Should I put my lad down? Please give your opinion.

I know where not to ask for help when my horse is ill, might be accused of being a fake!:mad:
Come on guys! How would you feel if you were accused of being something your not when you're in a desperate situation?
I feel awful for the Op, I wonder what she thinks of the lot of us right now? What ever happened to sympathy and care? For what ever the reason as to why he's still here, maybe she just didn't feel it was time, or didn't want to face up to the inevitable? She's about to loose her best friend, and has been grasping at straws to keep him with her :(
 
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Agree with billy & cptrayes. I'm hardly the most sympathetic, bunny hugging member going, but I'd rather risk wasting my time with a troll, than further upsetting someone who's horse needs to be pts. Who I get the impression is possibly either young or inexperienced, with little knowledgeable back up.
 
WHO would have taken it to hospital despite the financial situation. Let me know the number of your vet if they conduct investigations at no cost to the customer :)
 
Actually from the ops very first post my 10yr old French trotter is in constant pain, and some are saying which horse has not been in this condition well none of mine , and not meaning to be harsh but if you read it all would you keep a horse like this, and do you really think if several vet's has visited the horse they would not have advised either treatment or pts.
 
Which part of 'can't afford it' is so difficult to grasp. It doesn't matter if ops vet referred the horse to Jesus himself to heal, unless its free, & on site, the op can't go ahead with it.
 
TF much of your last post is irrelavent I'm afraid - and your last point is moot you say - don't you think a vet would have advised treatment - yes they clearly did - that was made obvious in ops first post! She didn't go ahead as there is no funding for it. What's your point?
 
If the OP is genuine and has any sense, she won't come back on here :(

JordannaLouise said:
Yes he has been on two sachets per day in the past. They did make a difference but the cost was getting to much and my boy has been bad for a while now so posting on here was my way of giving myself reassurance I was doing the right thing as most my family are not 'horsey' people and thank you for such an honest reply
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I don't understand how bute is too expensive to continue to give him, how much are you paying? It's one of the cheapest, possibly THE cheapest thing the vet can give you.

Given that you aren't in a financial position to help this horse to get better or to manage his pain and it appears evident that he is likely to continue to get worse or at least not improve without radical and costly intervention, I would advise you to PTS.

I'm sorry you're going through this. :(


Billie1007 said:
What do you mean - a vet wouldn't let this go on -? What listlessness, stiffness, lameness and bloating, some days good and some days bad? What exactly do you think the vets can do about it if owner doesn't agree to or have money for investigation?
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Probably advise the owner to call it a day :(
 
Ive found vets very reluctant to say the Euthanasia word unless they strictly speaking have to- my cushings horse went downhill very quickly before the summer and after several full blood work ups etc I had to say do you think its the end of the road etc. before the vets would say yes, pts. Not the vets fault I hasten to add- many people if given the prognosis of euthanasia will seek a second opinion, it isnt unheard of for vets to become involved in legal cases because a horse has been euthanased which some miracle worker afterwards has decided that could have been saved.

This thread really should be a case of go with the OP, just in case. It doesnt hurt you, it does hurt the OP if this (which I hope it is) is sincere. Shame on you.
 
And why do some of you keep pushing the can't afford, op say;s several vet;s have seen horse it is in constant pain and none of them can give an answer, and owner cannot afford treatment. I am saying vet will have advised pts in this situation but op say's this has been dragging on for a year.

I do not think any vet would allow this mine would not, why would they , horse is not being treated it is inhumane, and what is so funny, a usual response to not being able to afford to treat a horse would be not to own one.

If anyone thinks we should keep an animal we cannot afford to look after which it seems is what we seem to be saying to the op I disagree, put the horse to sleep it seems to have suffered enough, as fro the story about the vet do not believe it for a minute.
 
TF - what do you mean the vet 'would not' allow it? The vet has a say in nothing. I know of one horse right now who is lamed with infected sarcoids - vet has ADVISED treatment but that is where the involvement ends. I am intrigued to know why you believe a vet has the right or inclination to step and and make decisions in this case.
 
Am I the only one here who can't see the point in any of this?

