Colic is a scary thing and something that I always tell people is NOOOOO food - not even if you feel bad…. Really guilty bad….. NOOOO Haynet until we are completely normal once the pain relief has worn off…, no colic symptoms, and at least four/five normal droppings… Here’s molly and her NOOOO NET instructions 🤣😅😅😅😅❤️
Happy new year ❤️❤️
As 2024 draws to a close, myself and my family would like to wish you all a very happy new year. Please use your experiences to better yourselves and educate others into looking after your horses in the best way that you can. Use every opportunity to learn and always ask for advice - no matter how silly you may feel. I am ALWAYS at the end of the phone 📞 Here is my cheeky daughter asking questions - I’m used to every question under the sun! No matter how silly they may seem 😅😅🤣🤣❤️ Stay safe everyone and I will see you in the New Year 2025 ✨✨🤩🤩🎈🎈🍷❤️❤️❤️
My Rum is back ❤️❤️❤️❤️
Following on from my post last week regarding giving horses a break if they need it… My beautiful prince Rum completed his qualification today for this years regionals with a whopping 74%!!! The highest mark he’s ever got and he’s had no lessons in the past five months, hardly any schooling… just hacks… and he felt like my old Rum ❤️❤️❤️ Words can’t describe how proud I am of him - so soft, so quiet and so bloody happy 😃😃😃❤️❤️❤️🤩🤩🤩🤩🤩✨✨✨🥕🥕🥕🥕
How I feel after a day of scoping and X-rays at pocket nook 🤣😅😅😅 Hard work and non stop but so worth it 😅😅 Thank you to my student Isobel for all of your hard work and thank you to all of our horses today that were so well behaved ❤️❤️❤️ #workworkworkwork
Sycamore poisoning
Meet Paddy ❣️Paddy presented with a grade 5 heart murmur, a heart rate of around 80 beats per minute and was extremely weak with fully dilated pupils. His owners brought him to us that evening and we worked around the clock to help him. His muscle enzymes were into the thousands and he started to get muscle tremors all over his body. He soon went into left sided congestive heart failure, with a heart rate now of over 100 and pulmonary oedema starting to flow from his nose. He had to be physically lifted from the ground (well done matt!) every hour throughout the next two days and fluids, vitamin E (a good anti-oxidant), and electrolytes were given via a nasogastric tube every four hours. A fluid IV drip would have been easier, however we couldn’t afford to increase volume within the cardiovascular system as the pressures were already forcing fluid out of the lungs and he was practically drowning. Vasodilators were given to help with the pulmonary oedema and copious amounts of pain killers were provided. As you can see in the video, his urine was a very dark brown - typical of myoglobin from the muscles being broken down (a consequence of sycamore poisoning). Slowly but surely he began to recover and today he went back home!!!! Sycamore poisoning is caused by a toxin within the sycamore seeds called hypoglycin-a. As little as around 40 seedlings are enough to kill a horse and up to 75% of cases prove to be fatal. Paddy has been extremely lucky so far and it is true testament to his character - even when he couldn’t stand, he still tried to nibble on his favourite coarse mix whilst being hand fed 🥹❤️ It will be a long road from here - he will take a good few months to fully recover, however he really seems to be a far cry away from where he was two weeks ago 😍 Thank you to his owners for allowing us to share, a massive thank you to Matthew for getting him up every hour and assisting with the constant tubing and medications, and of course thank you to
Matthew has done a great job of setting up the cameras to keep an eye on our poorly inpatients 😃❤️❤️🐎🐎🐎🥰🥰🥰
Last week I noticed Rum lame on his right fore on the hard as he trotted and turned into his gateway.
I panicked - as we all do, and spun him on both reins on the lunge, both on hard and soft ground.
He was 1-2 right fore on the left rein on the soft and 3-4 right fore right rein on the hard. I just wish I had videos - I was a bit too depressed to take them 🙈😅.
