Its like standing on a precipice

[MystieMoo]

I rode other people's horses for thirty plus years before I was able to buy my own, and I remember thinking (with friends' experiences in mind) 'just buy something sound!' (obviously it's not as simple as that..) Anyway, I lost my head, bought a project (many homes, bad feet, difficult on the ground/psychologically a bit screwed up, physically wonky enough to pass a 5-stage but not to stand up to regular work), and retired him 18 months later. Goodness the sensation of relief when I stopped worrying about how rehab was going, or not going. The strange thing is I think that because he was mine I didn't want to have that struggle. I've helped with plenty of rehabs before but without the emotional investment. When it came to the Wonky One I felt much happier just doing what made him happy. We ended up buying a field, installing a permanent track/yard system and having a couple of retirees. My main horsey aim now is to eliminate mud. Nearly there this winter!

I totally get this. My daughter is 17 and events our ID x Cob. I worry incessantly to the the point of anxiety over them both keeping sound & well. My daughter will be off to university September 2023 and while I dread that day because I will miss her so much, from the horse point of view the pressure will be off as she will stay with me and be a happy hacker - I will worry, but not half so much, I hope!

 

[Boulty]

With my previous horse I used to say it was like walking a tightrope whilst juggling chainsaws (& sometimes the chainsaws were on fire). I did everything I could to make the "tightrope" as wide as possible by catering every bit of his management to his issues (whilst also taking his mental health into account) & he did everything he could to increase the number of things I was juggling & god help me if I dropped / took my eye off any single one of his issues as everything would fall to bits. Current horse is even more of a master of this & spends most of his life conspiring to do as little work as possible! (Rising 6 & still not fully backed despite starting the process when he was 4 & a bit!)

 

[ThreeFurs]

This! Yes. How easily they break, and how a lot of the time we're actually pre-mourning them, in a form of anticipatory grief. Mine has IBD, - eosinphilic colitis. He has stopped responding well to dexamethasone after doing well for about five months. I feel like atm my life is a round of tweaking medications, researching his illness, injecting him, cleaning his bum, and worrying about his diarrhea. I do also work, but as a freelance that's gone temporarily quiet, but will pick up.

Some days it feels unbearable, others I'm quite optimistic, it depends how comfortable he is. I've decided to review everything in September, which will make it a year since the colitis began, and 9 months since steroid treatment began.

But then at least I have him [and my retired oldie]. We've had two sudden horse deaths on our yard in the last two weeks; we all chip in for cards, photos and gifts; but it seems to be a constant process. Yet my oldie? Now had him 10 years, [retired two years ago at 22 due to arthritis.] I think in all that time we had maybe 3 vet visits. Competed him up to Advanced dressage. He gave me a dream run, and I thought they'd all be like him!

Non-horse people must think we're mad, being so deeply in love with a species that seems to spend its life hellbent on dying from tummy ache xx

 

[SO1]

Turned out it was arthritis easily treated with arthramid.

The bad news is that 4 days after he came back from vets he had a horrendous bout of colic two emergency vet visits and walking through the night followed by another first thing in the morning to check he was ok.

YO suggested I scope for ulcers and whilst scoping they found a gastric impaction. He went into hospital and finally after nearly a week of flushing with water and coke they managed to disolve the impaction. There was also a glandular ulcer.

Prognosis unknown as his stomach is massively distended and vet doesn't know if it will return to normal. So on ulcer treatment and very restricted diet with no hay or long stem forage for 4 weeks he is allowed 7 hours turnout with muzzle on on short grass and 4 meals a day consisting of one scoop of soaked chaff and he is also having lamigel. Then rescope to check to see if stomach emptying properly. If stomach not emptying properly then will need to be PTS as impaction will return.

The arthritis treatment has worked well and he looks really bright and healthy but who knows what is happening with his stomach. Not what we expected at all. If we had not have scoped the impaction would not have been found and his stomach would have eventually ruptured.

I hope you get to the bottom of the problem and pony is okay. Super stressful for you. I find I stress even when things are going right, in case something goes wrong!

 

[Birker2020]

Turned out it was arthritis easily treated with arthramid.

The bad news is that 4 days after he came back from vets he had a horrendous bout of colic two emergency vet visits and walking through the night followed by another first thing in the morning to check he was ok.

YO suggested I scope for ulcers and whilst scoping they found a gastric impaction. He went into hospital and finally after nearly a week of flushing with water and coke they managed to disolve the impaction. There was also a glandular ulcer.

