Experiences with melanomas?

fleabittengrey

fleabittengrey

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Just a thread to read other peoples experiences of melanomas and their progression/spread - will give a bit of background.

Grey mare bought aged 11 with verrucous sarcoid about the size of a 50p on front of neck. Left it alone, (vet advice) age 15 she was weaving next to a post and rail fence, caught it and ripped it open. Blood and stuff everywhere, within 48 hours it had cleaned up and gradually got smaller and smaller, less than a month later it had disappeared and never returned.
No sarcoids anywhere else.

Age about 14 she started getting melanomas under tail, now (aged 16) she has about two dozen tiny pimple ones and two large golf ball size ones. She also started getting them on her head, subcutaneous and only the near side, just below the ear (where browband meets headpiece.) Vet checked, said well yes its an older grey with melanomas, not much out of the ordinary there! Didn't affect her, but had to be careful with bridle fit (as it was about the size of a clenched fist)

In last 3 months new melanomas have appeared in the same place on the offside and grown rapidly, now larger than the nearside ones. I've not ridden her for a few weeks (for other reasons, kicked in field and has heamatoma on her flank) and now not sure about bringing her back into work to be honest, they seem to be spreading fast to new places (related to lymph nodes, is that possible?) and growing fast. I'm not sure she could comfortably wear a bridle at the moment.
I'm afraid I don't have any current pictures, will snap her tomorrow morning to show you.

Have our favourite vet coming out next week to see another horse (RK from CH for midlands people!) who I trust to the letter - and will ask him for an opinion on what should be done - not in terms of treatment clearly but more care and management.

Does anyone have any first hand expeirence of manageing melanomas in tricky places, did you have to stop working horses due to the places they appeared?? Did they affect the horse in any other ways?

Sorry bit of a rambly post ... just after any advice/words/stories, etc!
 
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Yes I have a mare I've owned for most of her life. She's grey as you might expect :rolleyes:. She also has the head melanomas like your mare. We retired her a couple of years ago as bridles do not lie smoothly or comfortably any longer. She's only 20 years old but she's quite happy wandering around her large field with all her friends. About 13 years ago she had a sarcoid in a different place which was about the size of a ping pong ball. I treated it and it disappeared and never came back. She has none in the usual under tail place though and no new ones have appeared in the last 8 or 9 years (which was when the first head/ear one appeared).
 
I've got a grey connie with a few tiny ones under his tail, he's had them for years! He's 12 now and they really aren't much too worry about. I would be wary about your mares, as they say that those on the outside are just a small reflection on whats going on inside. I don't mean to sound doom and gloom but a friends grey horse died suddenly in the field one day, on PM it was revealed that suffocated due to a massive internal melanoma on its windpipe. I would consult your vet, and maybe try and adjust a bridle to comfort fit. They don't go down, only get bigger.
 
The first few appeared under my boys tail when he was 10. Not a lot happened until he was 15, then a few more appeared, but nothing to worry about.

Then when he was 17 he suddenly got chronic diarrhoea. Spent 4 months and £1000s trying to control it and get to the bottom of it. Then suddenly (literally 3 days) the melanomas hugely expanded to the point he couldn't pass anything. I had to have him PTS because he would have coliced in the next 24/48 hours. On Post Mortem he was riddled with them throughout his intestines.

It's not necessarily the ones on the outside you have to worry about. It's what is going on internally :(

Sorry to be doom and gloom.
 
My grey shetland has got a huge melanoma within his lips/muzzle.

It started growing when he was 8yrs old and sort of stopped getting any worse about 3yrs ago. But it's started expanding again. Plus he had a few up inside his sheath, and they have got a LOT worse in the last few months.

He has always been a porker, but in recent weeks he's slimmed down and for the first time ever, I can feel his ribs. I fear this is the beginning of the end for my little fella :o(
 
natalia said:
as they say that those on the outside are just a small reflection on whats going on inside.
Click to expand...

That is exactly what I was told about 2 years ago, when the head ones appeared - I stopped jumping her then, she hadn't shown any signs of being out of kilter but we were hunting twice a week, schooling BE Novice and jumping county workers courses, it just wasn't worth the risk like jumping 2'6'' poles.... and since then she has just done dresasge/sidesaddle/posing - but now they have noticebly and aggressively increased in size and quantity, I think its time to get a vets opinion again.

Conversely, the last 12 months she has been the healthiest she has ever been - when she had a sarcoid on the neck/windpipe/oesophagus area she choked at least weekly and colicked at least once a month. For the first time ever she was porky and not relying on four highly conditioning feeds a day to keep her looking half respecable. She had been keeping fitness and muscle tone much better too.

