Dullness

ALEX: Dullness in a horse, probably has to do with a few things. One; they’re mental attitude. How they’re acting in the stall, they’re hanging their head. They don’t have the same energy level you’ve seen in prior days. We always used dullness as, looking at a horse, maybe their coat was dull. It didn’t have a brightness to it. It didn’t have that gloss that it used to have. I think dullness constitutes a lot of different things, and obviously, would throw a red flag up. Why is this happening? It’s something you have to address and figure out why.

STEVE: Definitely, physiologically, there’s a reason for it. What ends up happening is if you’ve got a horse that has normally, a slick, flat coat, typically what happens when they have a body temperature, and they get chills, or a virus in particular; they get chills, it tends to make their hair stand up, therefore it doesn’t shine like does and actually will be a dull coat. It would look dull, besides being depressed, and their eyes sagging a little bit, and not having the same brilliance and same sort of alertness. Also, they tend to be maybe sometimes a little dehydrated, and what happens is the coat, besides being a bit dry where you can tan it readily and they haven’t been drinking water as much, things like this. You know they’re uncomfortable, you know they don’t feel good, and of course, they show the outward signs that their coat’s not as shiny and bright as it normally would be.