joinup as a part of exercise. her feed is she gets half a chaff bag of hay in the morning and a hardfeed of only 2 scoops of chaff, 1 scoop of pony cubes and half a cap of equimin in the evening. the reason for the hay is that this time of the year the ground is very sandy (as i said in the cracking hooves question) and the ground is quite hard. the ground dries up and there is no grass at all, and hardly any to no moisture in the ground. my horse is exercised 2-3 times a week. on weekends, mainly saturdays i will get her out, do joinup with her, desensitising, then i will long line her at walk/trot or ride her at walk/trot, and she is ridden at walk/trot/canter on tuesdays and thursdays for only around half an hour. i had a physio come out and she said everything seems fine she just needs more work, she suggested lunging at trot on the vertical in sand, and she seems fine now, no longer sore and she has extended her trot alot and she doesnt find it hard to trot through sand. all she needed was some fairly hard and regular muscle work. i barely comg or brush her tail out, and i wash it roughly once every 5 weeks now. i dont use horse shampoo or conditioner as i agree with you, its the same its just more expensive, the same with every pet product. shes only ever changed paddock 3 times in around 6 months and she isnt stabled. I will ask my vet about the fluffy and uncontrollable tail aha its not that it looks bad, i was just wondering why its like that and what i should do :) also does anyone know how to build a bit more muscle in her neck and shoulders?

So glad you've finally had a physio out and all is well. I suggest maybe a quick phone call to the physio should bring you some good info on the best way to develop her shoulder and neck. Its sounds just a matter of time, patience, and consistency now. Good luck. My only comment is that there is no need to do Join Up with her every time - that is not the point of Join Up as Miriam said, but a bit of warm up is good :-)

okay ill ask about it. I usually long line her as a warm up, i dont always do joinup :) shes very lazy and wont move to do joinup anymore aha i use a plastic bag for joinup as a desensitising exercise :)

You build muscles in neck and shoulders by building them in the back/hind end. The neck muscles comes with proper flexion of the neck which is achieved by riding from behind with a good energy and drive from the hind legs which increase the degree of collection. Don't ever try to collect from the front and hoist up the neck with your hands. It will give you some muscles but useless ones for riding and not the important ones from behind. (Climbing and cantering over low poles is also a good muscle builder for the front end.)

just a note on using human shampoos & conditioners, human PH is 5.5 & horses skin PH is 7 i believe, so it may well be the cause of her having dry skin.

Very interesting Beryl, good point. I've been looking into thins a bit more and it is very confusing - I've seen reports of horse ph being anywhere between 4.11 and 7.2 !! However, consensus seems to be around 7 (neutral). On that basis, using a human shampoo does not seem a good idea after all unless you can establish that it is a ph neutral one! It's probably safe to assume that not all horse shampoos are tested for this either and, unless stated, may not be neutral. Thats what I love about this forum, lots to think about.

indeed vicci, & each horse is different so not all horse shampoos will suit every horse anyway.
I saw a horse react badly to one that i'd used for ages on my old boy, but this other horse had a nasty respiratory reaction!
I do use a wash & go shampoo on the hair on the bottom of their tails as it works so well, BUT i never use it at the top of the tail on the dock bone just in case.
i agree, there are lots of very good subjects brought up on here & gets you thinking about the things you do & why, which is a great way of learning.

Hi Help, I remember having similar issues at one point or another with one horse or another over the past 13years that I've had them around regularly. Unfortunately the nutrient value in the soil here in WA is horrid. Which area are you in? I'm in Maida Vale/Forrestfield and would be happy to have you come out and meet my boy and show you some of the ground exercises that we use as he has previously suffered from extremely tight hamstrings (he now sees a Bowen Therapist who specialises in Bio-Mechanics of horses and people (I see her too)) and has improved greatly. Both in physical and mental condition. You can find me on facebook if you are on there and pm me if you wish. This thread is also a reminder that the is a facebook group for the Online Uni which is great because I don't know about you guys but I'm only on the Uni once every week or so, which makes it really difficult to remember the threads I was talking to people on.

I'm in Byford area and it is a horrid dry area in summer, especially today at 44 degrees Celsius ... Aha she is doing much better now, she is worked at walk/trot/canter and is in games training atm as a friend of mine wants to use her for games which she is awesome at :) her real talent is starting to show :) her canter is naturally very long and fast, she just doesn't know how to slow it down yet so we are working on that :)

lol I have the same problem where I am help. It is horrible today. :( If you ever want to catch up you know how how to find me

Glad things are going well Help, you seem to have made great progress with all of them.

Yes I'm extremely proud and happy of them all! They are going so well! My friend is going to start taking her to training days to get her used to going out then she's going to use her for games :) she's already started doing simple training such as cantering or trotting past a barrel and the rider picking up the brush on the barrel, then going past again and putting it back on, cantering or trotting in and out of poles, weaving, relays such as riding past someone on the ground and the rider picking up the pole the person is holding, etc, she loves it! I just need to buy some sporting reins and a grackle bridle :)

That's wonderful Help. You can download lots of free game instructions from the internet which usually include instructions that are decent enough you can puzzle out how to train your horse to do these things. I do miss having one that had been doing it long enough that I just lined up at the start and sat the saddle while he did his thing. :)

In saying that I don't miss the dislocated ankle from him cutting too close to the barrel on a turn :P

Best of luck.

I have bought a grackle bridle with a sweet iron bit which she loves and she is very easy to supple to turn, round etc now. they all love the old sweet iron ;) She is going to commence training very soon to vaults etc and she has started doing alot of canter work so shes starting to learn how to slow herself down now :)

Thats awesome

next weekend she is going to tag along to a training day so she can used to it :)

I did that December year before last. It's amazing how well they can cope! The horse that we went with was very high strung and mine just sat there fidgeting all day :P