What is a cold-backed horse?

Despite having been described in equestrian literature for centuries, there is no single explanation for what a cold-backed horse is actually suffering from. This is because it isn’t a diagnosis, but rather a description of what we are seeing largely in the horse’s behaviour.

There’s a good chance that the first written account in English of a cold-backed horse was authored by the great horsemanship trainer William Cavendish in 1667. He described his approach to ‘restive’ horses, by which he meant those who were unhappy about being worked under saddle. He said that for some of these horses, simply being asked to work forwards on a loose rein was sufficient to ‘reclaim’ them from their restiveness.

A cold-backed horse was defined more recently in a scientific paper as being “a persistent hypersensitivity of the back, with stiffness and dipping (extension) of the back as the rider gets into the saddle. There are usually no other demonstrable clinical signs and no radiographic changes in the thoracolumbar spine. Initial stiffness on being saddled or mounted disappears within a few minutes. No effect on performance is noted thereafter”.

The critical points we can take from this are that ‘cold backs’ are short-lived changes in posture associated with a horse being tacked up and/or mounted. The horse reverts to normal after a period of riding, and a cold-backed horse occurs in those equines who don’t appear to have any problems related to the saddle area.

What causes a cold-backed horse?

Once a cold-backed horse has been ridden for a period, and their ‘cold back’ has warmed up, they will show no further signs of a problem and will work happily. In essence, this can be annoying for the owner, but it isn’t really anything to worry about. But how do we know whether a horse fits the definition of cold-backed? How do we know they aren’t suffering from something else, and can we really say that having a ‘cold back’ isn’t actually a problem for a horse? It also isn’t always just a case of a postural change. Some affected horses may buck, rear, plunge, kick out or even bolt, which is pretty serious.

In the 1950s, it was generally held that a cold-backed horse dislikes the pressure of a cold saddle being applied to their back, and so warming the saddle first could reduce the chances of bucking. Although that approach hasn’t continued, it does highlight the saddle as the chief culprit. It goes without saying therefore that the first thing to consider in a horse with an apparent (even transient) back issue when being tacked up is the saddle.