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

JordannaLouise said:
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
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OP Most of us dont know who we are talking to(perhaps just as well eh). I had a horse recently on Bute and realise it was masking a problem etc. My vets are a brill practice but sometimes enough is enough. Although vet wasnt happy as clearly I wasnt going to pay ££££ to put my lovely cob through tons of treatment(arthritic...you could hear him clicking 100yards away), vet thought he should be DOWN unable to get up(I utterly disagree and couldnt think of anything more distressing for my horse). Against my vet, I decided to PTS. Honestly do what is right and I hope you come back today to say you picked up the phone to make the decision to PTS. Your horse aint happy and hasnt been for a long time. But at end of day the hard decision is on your shoulders and it is anyones duty as the owner to do this if the time is right. But good luck most of us are trying not to judge. I hope you do the right thing whatever that is.
 
OP is there any chance at at all your horse is suffering from laminitis. This can very often be misdiagnosed as general stiffness? I say this as your horse seems to have symptoms of cushings disease (pot belly, but ribs showing, miserable, lacking in energy, dullness etc) which can cause laminitis.
 
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Wagtail said:
OP is there any chance at at all your horse is suffering from laminitis. This can very often be misdiagnosed as general stiffness? I say this as your horse seems to have symptoms of cushings disease (pot belly, but ribs showing, miserable, lacking in energy, dullness etc) which can cause laminitis.
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Agree whole heartedly with this, and its easy to miss in a younger horse which might explain why vets have missed it. Also could be pituitary pars syndrome (same as cushings but over production of ACTH can be caused by hormone imbalance rather than pituitary tumour, which is more common in the younger horse, but less common in general)

OP- most vets are currently offering free cushings testing- this might be worth pursuing.
 
Jordanna-Louise, please for your own sake don't write any more explanation. You will not be able to shut up people who are determined to stick a knife into you, they will simply find more to have a go at in whatever you say.

Just thank the people who are helping and ignore the others.

Good thought on Cushings Wagtail!
 
I just want to say good luck to the OP. And I've lost complete respect for some posters on this thread, I hope you never find yourself in the same situation as the OP, and when you're looking for help/advice/support, and generally feeling awful, as I imagine the OP is, I hope you don't get the same responses you gave.
 
I too have battled with a not well horse unable despite throwing money at it to get answers I put the horse a homebred who I adored to sleep not knowing what was wrong it's a long story so I know how you feel , and demoralising it is and how it drags you down too.
IF Your guts tell you PTS do so it is a desision between you and horse you are best placed to make such a judgement I send you my best wishes at this horrible time.
 
JordannaLouise it is the nature of a forum that unless you specify every little detail people will mentally fill in the gaps about how lame, how much pain and so on. It is very easy to get an inaccurate impression from behind a computer screen. It seems to me that you have reached the end of the line of diagnosis and treatment because it is not possible for vets to do anything else to diagnose him without him going for those additional tests which you cannot afford. So you have a horse who is suffering and you cannot afford to further diagnose or to treat for pain relief. I think at this point I would be having a chat with my vet and asking if his current quality of life is sufficient to keep him alive indefinately at this level of pain, lameness etc without treatment, or if the vet would advise you to pts.

For me though if he were mine and as you have described, he is a chronically ill horse who the vets have been unable to diagnose and aren't magically going to be able to diagnose and treat without spending the extra £3k, which you don't have and aren't willing to put him through (fair enough) and you are unable to afford to giv him regular pain relief. He does not appear to be likely to spontaneously recover. I would pts.
 
OP I haven't read all the replies. Quite frankly I couldn't because this is the hardest decision of your life and I can't cope reading negative comments I'm assuming have been left when you are going through the hardest time any horse owner can cope with. It's beyond belief how posters can be giving you abuse or calling you a troll.

Firstly well done for asking for advice and help, it's natural to feel guilt, doubts and have second thoughts. I was exactly the same with my boy. Through the love it's hard to see the pain an animal is going through and you always cling on to the hope that they'll pull through.