He had a previous injury to this right fore lateral
Collateral ligament just over a year ago and I was worried it was the same thing : (
Rum isn’t a fan of being nerve blocked - tries to kill everyone… so I decided to get out his mri report and make changes to his shoeing based on the findings - a lot of it didn’t really matter then (or so I thought) as he hadn’t blocked to the heel area. However in hindsight, I should have used the information I had to prevent problems in the future.
Right fore
🥕 mild navicular bursitis (this crops up most of the time in horses undergoing an MRI) - Flat 3D impression pad with impression material and extra length at the heel (support the navic region).
🥕 Enlarged lateral collateral ligament of the fetlock - Wide web shoe (support the collateral).
🥕 3D impression pads on the hind feet with a 3degree wedge (slightly reverse rotated on X-ray). Any issues behind will consequently overload the front.
I didn’t inject anything into him. It’s not that I’m against injectable meds - I just think that offering support to the feet first, is far more beneficial long term (after all - the feet are holding up your entire horse, and shoeing tends to last a lost longer than any medication!).
I won’t mention my farriers name, although I would love too - he doesn’t like to blow his own trumpet - however he has done an absolutely fabulous job!
I think that what I’m saying is to use whatever information you have from imaging the feet, even if it doesn’t seem relevent at the time (I.e the horse hasn’t blocked to it, such as navic changes on imag
Upper airway inflammation
This lovely horse has had a persistent cough for the past few months and had tried courses of antibiotics, ventipulmin and NSAIDS but it always returned.
Yesterday we scoped her airways and found a very angry picture. The vocal cords were actually purple! And there was muscus and pus present by the handful!
She has started a course of antibiotics, steroids and NSAIDs all together, along with grass or soaked hay only.
Previous treatments were likely not long enough/didn’t have the steroid to cut the inflammatory cycle.
It’s important that we re-scope the airway in another two weeks to ensure that the inflammation has completely resolved.
Hopefully she will be feeling much better very soon and thank you to her owner for allowing us to share.
If your horse has had a persistent cough that hasn’t resolved with treatment, then an airway scope is a good idea to have a look at what exactly may be going on.
A journey down into Bobs stomach!
How amazing is our new gastroscope!!!!
Today we took a ride down the oesophagus and into Bobs stomach. 🛝 🎉
The line between the squamous and glandular portion of the stomach is called the margo plicatus and is a common area where we find ulcers. This is usually caused by the acid splashing up into the non protected (white part).
Finally we assess the pylorus (entry into the small intestine). This is another common place where glandular ulcers like to hide and can be a little trickier to treat than the squamous ones. The video below shows a good example of ulcers in the pyloric region.
An injectable treatment of omeprazole is now available, which seems to have excellent results and saves the daily administration of the oral alternatives such as gastrogard.
The treatment is injected into the muscle once per week for 4-6 weeks and we usually supplement with oral sulcralfate.
Omeprazole reduces the amount of acid produced in the stomach and the sulcralfate aids in the healing of ulcers that are already present.
Management issues should also be addressed and other primary causes such as lameness/other pain related conditions should be ruled out.
Clinical signs of ulcers include;
Loss of appetite
Struggling to maintain weight
Behavioural problems such as biting, girthy, not wanting to go forward.
General underperformance
If you think that your horse may be suffering from ulcers, you can book them on one of our scope days here at Pocket Nook.
Just call or pm to sign up : )
Crystal
Meet Crystal
Crystal presented with some rather strange clinical signs…
Muscle tremors and rolling…
Chewing her food but struggling to swallow it…
Heart rate normal and temperature at the very high end of normal… gut sounds not present on the right hand side.
Dental exam revealed no abnormalities.
We carried out a dental to remove any sharp points, passed a stomach tube to give her some fluids as she was now unable to drink. Gave IV pain relief for her colic symptoms. The following day her tongue had started to swell and there were these ulcer like lesions on her tongue. We then gave IV steroids to cover an allergic reaction and low and behold, a few hours later she was back to normal!
Today her blood results came back as unremarkable.
Just a cool case that was rather baffling at the time but so incredibly satisfying to see this beautiful girl back to her normal self 😍😍😍
Thank you to her owner for the videos and allowing us to share x
