[59668]
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Hi
This could be long but please bear with me.
Back at the beginning of March, my horse started coughing a little. It wasn't terribly bad, and he seemed ok other than that, so I scaled back his work and hoped it would just clear up. A few other horses were also coughing on the yard, so thought it was just one of those things.
2 weeks later, his breathing got really bad. He would breathe in deeply, and then struggle to exhale. His whole body would move with the effort of it.
I got the vet out, and he prescribed norodine and ventipulmin, which we gave him for 5 days with good improvement. After 2 days he scoped him, just to be sure that we were looking at some kind of bacterial/viral infection, and there was a lot of thick mucus, pointing to this being the correct diagnosis.
After 5 days he was definately better than he had been, but not as improved as we had hoped, so scoped again and took a sample for the lab.
it came back as showing nothing to culture, so the norodine had done it's job and there was no more bacterial infection. The vet also reported that his lungs looked a lot clearer. He stopped coughing. So we stopped the norodine but kept him on the ventipulmin.
After another 5 days he was no better, if anything seemed a little worse, so we put him on high dose steroids. Also put him on antihistamines incase there was some kind of COPD response going on.
After another 10 days there was marginal improvement, but still not normal by a long way, so we increased the steroid dose (prednisolone)
This seemed to work, so started to reduce the steroids and I brough him back into very light hacking. He was buzzing in himself (had been eventing fit before all this) and seemed so happy to be back in work.
He still wasn't breathing 100% normally though, and I had the vet out again, who said that this might be as good as it gets, to carry on letting him be my guide with the workload, and he did a blood test, which came back normal.
That was last Tuesday. He has been working well and seems so well in himself - perhaps too well sometimes!
Today I lunged him for the first time. He was a complete loon, flinging himself round in canter and having a good ping up and down. He is obviously feeling well in himself, but when he stopped his breathing was so bad. Back to exhaling so hard his body was moving.
Now I accept that respiratory issues take a while to get over, and perhaps he just did too much this morning, but I am so disheartened and am worried that he will never be more than a hacking horse now. He loves his job, loves xc and jumping, and I am so sad that this has happened.
Am I just expecting too much too soon? Has anyone any words of advice or similar experiences?
This could be long but please bear with me.
Back at the beginning of March, my horse started coughing a little. It wasn't terribly bad, and he seemed ok other than that, so I scaled back his work and hoped it would just clear up. A few other horses were also coughing on the yard, so thought it was just one of those things.
2 weeks later, his breathing got really bad. He would breathe in deeply, and then struggle to exhale. His whole body would move with the effort of it.
I got the vet out, and he prescribed norodine and ventipulmin, which we gave him for 5 days with good improvement. After 2 days he scoped him, just to be sure that we were looking at some kind of bacterial/viral infection, and there was a lot of thick mucus, pointing to this being the correct diagnosis.
After 5 days he was definately better than he had been, but not as improved as we had hoped, so scoped again and took a sample for the lab.
it came back as showing nothing to culture, so the norodine had done it's job and there was no more bacterial infection. The vet also reported that his lungs looked a lot clearer. He stopped coughing. So we stopped the norodine but kept him on the ventipulmin.
After another 5 days he was no better, if anything seemed a little worse, so we put him on high dose steroids. Also put him on antihistamines incase there was some kind of COPD response going on.
After another 10 days there was marginal improvement, but still not normal by a long way, so we increased the steroid dose (prednisolone)
This seemed to work, so started to reduce the steroids and I brough him back into very light hacking. He was buzzing in himself (had been eventing fit before all this) and seemed so happy to be back in work.
He still wasn't breathing 100% normally though, and I had the vet out again, who said that this might be as good as it gets, to carry on letting him be my guide with the workload, and he did a blood test, which came back normal.
That was last Tuesday. He has been working well and seems so well in himself - perhaps too well sometimes!
Today I lunged him for the first time. He was a complete loon, flinging himself round in canter and having a good ping up and down. He is obviously feeling well in himself, but when he stopped his breathing was so bad. Back to exhaling so hard his body was moving.
Now I accept that respiratory issues take a while to get over, and perhaps he just did too much this morning, but I am so disheartened and am worried that he will never be more than a hacking horse now. He loves his job, loves xc and jumping, and I am so sad that this has happened.
Am I just expecting too much too soon? Has anyone any words of advice or similar experiences?
