Cataracts! Sorry, purely self indulgent post!!

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ClaireT

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As a follow on from my post yesterday about being offered a bar-fired TB, you'll never guess what I got the chance of today..
A stunning 9yo 16.3 Iron Grey gelding, olympic class bloodlines, grand prix dressage, floats across the ground like a dream, plenty of BSJA winnings...cost its owners £15,000. Sounds like a dream come true till they mentioned that it has a cataract in one eye, and will probably go blind! And they STILL want £3000 for him! Although 3 grand for something that does passage and single time changes might be worth it....if only it could see where it was going!
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So, friends, cataracts.. yea or neigh?? Can I take him to vision express to get them sorted out!!!
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A cataract on a human can be easily repaired, I'd possibly do some research on it before I ruled it out

Also know horses blind in one eye and they manage fine. However if they get cataracts in one arent the likely to get one in the other eye?
 
Thanks, Bean and Sohpie! I've been googling, and apparently the vet school at Liverpool are performing very successful ops on cataracts... Might see if the owners will reduce the price...at £1500 it might be worth a gamble..
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I saw a horse in Horse magazine that some people bought from dealers, they didn't know it was blind in one eye. He is fine, ridden etc he is a bit spooky on his blind side but very trusting.

Guess it's a gamble really.

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I think if a horse goes blind slowly it can be spooky - my boy is blind in one eye through an accident and it doesn't phase him - in fact he's bomb proof on his right hand side
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If the cataract is only in one eye and his other eye is ok then to be honest, it wouldn't bother me. I found that horses that have jumped BEFORE they go blind are usually ok - it's the ones (like mine) who haven't really jumped before they went blind who find the experience very scarey.

Because my boy hasn't done much he's going to end up going on loan with the view to him being given permanently if it works out.....

Beanxx - don't suppose the horse was from Ireland that you saw was it?

Infact, was it the new issue of horse because Ty was going to be in there! Perhaps it was him.....
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Yes, Sophie, that is me on the bay - but he died. The blacky bay is my current horse, but she is in foal...hence the search for some new hooves!
 
yep, my advanced mare had to be retired at the height of her game due to a cataract. the vet advised immediate retirement, as it was too dangerous to keep jumping big solid fences at angles etc. (we'd had our first and only near miss the week before)
i think for dressage and low-level stuff i'd consider a horse with one. depends how much vision the horse still has, if it's spooky etc because of it. my mare wasn't, but once i knew she has limited vision on that side, i worried about riding her on the roads, in case something suddenly appeared in her vision when she hadn't been able to see it before.
at the time, cataract ops on horses weren't an option (this was in 2000), but if they are now, it's worth a try, as long as the price allows for what the op will cost you.
 
My 16 y.o. mare has a cataract, it became more obvious recently but may have been there a while. Due to injury she hasn't been jumped in a while but barely knocked a pole and jumped up to Grade C before I had her. She is a bit spooky on the road but then she's a full TB, infact my 6y.o. TBx is probably more spooky. Not sure the cataract has made her any worse as yet but probably will get to a point where it does as did a mare I used to work with, she kept bumping into things and became a bit nasty in the stable so was pts.
 
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