possible eye problem?

[digitalangel]

Just posting about this because 2 very good riders have asked me this in the past 2 days!

My boy is coming back into work after 3 months of box rest with a fetlock injury. Vet has prescribed continuing box rest but building him up slowly - 2 weeks of walk (done) and 2 weeks of trot before reassessing to start canter work.

We are on week 3, having just completed 1 week of trot work. Soundness-wise he seems fine. However when i put the leg on to ask for or maintain the trot, he just loses his sh**. Not in an exuberant way at all - he just seems to panic, pops his back legs right underneath him, spreads his forlegs right out, bounces there for a second then will buck/rear/spin/do a dance, then he will be fine again. Kind of like an absoloutely massive spook, but there is *nothing* to spook at ( and i know what his gremlins are )

So ive been working him through it, and after a lap or two it lesssens, and stops and he will generally do a couple of laps quietly and his gait will improve.

However, like i said, 2 people have commented that they think he might have problems with his eyes - his eyes were checked on his vetting last year, and also again in august time as he had an ear infection and we couldnt get near his face. he is a lot better with that now.

Is it worth getting the vet up again to check his eyes? If there was a problem with his eyes what would the signs be? He is fine around his stable, seems to react well to people/things in his stable and he reacts if i put my hand up to both eyes.

thanks muchly in advance!!! sorry if it doesnt make much sense, bad day and dog tired!

 

[Box_Of_Frogs]

Doesn't sound like eye problems to me DA. Eye problems would show symptoms such as excessive watering, conjunctivitis, inflamed eyes, cloudy patches across the cornea, horse unhappy in daylight and seeking dark corners. I think it sounds more like a behaviour thing. How old is he? Maybe he's just spooky after not being in work.

 

[Birker2020]

Ha, I was going to suggest asking Box of Frogs as shes an eye expert but looks like she has beaten me to it! My horse is 12 and yet he is very spooky and acts like a complete plank sometimes. The vet had a look at his eye and said he has an extra layer of cells over his eyes called keratitis or something similiar, but didn't think this would affect his field of vision although he did admit he wasn't an eye expert. A simple test is to hold a flame up to the horses eye (be careful now) and you should see three images, flame upside down, flame lying flat and flame lying upwards. If you don't see these three images (look very closely) it is a sign of a problem with the retina at the back of the eye.

 

[digitalangel]

Thanks Box_of_frogs - he had a weepy eye last year but not an actual infection and shows none of the signs you listed. Hes 13 and can be spooky but nothing like he is now - hes just losing it for absoloutely no reason! I agree its probably a behaviour thing, but thought i would check and see what people thought because i think it is strange that 2 completely different riders said the same thing!

Applecart - thanks for the tip about the flame! ill try it with a lighter ( and ill be careful ) and see what results i get. I guess if it is an eye issue, i was actually meaning a vision issue. hee hee!

 

[rcm_73]

Sorry to have to be different but my mare does what you describe when asking for or trying to maintain a trot. She does have an eye injury (blind in one eye) which was coupled with a suspensory ligament injury about 2 years ago both affecting her off side. I still ride her and she will still jump but I always have to be aware of her disability and have just kind of learnt to live with the fact that we can only get a trot sometimes and only usually in straight lines.

 

[digitalangel]

Wow this is very interesting. Do you mind me asking how she became blind in one eye? Also Is she more spooky on one rein than the other? Its so unlike my boy to completely panic like this and it worries me. That said there was no sign of the behaviour today, despite similar weather conditions etc. I cant get a trot out of my boy even in a straight line most days, havent even considered a circle yet!

Would love to hear more about your mare.

 

[rcm_73]

Hi she became blind after a field 'accident', (she is the one on the left picture) basically I was on a poorly run yard and she got herded about by some other horses and damaged her suspensory ligament and eye at the same time. Nobody witnessed the incident, all I know is there were some very dominant geldings in there with her and one day she came in lame with a watery closed up eye leading me to believe she may have fell or fell into something (the fencing was unsuitable). I've looked along the lines of Equine Recurrent Uveitis but I don't think (and hope) that it isn't that, all the same I take precautions and put a UV mask on her when she's out. I wouldn't say she's more spooky on one rein but she is definitely always compensating for her loss of sight by trying to look right to see where she is going and this of course affects her collection and movement. I'm not sure why it only seems to affect her trot? Can walk fine and canter isn't fantastic but is ok, straight lines are better than circles but this I think is maybe because she can get her field of vision sorted without it constantly changing as I expect it does on a circle. May be an idea to get him checked, I wish that something could have been done for my mare but the vets just gave me eye ointment for her and that was it, unlikely there is anything that can be done now without it costing mega £££s. I would trust your instinct, you know your horse, at least if it turns out not to be his eye then you can rule it out and look elsewhere for the 'problem'. I wish you all the best with him x