If the OP is a troll then you are only supporting her by calling her out on it and then having a big debate about it amongst yourselves, which is ultimately what a troll wants. They only want to cause drama for some strange sense of entertainment. Therefore even if she is a troll, why call her out on it? What is the point? Just ignore it and move on, after all don't feed the trolls.

If the OP is genuine then by calling her a troll you are only going to offend, distress and upset her more.

So ultimately isn't it a lose-lose situation if you play the troll card, who really benefits from it? Besides the troll, if there is one.
 
Sounds like a texbook case of grass sickness to me? Have vets mentioned that? If horse really is in that much pain and has given up, kindest things to do is PTS - I know I wouldn't want to suffer.
 
I think the OP is genuine, and I think she has made a brave decision to do the right thing by her horse. Not everyone has the funds to carry out series of investigations into a problem that sounds like it will be a nightmare to diagnose. People can rant as much as they like about how she should be spending thousands finding out what's wrong - but if she hasnt got that sort of money, she hasn't got it - can't be helped. Doesn't make her a bad person, or not worthy of owning a horse.

OP - if it's helped him in the past, and its just financial constraints stopping you from giving him bute, please PM me your address, and I'll send you some.
 
Ok I think this has annoyed me for several reasons, I have just lost a horse we fought hard to save, usually on this forum if you imagine someone posting I have a horse who has been long term ill, no vet in my county can give a any ides of what is wrong with it so I have allowed it to go on, as op states in constant pain, bloated, limb stiffness .neck pain and colic, and even a member who I would consider to have lot's of knowledge said what horse has not had these symptoms well none of mine.

Also op cannot afford treatment so we should overlook what is going on, I did think op was a troll as the whole thing seemed so untrue, I mean do people actually expect horses to,be treated in this way, fair enough if it was a troll but several regular posters actually agreed with the op, one even stating would I pay for the horse to be referred, eer no I pay for my horses to be looked after, I do not ever expect them to be in pain constant or not or whether I could afford it or not, if I could not I would pts on the spot ,I have to say my vet's are more advanced in treatment than the supposed one's that have been referred to in this thread.

What alarmed is the fact supposedly horse owners with knowledge were agreeing with this tripe.
 
Trinity Fox said:
Ok I think this has annoyed me for several reasons, I have just lost a horse we fought hard to save, usually on this forum if you imagine someone posting I have a horse who has been long term ill, no vet in my county can give a any ides of what is wrong with it so I have allowed it to go on, as op states in constant pain, bloated, limb stiffness .neck pain and colic, and even a member who I would consider to have lot's of knowledge said what horse has not had these symptoms well none of mine.

Also op cannot afford treatment so we should overlook what is going on, I did think op was a troll as the whole thing seemed so untrue, I mean do people actually expect horses to,be treated in this way, fair enough if it was a troll but several regular posters actually agreed with the op, one even stating would I pay for the horse to be referred, eer no I pay for my horses to be looked after, I do not ever expect them to be in pain constant or not or whether I could afford it or not, if I could not I would pts on the spot ,I have to say my vet's are more advanced in treatment than the supposed one's that have been referred to in this thread.

What alarmed is the fact supposedly horse owners with knowledge were agreeing with this tripe.
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FWIW I totally agree with you, if the owner cannot even afford pain relief then the poor horse should have been PTS before now :(
 
TF - you have read what you wanted to read. Nobody here has said 'what horse doesn't have these symptoms' but some of us has said that there are plenty of horses that suffer from these problems. Stick to the info on the page rather than allowing your emotuons to interfere and lead you to read what you want to read.
 
I agree if the owner can't afford treatment they should pts. But if ops vets haven't suggested it, & op hasn't either experience of their own or others to fall back on, I can see why op might have left it this long.
When I was 16, my elderly dog was diagnosed with terminal cancer. The vet wanted to keep her in, poke about, & if she survived I might get two weeks tops on pain killers at home. I took her home, spoilt her rotten, & took her to a different vet to pts later that day, whilst she was still pain free. The vet rang all afternoon, telling me 'if I loved her' I would take her in for him to poke & prod. I'd spent a lifetime with animals, & was a million times more independent than most adults. So for me, there was no choice but pts, despite first vet being adamantly against it. However if vets haven't suggested it, & op isn't experienced, I can see why its been left.
 
