The ulcers may have had something to do with it. Is it a certain season he does this?Could it be a "displacement behavior"? you mentioned Weaving--- Like Cribbing, usually once they start that it affects the brain and they get some sort of sedatiave effect from it. Is it in an area that there maybbe a water source (and he gets carried away and can't stop)?
He does it in different places - the middle of the pen (200 X 200 ft, all dirt), along the fence, in his stall.
If you interrupt him and get him doing something else, lounge him, ride him, give him a bath, does he go back to this behavior and/or in the same place?If he returns to the same place , there could be somthing "located " there, and he gets carried away--starts logical and ends up neurotic....
It's hard to interrupt him, but I can get him to stop and he won't start back up right away. Sometimes hours later he'll pick a new spot and start digging again. I don't know what starts this up. The pacing always comes when he wants something (to go ride, to get in the other pen, food, etc) and can't have it. The digging has only showed up twice before in his life (he's 10). It's just really bizarre. He gets into this trance-like state when he's doing it.
And last but not least , he could just be neurotic or have a neurological blip and be having an "episode". Of course a vet can check him out, as soon as he starts this--but vets don't always see them on a day to day basis... Good luck let us know.
Horse epilepsy? But instead of seizures, digging episodes? Guess we can just do what we usually do and blame the blue eye on it. I mean, one blue, one brown, he's got to have a multiple personality, right?