 

[Butterbean]

A horse owned by someone on my yard (she also comes on here but can't remember her name) was eventually found to have large "floaters" in its eye that would move around and frighten it, I guess as objects suddenly appeared in its field of vision when the floater moved. The horse had become very spooky and unpredicatable. Probably wouldn't be this in your case as would affect it in other paces / being handled also.

 

[rcm_73]

Gosh that's interesting..was there any treatment for it? My horse has a cloudy area covering her pupil, I presume it's a cataract.

 

[Box_Of_Frogs]

MM - did your vet confirm that your ned was blind? The cloudy area on her cornea shows damage to the cornea, not necessarily a cataract - is this on her blind eye or the other one? The problem with untreated "minor" eye problems is that they can rapidly becaome major ones. One key factor is that the cornea has no blood supply so healing is very slow. Conjunctivitis will cause a weepy eye but untreated it can change into a much more sinister auto-immune disease called superficial keratitis. This is what Sunny developed and it eventually led to him having to have his eye removed because the pain of the injured eye was unrelenting and impossible to control while still leaving him any quality of life. He is now as happy as Larry and one of the safest hacks/dressage stars on the yard. He is used to having no vision that side now and all I have to do is remember that if he is aware of something iffy on his blind side, he will need to do a full body turn to check it out.

So loss of vision itself doesn't cause spookiness. If the spookiness IS related to the horse's vision, it is more likely that the vision is in the process of deteriorating rather than totally gone. If it was me DA and I had a gut feeling it wasn't "ordinary" spookiness perhaps related to 3 months box rest, I'd try to test it out. Try him on the lunge, working behind another horse, being led, in familiar and unfamiliar places etc etc. Just get a feel for what provokes it and what doesn't. Armed with as much info as you can gather, you might be better able to decide what to do next.

As always, if in doubt, get your vet up and if there's any doubt there at all, get a referral to a specialist on eyes. Eyes are too precious to take chances on.

 

[rcm_73]

Box Of Frogs my vet didn't confirm she was blind but just gave me ointment to treat it with, I'm sure the cloud appeared after that and I think I should have the vet back to see if anything can be done for her. I know she has very very limited sight if any on her right side as she will bump into things on that side and has to do the full turn you were talking about if there's something she's not sure of. I can run my hand in front of the eye and she doesn't blink. As it is on the right I have to be particularly careful out on the roads as she doesn't see traffic. I think I will call my vet up to take another look.

 

[Box_Of_Frogs]

Aw MM - Sunny lost his right eye too. He had been owned by a riding school and was so safe that he was used and used and used. But they didn't bother to treat his conjunctivitis properly. Over Xmas 3 years ago, his right eye suddenly clouded over and that was the start of a 6 month battle to save it. In the end, we couldn't save it and the pain for him was unrelenting, 24/7. After his 3rd trip back to horsepital, we agreed that the only thing to do was to remove the eye. The vets tell me that as soon as he woke from the GA and got to his feet he was a happy boy. The surgery would have made him sore, but not the same pain as the superficial keratitis.

My concern with your ned is that she is also in pain. Do you ever find the tissue round her bad eye puffy? Or find her with her whole face black with tears? I'd definitely get the vet to have a look. It sounds, as you say, that her vision has is going or has gone in that eye. The danger is that it causes her pain still. Glad she's got a caring mum hun xxx

 

[rcm_73]

Thank you for kind words B_o_F. Since the initial injury to the eye I have never known any puffiness or even any weepiness and I see her twice a day. I do keep a careful watch over it as I was worried it could be Recurrent Uveitis so I check both eyes daily and this time of year she wears a UV fly mask outside. I am quite worried though and would like to rule out Uveitis and other such eye disorders so am going to have the vet back as I worry her other eye could start. The initial treatment was to clean the eye in distilled water and apply ointment, the vet never really gave it a label as such but when it first started it looked like a case of conjunctivitis / uveitis as it was puffy, closed-up and weepy but it soon subsided with the ointment and then just became cloudy. Sounds like it could be similar to what happened to your boy, he is lovely by the way, I like the eye patch, I often think my mare should have something like that to warn drivers etc that she is partially sighted.