It does seem like you have made every effort to resolve the matter and offer your horse the best chance to recover. But deep down I think you seem to have come to you decision.

The final step is very very hard but given time you will see it was the right choice. It's not easy, I was dying to cancel the vet when my boy was booked in to be PTS, I had so much guilt and self blame but ultimately I knew he had reached the point were he was suffering and he wasn't going to ever recover.

Please don't take too much offence to the negative posters on here, they do not no your full circumstances and aren't in a position to criticise you for asking for help! People constantly jump to conclusions and to be honest how easy is it to sit behind a computer and type away at how you should put your horse down... It's the hardest thing you will ever do so a little support and sympathy isn't much to ask for from other forum users.

Maybe have a chat with a trusted vet about your options? Again they can't say PTS in so many words but they will give you an honest opinion.

Weigh up your horses quality of life, the weather/ winter, turnout etc...

My horse had arthiritis, he couldn't be stabled but the rain/ cold wind done him no favours. He was gloomy and his bad days where heartbreaking. Once I made the decision to let him go I almost felt relief that I'd never walk onto the yard and find him down and unable to get up. It took time but I now know it was for the best.

Anyways, stay strong and be brave. Spoil your horse rotten and reassure yourself that you have made the right choice. No one can decide for you, you have to make the decision but I wish you all the best and if you need help feel free to PM me x
 
Wagtail said:
OP is there any chance at at all your horse is suffering from laminitis. This can very often be misdiagnosed as general stiffness? I say this as your horse seems to have symptoms of cushings disease (pot belly, but ribs showing, miserable, lacking in energy, dullness etc) which can cause laminitis.
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These were my thoughts, too. When Henry had laminitis he walked stiffly and appeared to delicately place each foot when he walked. He has tested negative for Cushings so far, but he does get the bloated and still ribby belly if he's on rich grass for any time (vet thinks he's EMS, rather than Cushings, but this hasn't been tested, yet, as his management is working).

I would ask for some more bute (perhaps a week's worth), then muzzle your horse if he can't be stabled, with a pen overnight containing soaked hay. After a couple of days on bute, try him without. A couple of days off the grass is enough (albeit in my limited experience!) to remove the symptoms, assuming starch is removed as much as possible from his diet (I feed speedibeet for weight gain, with linseed). I know you say money is tight, but are you able to have the vet visit before and after you try penning, to get an objective analysis of how he is doing? Or at least a knowledgeable person with a camcorder to film his gait?

That would be my 'Last Chance Saloon' if it were my horse and I couldn't afford further scans or x-rays.
 
LittleWildOne said:
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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I couldn't read your sad post and not comment. What a terrible time you had with such a sad outcome. So sorry for you.
I just wanted to say that luckily I have always had good vets that I could trust to guide me, but I suppose vets are caught in the middle. Their whole goal is to preserve life and I suppose they must make poor judgement calls as anyone can. It sounds like your vet did just that and maybe that eye test could have been carried out at home as a definitive test for your mare to prove grass sickness.
There can always be 'what ifs' after you lose a horse and hindsight is also wonderful. It sounds as though your mare was lucky to have such a supporting owner staying with her through her ordeal.

My mare had stress laminitis and after 12 weeks box rest (we knew she had sinkage and rotation) my vet advised the kindest thing was to pts. She said the prognosis was so poor, the sole of my mare's fore foot had become necrotic and she said I would probably be looking at 2 years box rest if my mare got over the foot infection and I could lose her at anytime along the way. In her opinion the quality of life offered to my mare was not right or humane for her. I sadly lost her at the end of June.

OP I am very sorry for your situation - it sounds like you have exhausted many avenues. Veterinary investigations can cost thousands and still return no answer. I used alternative therapies for my WB and you need to do what you feel comfortable with. I would go with your gut feeling and discuss any decisions with your vet. Good luck.
 
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