Hollyhorse
Well-Known Member
I posted last week for suggestions about what might be wrong with my horse who was becoming nastier than usual (always v difficult n stallion-like), irritable and increasingly backward which is a big change as usually he's really highly strung and forward - to the point that at a one-day-event I got time faults for going too fast last year and this year I didn't even finish because he just wouldn't move
He is very thin skinned, sensitive and cold backed with a horrid skin infection on his face and constantly yawning and fidgeting...
Thank you for all your suggestions, he went to the vet for investigations thurs and fri and the vets found the blood tests showed no evidence of liver or bladder problems and the back xrays and scans showed no evidence of back abnormalities or kissing spines (in fact the spaces were so huge he will never have this problem!). His shoes were due so they reshod him and looked for lameness but found none. So they decided to do a gastroscopy just in case and found horrendous gastric ulcers (4 on a scale 1-4) !! They said this would explain why he was acting particularly cold backed and really didn't want to go forward, why he was irritable and had slightly lost his appetite. He's now on gastroguard or something for a month and I can ride him (although I was away over the weekend so haven't yet) and he needs a second gastroscopy in a month's time to see how things are going. In the meantime we've tried to eliminate stress if he comes into the stable with many different piles of different feed (hay and haylage) around his stable and many different licks and toys. We've increased the roughage and fibre in his feed, which we had decreased to keep weight down but have got HiFi lite so has several handfuls of that in each meal with his concentrate. And we're trying to keep him living out fulltime with the other horses to encourage continual chewing!
He'll always be difficult and as unforgiving and dishonest as you can get but hopefully this will explain his recent poor performance, change in behaviour and refusal to go forward. At least it sounds like they explored everything they could and this is the problem. Has anyone got any advice of things I can do to help my horse recover and prevent the gastric ulcers coming back, any supplements, dietary/lifestyle changes?? Many thanks!
PS --- the people who lived at our house before (two years ago) had a horse that got gastric ulcers...could there be anything on our land that's causing it? Grass, soil, bushes, trees...?? It can't be a coincidence..
Thank you for all your suggestions, he went to the vet for investigations thurs and fri and the vets found the blood tests showed no evidence of liver or bladder problems and the back xrays and scans showed no evidence of back abnormalities or kissing spines (in fact the spaces were so huge he will never have this problem!). His shoes were due so they reshod him and looked for lameness but found none. So they decided to do a gastroscopy just in case and found horrendous gastric ulcers (4 on a scale 1-4) !! They said this would explain why he was acting particularly cold backed and really didn't want to go forward, why he was irritable and had slightly lost his appetite. He's now on gastroguard or something for a month and I can ride him (although I was away over the weekend so haven't yet) and he needs a second gastroscopy in a month's time to see how things are going. In the meantime we've tried to eliminate stress if he comes into the stable with many different piles of different feed (hay and haylage) around his stable and many different licks and toys. We've increased the roughage and fibre in his feed, which we had decreased to keep weight down but have got HiFi lite so has several handfuls of that in each meal with his concentrate. And we're trying to keep him living out fulltime with the other horses to encourage continual chewing!
He'll always be difficult and as unforgiving and dishonest as you can get but hopefully this will explain his recent poor performance, change in behaviour and refusal to go forward. At least it sounds like they explored everything they could and this is the problem. Has anyone got any advice of things I can do to help my horse recover and prevent the gastric ulcers coming back, any supplements, dietary/lifestyle changes?? Many thanks!
PS --- the people who lived at our house before (two years ago) had a horse that got gastric ulcers...could there be anything on our land that's causing it? Grass, soil, bushes, trees...?? It can't be a coincidence..
