emfen1305
Well-Known Member
Firstly, apologies for the long post, this is my first time ever dealing with anything like this and I'm a bit worried!
I've had my cob x for 18 months, he was in regular light/moderate work (5 days a week including showing and jumping, lunge, hack etc) and he's been getting less enthusiastic about working since the end of summer to the point where he wouldn't canter on a stubble field and started to refuse in jumping. At this point I gave him some time off, had his teeth, back and saddle checked and then in October I clipped as thought he might have been too hot. Long story short he was scoped with grade 4 bleeding ulcers and put on a course of peptizole. I was horrified at how honest he had been and felt terrible but I gave him 6 weeks off to heal alongside the medication and he was rescoped clear 2 weeks ago and I started bringing him back into work. In short, he is absolutely no better than he was before the time off. At first I thought it might be remembered pain or that he had lost a bit of fitness but he just looks so unhappy in his stable, he cannot maintain canter for more than three strides (both on the lunge and whilst ridden) and struggles to do anything other than going around on the track (no bending, lateral work even circles are a struggle now). He is a bit better hacking but I think that's because it's easy for him. I have had a couple of people ride him to make sure it isn't my own inability and they struggled to get him going too.
We had a thermal imaging lady at the yard on Saturday and she scanned his back and hocks and said that he had an incredibly hot area in the thoracic part of his spine and when she had seen this before it was almost always diagnosed as kissing spine with xrays. She has taken the images away to analyse on the computer and I am waiting to hear back before I phone the vet for an xray. When I looked at the symptoms he does show a lot of the signs and I was never convinced that he got ulcers that bad due to my poor management.
I know he hasn't been diagnosed yet but i'm preparing for the worst and hoping for the best! I'm looking for advice, a shoulder to cry on, other people's stories. He is insured but I'm worried about what happens next, is it just an xray or a bone scan too? Do I make the decision about the operation or injection or will that fall to the vets? Is there anything else I should be looking out for with this? I suspect he's had this problem for quite some time so i'm worried about other issues it has caused and whether there will be enough money to cover them.
Any help/advice/suggestions on how to make him comfortable would be greatly appreciated.
I've had my cob x for 18 months, he was in regular light/moderate work (5 days a week including showing and jumping, lunge, hack etc) and he's been getting less enthusiastic about working since the end of summer to the point where he wouldn't canter on a stubble field and started to refuse in jumping. At this point I gave him some time off, had his teeth, back and saddle checked and then in October I clipped as thought he might have been too hot. Long story short he was scoped with grade 4 bleeding ulcers and put on a course of peptizole. I was horrified at how honest he had been and felt terrible but I gave him 6 weeks off to heal alongside the medication and he was rescoped clear 2 weeks ago and I started bringing him back into work. In short, he is absolutely no better than he was before the time off. At first I thought it might be remembered pain or that he had lost a bit of fitness but he just looks so unhappy in his stable, he cannot maintain canter for more than three strides (both on the lunge and whilst ridden) and struggles to do anything other than going around on the track (no bending, lateral work even circles are a struggle now). He is a bit better hacking but I think that's because it's easy for him. I have had a couple of people ride him to make sure it isn't my own inability and they struggled to get him going too.
We had a thermal imaging lady at the yard on Saturday and she scanned his back and hocks and said that he had an incredibly hot area in the thoracic part of his spine and when she had seen this before it was almost always diagnosed as kissing spine with xrays. She has taken the images away to analyse on the computer and I am waiting to hear back before I phone the vet for an xray. When I looked at the symptoms he does show a lot of the signs and I was never convinced that he got ulcers that bad due to my poor management.
I know he hasn't been diagnosed yet but i'm preparing for the worst and hoping for the best! I'm looking for advice, a shoulder to cry on, other people's stories. He is insured but I'm worried about what happens next, is it just an xray or a bone scan too? Do I make the decision about the operation or injection or will that fall to the vets? Is there anything else I should be looking out for with this? I suspect he's had this problem for quite some time so i'm worried about other issues it has caused and whether there will be enough money to cover them.
Any help/advice/suggestions on how to make him comfortable would be greatly appreciated.
