scats
Well-Known Member
I have no idea how I can keep the weight off the Diva given our current situation.
She has EMS, on metformin. She was diagnosed last week with a rare disorder that means her trachea is collapsed the whole way from throat to chest, as a result, she has to work harder to breathe even at rest. She copes absolutely fine at rest and in walk, just sounds more blowy than a normal horse, but in trot and canter her pharynx also collapses, so she essentially cannot get enough air in to exercise.
Vet advice was to try and keep her doing some trot and canter, due to her weight, in very short bursts but be very much guided by her and if she can't sustain it, then back to walk to get her breath back.
As a result of her airway problem, she cannot be stabled the whole time as dust particles from beds, hay of nearby horses etc, can make her problem worse.
If she wears a grazing muzzle, she gets very distressed and blowy because she then finds it more difficult to breathe. I have her on a very bald field overnight, with a pony who keeps her moving around a lot (without chasing), she comes in to 1kg of hay that I soak (but doesn't eat it all, she's not greedy) and has Balancer to get her metformin in her (1 cup a day)
I am riding her every day, hacking around our farm, but mostly in walk. If we have a trot or a canter, she manages maybe 30 seconds worth before needing to stop - vets have said she must be allowed to stop when she needs to. Underneath this, she has been very fit as obviously prior to this diagnosis I was being told she was simply fit and unfit and to get her as fit as possible, so what we are doing now is simply not having any impact on her at all and is not going to cut it with weight loss. I struggled before, so it's near-on impossible now.
Pony in herself is fine. They think she's had this problem for many years (congenital) so she has adapted very well. She has more breathless days, the atmosphere of the air can affect her as well, and some much better days, but the exercise issue doesn't change. But I am well aware that she is going to cope much better with less weight to carry. Last week she weighed 508. I want to get her down to 450 with the idea of then trying to get her down to 400, but I realise this may be near on impossible.
I am distraught because I don't know what I can do to help her. Not being able to exercise her properly is the biggest problem. She's gone from 6 days a week full-on work, to pootling about on the end of the rein - she can no longer be be ridden into a contact as this actually shuts her windpipe off.
I am open to any suggestions or seeking advice from anyone who has been in this situation or even a similar one.
There is no medication or treatment for her condition unfortunately. The only suggestion by the vets was to help her by getting her weight down.
She has EMS, on metformin. She was diagnosed last week with a rare disorder that means her trachea is collapsed the whole way from throat to chest, as a result, she has to work harder to breathe even at rest. She copes absolutely fine at rest and in walk, just sounds more blowy than a normal horse, but in trot and canter her pharynx also collapses, so she essentially cannot get enough air in to exercise.
Vet advice was to try and keep her doing some trot and canter, due to her weight, in very short bursts but be very much guided by her and if she can't sustain it, then back to walk to get her breath back.
As a result of her airway problem, she cannot be stabled the whole time as dust particles from beds, hay of nearby horses etc, can make her problem worse.
If she wears a grazing muzzle, she gets very distressed and blowy because she then finds it more difficult to breathe. I have her on a very bald field overnight, with a pony who keeps her moving around a lot (without chasing), she comes in to 1kg of hay that I soak (but doesn't eat it all, she's not greedy) and has Balancer to get her metformin in her (1 cup a day)
I am riding her every day, hacking around our farm, but mostly in walk. If we have a trot or a canter, she manages maybe 30 seconds worth before needing to stop - vets have said she must be allowed to stop when she needs to. Underneath this, she has been very fit as obviously prior to this diagnosis I was being told she was simply fit and unfit and to get her as fit as possible, so what we are doing now is simply not having any impact on her at all and is not going to cut it with weight loss. I struggled before, so it's near-on impossible now.
Pony in herself is fine. They think she's had this problem for many years (congenital) so she has adapted very well. She has more breathless days, the atmosphere of the air can affect her as well, and some much better days, but the exercise issue doesn't change. But I am well aware that she is going to cope much better with less weight to carry. Last week she weighed 508. I want to get her down to 450 with the idea of then trying to get her down to 400, but I realise this may be near on impossible.
I am distraught because I don't know what I can do to help her. Not being able to exercise her properly is the biggest problem. She's gone from 6 days a week full-on work, to pootling about on the end of the rein - she can no longer be be ridden into a contact as this actually shuts her windpipe off.
I am open to any suggestions or seeking advice from anyone who has been in this situation or even a similar one.
There is no medication or treatment for her condition unfortunately. The only suggestion by the vets was to help her by getting her weight down.
I can't come up with anything that can help but only suggest longer or more hacks a day. Have you got a walker near by maybe?