Prognosis unknown as his stomach is massively distended and vet doesn't know if it will return to normal. So on ulcer treatment and very restricted diet with no hay or long stem forage for 4 weeks he is allowed 7 hours turnout with muzzle on on short grass and 4 meals a day consisting of one scoop of soaked chaff and he is also having lamigel. Then rescope to check to see if stomach emptying properly. If stomach not emptying properly then will need to be PTS as impaction will return.

The arthritis treatment has worked well and he looks really bright and healthy but who knows what is happening with his stomach. Not what we expected at all. If we had not have scoped the impaction would not have been found and his stomach would have eventually ruptured.

Oh blimey, you have been through the mill. Hope he is on the mend and his stomach gets sorted somehow. Sending positive vibes.

 

[Orangehorse]

Turned out it was arthritis easily treated with arthramid.

The bad news is that 4 days after he came back from vets he had a horrendous bout of colic two emergency vet visits and walking through the night followed by another first thing in the morning to check he was ok.

YO suggested I scope for ulcers and whilst scoping they found a gastric impaction. He went into hospital and finally after nearly a week of flushing with water and coke they managed to disolve the impaction. There was also a glandular ulcer.

Prognosis unknown as his stomach is massively distended and vet doesn't know if it will return to normal. So on ulcer treatment and very restricted diet with no hay or long stem forage for 4 weeks he is allowed 7 hours turnout with muzzle on on short grass and 4 meals a day consisting of one scoop of soaked chaff and he is also having lamigel. Then rescope to check to see if stomach emptying properly. If stomach not emptying properly then will need to be PTS as impaction will return.

The arthritis treatment has worked well and he looks really bright and healthy but who knows what is happening with his stomach. Not what we expected at all. If we had not have scoped the impaction would not have been found and his stomach would have eventually ruptured.

Oh gosh, how awful for you and the horse. Hope he improves.

 

[Orangehorse]

I have been riding for 60 odd years and had ponies and horses for most of that time.
In those days a horse was getting old at 13, if it had colic it either got better with a colic drench or the vet had to shoot it (remember All Creatures Great and Small?).

People had saddle fitters, but because the saddles mostly had short panels they often did fit a lot of horses if maybe not every horse! The vet would do the teeth if there was a problem, but it wasn't routine.

A lot of things have improved, horses live longer and I hope that most people look at things from the horse's point of view instead of only the human and wonder why a horse does something rather than punish it for not "knowing" what it should be doing.

I am so sorry for people with problem horses, I had one once and it was a terrible worry and it seemed that it got over something only to immediately go and do something again. Nothing awful, just enough to keep it off work.

 

[Patterdale]

A few years ago I moved to a very remote area. I rent 19 acres of hill land and have no arena but lots of great hacking. No stables. No equine vets nearby and very limited farrier/physio/dentist availability. No show centres nearby.

I spent most of my time wishing I had better facilities, an arena, could go out competing more etc etc. Then about 4 months ago I went to stay away for a competition and was stabled on a busy livery yard. After being away from the horsey world for a while (I used to ride for a living) I could not believe how unbelievable depressing it was. The horses looked fed up, every other one was on some kind of ‘strict regime’ ‘restricted turnout’ ‘walker only’ on their sad little boards. The facilities were amazing from a rider’s point of view but oh my, those poor horses.
There was one block which a professional was renting with showjumpers stabled there. The horses were round a corner with no windows, they had no turnout and just went on the walker each day. It’s unbelievably cruel. You wouldn’t be allowed to keep dogs like that. I always think of them

ANYWAY it made me think. Since my horses’ enforced natural lifestyle, I have had vanishingly few issues with soundness. A few abscesses, the odd cut in the field, one with suspected asthma. The horses have 24/7 group turnout in a stable herd, they hack on all terrains and only go in circles once or twice a month, and mine only goes on a surface twice a year at camp. I only compete once a month maximum as everywhere is so far away. I don’t get the vet unless it’s a serious emergency as they are far away, they don’t have regular physio for the same reasons. Mine was a bit lame last year which turned out to be a splint forming, I just gave him time off. And they generally have 2-3 months off in winter because it’s too dark and wet, with no arena or lights.

I think they may be the toughest and happiest bunch I’ve ever had, and you couldn’t pay me enough money to go back to having good facilities again. Even though I’ve moaned about it for years! ?

 

[Cortez]

I spend enough time on here to be familiar with how you do things in the UK. I'm very glad I'm not in the UK, for whilst I'm sure you have marvellous vets, physios, facilties, etc. you don't seem to really get the benefit from all that. I've never kept horses for leisure or as pets, they've always been part of my living, but I've always had healthy working animals. If a problem has occurred, then a few months out in the pasture has sorted it; despite 100's of horses through my hands I've never experienced the levels of misfortune that seem to be commonplace. Maybe I'm just lucky?