The fact the op states the horse is in constant pain in the very first post which we seem to choosing to ignore, constant pain do you not think the vet would have advised pts, but instead we are asked to believe they sent several vet's not from the same practise mind you but from all over the county.
None of them can find out what is wrong with the horse now you have to consider while the op was calling out vet's from not only the practise they use but others all over the county there could not have been much financial restriction at the time otherwise you would not have done so, it is a strange thing to do as if your vet practice could not help they would refer to an equine hospital and that would cost no more than calling out several vet's in the county.

We then have a situation where op is financially strapped fair enough , but horses situation is then allowed to continue for a year getting worse , especially over the last month as the results are always the same ? , if any of this is wrong as my memory is dire correct me, one question is this a normal sounding situation to anyone.
 
littlelegs said:
The vet rang all afternoon, telling me 'if I loved her' I would take her in for him to poke & prod.
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How absolutely awful and unforgiveable for them to say that. :(

Our small animal vet practice has several vets who vary greatly in their advice, it seems to depend on if they are newly qualified or very experienced. One wanted to do exploratory surgery on a 19 year old cat with a heart murmer, failing kidneys, an overactive thyroid and ear tumours :rolleyes: We went back a few days later and booked to see a vet nearing retirement, who prescribed us some antibiotics which kept her water infection at bay and she had another few months with us.
 
Anyone who doesn't understand that bute is expensive wants to add up the cost of the three sachets a day the horse is getting, over the course of a year. Some people just don't have a few extra hundred pounds a year to spend.

For those saying get horse referred to vet clinic, what's the point? Horse doesn't travel, doesn't stable and OP is skint.

I don't think its unnatural or unreasonable to look for reassurance in a forum. Lots of people won't say their true feelings on this subject IRL because they don't want to be seen as heartless, don't want the fall out if owner later decides they wish they hadn't, doesn't want to be the bearer of bad news, or has an emotional attachment to their friends horse themselves.

OP, FWIW I don't think you're a troll and I agree with you PTS the horse, the quality of life is gone now.
 
I'm sorry to hear your boy isn't doing so well.
PTS is the right thing to do in your circumstances.

