Jessica Jahiel's HORSE-SENSE Newsletter Archives

Tongue-sucking horse

From: Dawn

Hi, I just read an article of yours about tongue lolling. It doesn’t help me because the horse I just bought is doing weird things with his tongue without the bit in his mouth. I wondered if you had ever encountered this before. He seems to play with his tongue a lot, lets it hang out the side of his mouth or curls it in his mouth and sort of sucks on it like a pacifer. I also hear him making a grinding noise kinda of like when they eat. I am going to have his teeth floated next week but the vet who did the pre-purchase did not note anything unusual. Do some horses do this as a habit for no reason?

Any comments would be appreciated.

Thanks, Dawn

Hi Dawn! You're right, advice about tongue-lolling wouldn't be of any use with a tongue-sucking horse. Tongue-lolling is almost invariably a response to the rider's hands and/or the bit. Tongue-sucking is something else entirely. Yes, some horses DO do this as a habit, but I don't think it's for no reason. Horses always seem to have reasons for everything they do, even if the reasons don't make sense to us (and even if we can't figure them out). I've observed this behaviour in perhaps a dozen horses over the last thirty years. I've always been curious about this, and although observing a dozen horses out of thousands certainly isn't going to provide any conclusive data, I did ask the owners a lot of questions, and I can tell you that eleven of those horses had been weaned very early. The twelfth horse was an unknown quantity, as his owner didn't know anything about his first year - she had bought him as a six-year-old from a dealer. I would love to have been able to identify and interview his breeder, and find out whether he, too, had been weaned early. Until a better hypothesis comes along, I'll stay with the possibility that a horse weaned very young might, in the absence of its dam, attempt to comfort itself by sucking its own tongue - something that's always there and readily available, like a baby's thumb. The habit doesn't seem to be harmful in any way, but it does seem to be quite persistent - the horses I observed would all stop doing it under saddle, as long as they were working and focused on the rider, but would then begin again as soon as they were "off duty". One very athletic, talented young horse belonged to a friend of mine in England, and everyone in the owner's family agreed that if Tornado ever won Badminton, he would undoubtedly suck his tongue whilst posing for the photographers. ;-)

Tooth-grinding is far more common in horses of all ages, and again, horses don't do it for no reason. Tooth-grinding is usually a sign of stress, so if it doesn't stop once the horse's teeth have been floated, you might back off a little bit on his training schedule and see whether that helps.

Jessica

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