Would any scan show up where they were besides what we could actually see? For my own peace of mind?

This is my horse of a lifetime, I am very lucky to have 3 great geldings to take up her mantle but she is the horse that went with me from being a nice young rider to being a professional doing what I love for a living - that being re-breaking/ re-schooling ex racers and problem horses in general.
 
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My vet did an ultra scan of my boys intestinal area. It did show inflammation, but they had no idea what was causing it. could have been anything. We were talking about sending him for a biopsy (long needle type, I didn't want him opened up) just before he died. He had a rectal biopsy and that came back clear (shows biopsies can't 100% be trusted). All blood tests just showed gut inflammation.

I don't really think there are any tests that can tell you 100%.

I feel for you. My boy was my horse of a lifetime too.
 
Many thanks for your replies Galaxy23, and everyone else who has replied, I know its never going to be a great long term prognosis but really useful to hear other peoples experiences. As I said I haven't ridden her for a few weeks and she is really grumpy, sullen and not atall happy - having been "top dog" for years and been my best competition horse, she has had to stand and watch me working other horses, but she doesn't know why she is no longer the most important horse on the yard, so to speak.
 
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Sorry, another doom and gloom post.

My mum's friend had her (admittedly in her 20s) grey mare put down because the melanomas under her tail had started to impede her movement as they were pressing on her spine. She had for a long time been unable to lift the tail to poop etc. And we had a grey mare who had some on the outside but on post mortem a huge one on the inside which pressed on her spine - she lay down and was unable to get up one day as she was paralysed from this one, she was in foal and both of them died - it was horrible.

I would ask the vet to look - see how long you can carry on riding etc, hope its ok for a while at least.
 
My youngster, 7yr old, Irish and grey, has small ones under his tail, and one right by his anus. I've had him for a year and the don't appear to have changed so far.
He also has one inside his sheath that I'm keeping an eye on (so to speak lol).

I'm watching them closely!
 
This is a really interesting thread

My mare was bought at 10 with a couple of melanomas under the tail area - vet said not to worry now approaching 19 they have grown in size (golf ball ) and a couple of new additions. But only in the under the tail area and to this day not caused any issues

When she coliced last year, the vet says there was traces of blood in her anus possibly from aggrivated melanomas on the inside. she had not long been back from stud so all the scans she had would explain the aggrivation.

What is interesting is how they vary in aggression and at different stages in thier lifecycle. I hope my girl will be around for a long time yet however I have often wondered about the long term effects, this thread will help me recognise issues in the future.

I really wish you all luck with yours - I guess all we can do is ensure they are happy and comfortable and know when enough is enough. I know thats how i would like to be cared for.
 
I had a grey pony as a child who had a few under the tail which caused no probs and he died of something totally unrelated. Also we had a grey horse with a huge one near his jaw who was a fab jumper and it didn't affect him at all, vet advised to leave it alone and he eventually died of old age related issues - nothing to do with the melanoma.

I currently have a 33yo grey mare and she has them. 1 small one between her teats which has been there for years and loads under her dock (some golf ball sized, some smaller) and a few around her bits. At the moment they are causing her no problems, they've never broken open and they don't impede her tail movement or passing droppings/wees. I watch her like a hawk for signs of them bothering her but so far so good. She did colic last summer and I thought it was quite likely due to internal growths and was expecting it to happen again, in which case i'd call it a day but she came through it fine and fingers crossed has been fine since. There's no scanning machine powerful enough to see a full cross section of the middle of a horse to check for growths which makes it all kind of guess work really but I just keep a very close eye on her and the vet checks her whenever he's out. She also has a scar on her flank which was there when I got her years ago and the vet said it was probably from removal of a sarcoid or melanoma. Nothing has ever grown back there.

My vet said that literally every grey horse will get melanomas eventually unless they don't make it to old age for other reasons.

Anyway these are my experiences of melanomas. Hope it's of interest and hope everything goes well with yours :-)
 
Equinimity said:
I had a grey pony as a child who had a few under the tail which caused no probs and he died of something totally unrelated. Also we had a grey horse with a huge one near his jaw who was a fab jumper and it didn't affect him at all, vet advised to leave it alone and he eventually died of old age related issues - nothing to do with the melanoma.

I currently have a 33yo grey mare and she has them.
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Well ther is hope for us all - some days I think I'll be lucky to reach 33 never mind my neddie :-)
 
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