 

[Patterdale]

I spend enough time on here to be familiar with how you do things in the UK. I'm very glad I'm not in the UK, for whilst I'm sure you have marvellous vets, physios, facilties, etc. you don't seem to really get the benefit from all that. I've never kept horses for leisure or as pets, they've always been part of my living, but I've always had healthy working animals. If a problem has occurred, then a few months out in the pasture has sorted it; despite 100's of horses through my hands I've never experienced the levels of misfortune that seem to be commonplace. Maybe I'm just lucky?

Nope, I think there has become a real culture in the UK of investigating every teeny tiny lame step or slight drop in performance (probably caused by a restrictive regime anyway) and then treating it with invasive interventions and even more restrictive regimes.
Most of these issues are caused by the lifestyle and exacerbated by the restrictive rehab in my opinion. I’m a big advocate of a few months rest as a cure for most issues - mainly because it usually works!

 

[MuddyMonster]

I wonder if posts on HHO forum aren't necessarily always indicative of the wider world?

I can't really think of anyone I know with horse's that have such a restricted lifestyle that has made out by some - mostly all of them have at least daily turn out, hack and do other stuff than going around in circles on surfaces to varying degrees. Plenty of vets (including my own) advocate time off or a more conservative approach.

I rarely post about the ins and outs of my horsey life as confirming he's still happy, healthy and that we've had another lovely 3 hour hack would be very boring very quickly! But I might be more inclined to post about my own horse more if I was going through an injury or rehabilitation process and wanted moral support, which I guess could self-fulfill the image everyone has a broken horse?.

Maybe I've just been lucky though!

 

[palo1]

Horses are massively commoditised in the UK; every single thing about them has a product, a treatment, some improving device or 'buy-into' guru. I think we have forgotten how to think about horses in some ways and how to understand and look after them in others. We are hugely invested in them; probably because they eat so much of our time and money but that is the road to heartbreak and despair sometimes; they are amazing animals to share a life with but if we place our dreams in their fragile minds and bodies then, well, yes, we are in trouble to a degree.

 

[SO1]

I think that is very relevant. My pony is 20 and had no real problems until he was 17.

Advances in veterinary medicine, diagnostics, treatments and insurance means that like people horse are living longer with health conditions which may have lead to their demise in the past, more horses with underlying health conditions are being patched up where they might have been PTS 30 years ago.

There is also peer pressure I think on livery yards too that you don't get when you keep horses at home.

I think the demographics of horse owners has changed. 35 years ago it was mainly people from farming or hunting backgrounds who were perhaps a bit more used to seeing death and making those sort of decisions for animals and more pragmatic about how much money and time to invest in fixing problems.

Now I think we have a lot more urban pet owners who may be blinded by their love for their animal making them more neurotic and worried about how they will cope if they loose their pet. Vets who lack experience trying to offer desperate owners options to help save their pet with people getting debt in order to do so or feeling guilty if they opt not to do expensive treatments.

One of my old friends from my pony club days came down to offer me moral support when my pony was at hospital. She keeps her horses at home and is less sentimental than I am and with her help I managed to tell the vet that at 20 I didn't want my pony to have any operations or more box rest so not to offer me anything that involved those options. Vet agreed that 20 was too old to be having operations but I know most people on the yard would have tried to persuade me to do both operations or box rest or get into huge amounts of debt in a desperate attempt to save a much-loved elderly pony. Peer pressure can be really difficult and it is often well meaning.

This whole situation is impacting on my mental health, my pony's health and happiness being so closely linked to my own. I so desperately want him to be ok and to be able to have a good quality of life.

I have been riding for 60 odd years and had ponies and horses for most of that time.
In those days a horse was getting old at 13, if it had colic it either got better with a colic drench or the vet had to shoot it (remember All Creatures Great and Small?).

People had saddle fitters, but because the saddles mostly had short panels they often did fit a lot of horses if maybe not every horse! The vet would do the teeth if there was a problem, but it wasn't routine.

A lot of things have improved, horses live longer and I hope that most people look at things from the horse's point of view instead of only the human and wonder why a horse does something rather than punish it for not "knowing" what it should be doing.

I am so sorry for people with problem horses, I had one once and it was a terrible worry and it seemed that it got over something only to immediately go and do something again. Nothing awful, just enough to keep it off work.

 

[Birker2020]

This whole situation is impacting on my mental health, my pony's health and happiness being so closely linked to my own. I so desperately want him to be ok and to be able to have a good quality of life.

I'm so sorry you are struggling, I have been there more times than I care to admit and I am struggling now.
I firmly agree that your horses welfare can have such a huge impact on your mental health. Its an all consuming, exhausting pattern.

If you want to chat ever in confidence just PM me, I will listen x