As far as vets go re treating/making decisions, I lost my 5 year old mare in April 2011. I've changed vets since this as I completely lost confidence in that vet.
She had aborted/delivered her first foal at 315 days. He was born alive but died shortly afterwards. I sat up all night with that pony after my vet had been out for a few hours. He suspected a foaling complication. A retained placenta or an internal tear and was treating her as such. She had a rectal examination, IV finadyne and oxytocin. She had her uterus washed out...
Her heart rate was very high and she was looking colicky. Patchy sweating, blowing heavily, wanting to lie down then get up again, digging up her bed, she was getting too hot then too cold and was trembling on and off.
My vet didn't leave us until 1am, and he left me his personal mobile number incase I needed him back urgently. I actually rang him an hour and a half later because my pony was getting more colic like symptoms. He reassured me that it would just be the uterine contractions caused by the oxytocin she'd had. He was back out at 7am.
During the early hours of the morning, she had been lying down but got up and went over to her water bucket (vet told me to leave her with water but to remove hay). She stuck her nose in the bucket, sloshed it around a bit then had water dribbling out of her mouth. She did that a few times in between lying down for a rest, each time there was water dribbling out of her mouth.
I couldn't leave a rug on her because she was still getting too hot then too cold. I basically spent the entire night laying a rug over her when she was cold, then taking it off when she got too hot (breaking out in a patchy sweat). While she was lying down, she was trying to roll onto her back and lay there with her legs up.
When my vet came back out, I told him about her dribbling water out of her mouth and that she was up and down all night. Her heart rate had come down slightly, but was still very high.
He gave her more finadyne, more oxytocin, washed her out again then did a rectal examination. He found droppings inside her, but they were very small and hard....and covered with cheesey mucus. He tubed her to check for gastric reflux....and got a small amount of fluid coming out of her stomach. He said then that he suspected grass sickness. I asked him to put her to sleep....but he wouldn't.
He wanted another opinion so referred her to the equine hospital. She had to travel 15 miles in a trailer, while seriously ill (I now know that she was dying), then be examined again by more vets.
More rectal examinations, more uterine wash outs, more finadyne and oxytocin, more gastric reflux (with a lot more fluid this time), she had one entire side clipped so the vets could do an ultrasound scan....her internal organs were enlarged. They took blood samples and put her on IV fluids while the lab tested her blood.
I was taken into a room by the head vet for "that" talk.....the one where they tell you their suspicions and what the likely prognosis is. He told me that everything was suggesting acute grass sickness, but the only way to know for definite would be to open her up and take a biopsy from her small intestine. I said that I wasn't prepared to put her through surgery. She had just lost her foal, was extremely ill, and I wasn't expecting her to survive...never mind have her go under GA to confirm what my gut feeling was already telling me based on everything else the vets had said. He told me to hang on for a little bit longer while her bloods were being tested.
I went back to my sister's, 10 minutes away from the hospital, to wait for the vet to call me.
I got the call an hour later. He said, "It's not good news I'm afraid." They had tried a test, specific in diagnosing EGS while they were waiting for her blood test results. This involves using Phenylephrene eye drops. A typical symptom of EGS is droopy eyelids, the eye drops reverse the droopy eyelids in EGS affected horses (has no effect on non EGS horses' eyes), and my mare responded to this test as a typical EGS case (link to the info on the Equine Grass Sickness Research website - http://www.grasssickness.org.uk/egsf-page.aspx?pageID=44).
So, we made our way back to the hospital to be with my mare while she was PTS........6 1/2 HOURS after I'd originally asked my own vet to do it.
He's a lovely vet and all that, very good with horses...especially young/nervous horses, but I just lost confidence in him after that because he he was unsure about puting my pony to sleep after suspecting grass sickness then speaking to an EGS specialist vet on the phone.

ETA - and if anyone thinks this story is made up, I'll happily post photos of my dying mare and her dead foal !:mad:
 
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If you horse is unhappy and in pain the having him put down is the kindest thing.

But i cant see why the vets cant find out exactly whats wrong.
Ones the causes have been found it could be simple and quick treatment that make him better and turn him in to a happy healthy horse again.
 
To all those who support thankyou and to the rest please go away because your not helping me whatsoever only stressing me out further.
I have read most of the replies and feel that I need to clear a few things up.
1. Yes I have had around 7 vets in total come on many different occasions. He has been prescribed bute(on many visits) other times they have just said to keep resting him and call out if anything changes. I have been asked 4 times to take him for further tests that cost a lot of money which may not even find out what is wrong with him.

2. He has had blood tests, things put down his throat (aswell as his other end) they tried looking for ulcers ect. But everything came back normal.

3. When he had colic he was in such a bad way that at one point 'if he doesn't get up in the next 20 minutes there is nothing more we can do' (this was after shaving off some hair on his neck to put some sort of medication straight in his vain.

4. Yes he is stiff all over but not dragging himself round with his back legs dragging across the floor. He still sometimes trots in the field. When he is lame it's only as bad as having sore feet really nothing more he just treads as lightly as he can.

5. He is in constant pain yes but I think some of you have a very good imagination. He isn't half dead lying on the floor. He is walking around and is stiff but he manages the pain.

6. All vets that has seen him are scratching there heads over what's wrong with him, and the truth is I will most probably never know the full answer.

7. If one more person calls me fake or a 'troll' I am gonna lose it because I don't 'abuse my horse' and I also aren't 'some sick twisted person who is making it up'

8. Yes I am a new member but I thought this was a good site to ask for fellow horse lovers and owners there opinions and thoughts on others situations and didn't expect such a harsh reaction from some of you, if I knew this would happen I never would of put this thread up ...

Jordanna
 
Some people on here are bang out of order. Just because some one doesn't do things your way then they must be lying! Wtf.
as for vets making the decision to pts, they don't do this unless its an irreversible injury or illness.
 
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