Sunken flanks and heavy breathing

[Mirakai]

So, my mare has had this for about a year now - we've managed to get it somewhat controlled with soaking her hay, but it's still not enough.

Her symptoms - when standing still, you can see her stomach slowly 'pull up' as if trying desperately to purge the air out of the lungs. She's belly-breathing. Her eyes are often dirty, her musculature is staying behind, and she looks very... Sad. Her eyes are drawn.

She's been seen by five at-home vets first, and they've checked everything under the sun or something. She's had four blood tests within a year, and has been checked thoroughly. The vets were convinced this is how she normally is, she just needs to lose weight.

I then took her to the clinic (after osteopaths, massage therapists, etc) and they found that she's allergic to dust and pollen, and she had bleeding ulcers. Her lungs had an endoscopy and where photographed. Her lungs are perfectly healthy, weirdly enough.

She was treated for the ulcers, but there was no change in behaviour while she was treated with both sucralfate and omeprazole for months.

We started soaking her hay, which did almost nothing, but at least she wasn't in the corner heaving after each breath anymore.

We're going to try haylage as of today, see if that does the trick. Any other tips? She's been on a local detox, but I'm thinking it's more snake oil than anything. No change whatsoever.

This is her normally, these days -


And this is her on grass -


Grass is sadly not an option yet... We're at a stable with no grass at all in the pastures, for months now. She's been on hay since may. They didn't even get to have a good summer, because we had a severe heatwave.

 

[ycbm]

Is this mare in full time or is there just no grass in the field?.

 

[be positive]

My thoughts, firstly she should improve on haylage, soaking just isn't enough to help many allergic horses, second she is overweight and getting her weight down will help but is not going to be easy on adlib forage with poor airways so build up very slowly.
My next thought is that ulcers are rarely the primary issue so unless they are due to her breathing problems I would want to investigate her soundness if you haven't already.
Get a good ACPAT physio to help with her rehab, if she can learn to lift her core better then that will help her general health and could make a big difference to how she breathes, it may also help her to get slimmer.
Finally look for somewhere else to keep her, if not for this winter for next year so she can be out on grass, it may have been a dry summer but mine have had no hay as there has still been enough grass, it is growing now and I have too much so am restricting them all.

 

[Mirakai]

It's really just poor pasture management here and too many horses... the stable started out fine, but then in winter last year she was fed only 1/5 of a small hay bale a day, and then she 'couldn't go on the big pasture' because she was fat and I was going to ruin her, and now she's on the big pasture with my shetlander, but of course, the grass is gone. I'm making arrangements to move to a nice pasture but it's being fenced currently, and we need to build a shelter for comfort. As soon as we can, we're going to move. Right now we're trying to keep afloat for her...

She's always out 24/7, there's just literally nothing on the pasture. I don't like the idea of them locked up inside in a small confined space. The dust would also be terrible.

Our physio is going to help us with muscle building exercises when she can hopefully, finally breathe again. She normally does trail vacations with me, so long hours, lots of stamina build up, lots of work. She did 50 km easily at high speed two years ago. Lots of hill work and leaving her to look for the best way to use her body outside. She's western trained in the arena, so her rollbacks, back ups, sprints and stops really help her. She's always been awful to get weight off, though. With him much she works, you'd think she'd lose something!

 

[Red-1]

Laboured breathing with clear lungs on endoscope would indicate pain to me.

If she had bleeding ulcers on endoscope and then treatment that did not appear to change her demeanour, did she have a second endoscope to ensure that the ulcers had cleared up? Just giving treatment does not necessarily mean it has resolved.

 

[Mule]

I had a horse with recurrent airway obstruction (COPD). She had the belly breathing your horse has. She couldn't be stabled at all. Soaking hay wasn't enough for her either. Haylege helped a lot but she wasn't right until the hay was removed from her environment. When the rest of the herd were also put on haylege she improved to the extent that she no longer needed her medication.
Things should massively improve once she's out on grass.

 

[Mirakai]

Yeah, she was on grass with a friend for a week and she almost looked perfect again... We sadly couldn't stay. No sunken flanks, no heaving. Still some puffiness around the eyes but I figure that would've gone eventually too.

Haylage arrived today, so I hope she'll have less trouble now... It smells loads and loads better at least, and it doesn't leave a cloud of dust.

She hasn't been rescoped yet as I figure I should fix one problem at a time :')

 

[ester]

Is she always breathing like that or is she having episodes? I'm wondering whether if its the later the lungs would scope ok but still be affected during an episode.
Has she been medicated with ventipulmin or other at all during an episode?

I'd definitely want to rescope to check the ulcers have cleared, they don't always.

 

[Mirakai]

She had severe episodes, sometimes she'd be fine and awake and others she'd sit in a corner pumping her flanks so hard, head down and in pain.

 

[ester]

so what treatment was she given during those episodes, ventipulmin? steroids?

 

[Mirakai]

No treatment, as according to results she only had 'light' allergies and she was fine everywhere else. I was told to pick her up, and they did absolutely nothing in the clinic, just told me to get hold of some meds for ulcers and make her hay wet.

They just love doing nothing when it's not about a fancy warmblood though, I've gathered.

She's eaten her first batch of haylage instead of normal hay. It smells great, isn't dusty like the previous hay was, and was cut later. She's so used to wet hay though, that she acted as if I brought her actual dirt in bags in her pasture when I hung them up! She's drinking buckets full as well, which she wasn't with the wet hay, of course.

She's been on her second detox now, supplements for breathing don't work whatsoever.