06/05/2024
𝙍𝙚𝙖𝙙𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙈𝙚𝙩𝙖𝙗𝙤𝙡𝙞𝙘 𝙀𝙮𝙚
𝘽𝙮 𝙆𝙖𝙩𝙚 𝙋𝙧𝙤𝙬𝙨𝙚 - 𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙀𝙦𝙪𝙞𝙣𝙚 𝙏𝙤𝙪𝙘𝙝 𝙄𝙣𝙨𝙩𝙧𝙪𝙘𝙩𝙤𝙧, 𝙎𝙥𝙧𝙞𝙣𝙜 2024
In horsemanship people often talk about “reading the eye”. Seeing the difference between the staring, vacant eye and the hard, steely eye allows you to have a window into the thoughts and emotions of the horse. Working with a horse in a place where they keep that lovely soft eye is often the secret to success, and most ET students have witnessed that softening of the eye perhaps before the horse slips further into deep internal processing.
Well, over the last few years I have had to make a point to studying the eye of my mare with regard to her metabolic state. Diagnosed with Equine Metabolic Syndrome (EMS), I must be extremely careful about her weight and condition as this frustrating syndrome is one of the most common causes of that cruel disease of the hoof, laminitis. A little similar to Type 2 diabetes in humans, I must manage this horse very closely with diet and exercise to keep her insulin levels healthy to avoid laminitis.
High insulin levels can trigger laminitis, insulin is released in the body to process glucose in the blood and blood sugar levels rise after consuming sugar and starch filled foods, like grass! I wanted another tool to assess her condition day by day and to know whether it was likely to be safe to give her grazing or not. The potency of the grass changes with the seasons and daily with the weather so maybe one day it is fine and the next it is not. Knowing when to change your management regime from a more relaxed winter routine to a restricted spring and summer one, and then assessing whether you can give any grass at all or not, can hopefully prevent that slide into trouble.
EMS is a lifestyle disease directed by her genetics and her environment and I hope to be able to give her the best chance of good health by keeping her on the right side of trouble by controlling her diet and maximising her exercise. Exercise for her is also tricky as she is one of the unfortunate ones with a rather broken body which cannot tolerate hard exercise, but that is another story.
Through the winter months when she was not carrying excess weight and the sugars on the grass were low, I got to know her “lean” body shape and eye. I memorised the shape and texture of the fat pad areas I know she has a tendency to display – tail head, behind shoulder and crest mostly for her. (Other horses may put fat in other places like along the line of the rib shelf). I looked at her eye, the lids in particular, as well as the orbital depression, everyday to become so familiar with it I would spot any changes.
Even as early as February, way before the grass appears to start growing, I have noticed her body shape start to change slightly and that is the first sign that I have to take action. Previously in Essex when I was on a livery yard, I would fence off the centre of the paddock to make a track around the outside – limit access to grass but keep them moving. If I had to stop all grass, say when it was frosty, I had to stable her during the day. Now in Norfolk, I have an area of hardstanding and a sacrifice paddock that I can use to keep her out but limit the grass. It is important to give them hay or other forage as an alternative as it is not about starving them, but about giving sufficient low sugar, appropriate food. If you do not know the sugar content of your hay via analysis, it is probably safer to soak it to remove a higher sugar load (research implies that even an hour can remove a good portion of the soluble sugars). Every day I study her eyes, palpate her rump, squeeze and wiggle her crest, testing the size (particularly the width) and texture. If I am concerned, I feel for a digital pulse and hope not to find one.
By keeping a close watch I am now aware if those fat pads are growing. The horse may not look fat or overweight, maybe even the weigh tape is not telling you that they are bigger, but if these regions start to change shape, it is an early indication that the horse is heading into a danger place.
𝙍𝙪𝙡𝙚 #1. I now regard those fat pads as a polluting factory for making poison (it helps me to stick to the rules!). The fat in the fat pads secrete toxic hormones which make the horse more likely to get laminitis, therefore you need to minimise that fat.
𝙍𝙪𝙡𝙚 #2. As the horse gets into an unhealthy state with high blood sugar and high insulin, those fat pads can become hard. Be very alarmed if those fat pads become hard! If it is happening in the fat of the tailhead, crest, and the eyes with puffy eyelids, it is probably also happening in the feet too. 𝙔𝙤𝙪 𝙢𝙪𝙨𝙩 𝙩𝙖𝙠𝙚 𝙖𝙘𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣 𝙩𝙤 𝙝𝙚𝙡𝙥 𝙮𝙤𝙪𝙧 𝙝𝙤𝙧𝙨𝙚. As a minimum stop giving them what is making them sick - 𝙜𝙚𝙩 𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙢 𝙤𝙛𝙛 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙜𝙧𝙖𝙨𝙨!
Get them off the grass long enough for these body parts to return to normal. If the horse has raised digital pulses and is already suffering foot discomfort, sometimes only noticed when turning on a circle, there are other First Aid measures you can take to try to minimise the damage already happening in the hoof whilst you wait for Veterinary assistance. The simplest, which I have used is to get the horse off the grass, onto soft footing and apply a frog support to pack the foot and reduce the amount of pull on the damaged laminae. I have two foam supports that match the shape of the frog in my Vet Box. You can stick these over the frog with tape or bandage and maybe a boot that help to provide pressure at the back of the foot. If you do not have frog supports a small, rolled bandage can do the same job until the Vet can fit a supportive pad to the bottom of the hoof. Cold therapy and some nutritional support are also said to help. Keeping the foot in iced water to lower the temperature of the hoof tissues can apparently halt the damage of laminitis, but this is recent research and requires special boots, so again contact your vet sooner rather than later.
𝙍𝙪𝙡𝙚 #3. So, what about the eye. The “grass eye” looks fat and puffy. If your horse’s face looks “different” it could well be the eye and 𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙣𝙚𝙚𝙙 𝙩𝙤 𝙩𝙖𝙠𝙚 𝙖𝙘𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣. In my experience the lower lid is the first part of the eye to change and the bottom lid can become fuller and thicker. The top lid can also get fuller and begin to look hooded. The dip above the eye, the orbit, can also fill in. The puffy lids can give the impression that the horse is wearing goggles. These eye changes can sometimes be quite subtle but if you consider them in combination with the size and state of the crest and the current weather conditions, you get a pretty clear indicator of whether your horse is becoming inflamed. As we know from human medicine, chronic inflammation, with sugar being one of the biggest culprits, is at the root of many modern lifestyle diseases, so it is not a good state for your horse to be either.
Often in early Spring we have bright sunny days and cold nights. If you understand how grass grows, you will know this is red alarm weather for laminitics. At any time of the year, grass photosynthesises with sunlight during the day to make sugars which the plant will use to grow. However, if it is too cold overnight, roughly below 5 degrees c, the UKs cool season grasses will not grow and just stores the sugar until it warms up and can grow again. So the young grass gets richer. Bright, frosty morning grass is the most dangerous because it is storing the sugar the sun generates until it gets warm enough to grow and use it up. Later in the year when it is warmer overnight, the grass grows overnight using up the sugars from the previous day, so the morning grass is less rich than the afternoon grass which has had all day photosynthesising. This is why on a long, hot summers day, the grass will be more sugary in the late afternoon than the morning, just when may owners want to put their horse out when they get home from work, for a night in the cool paddock. So I watch the eye closely to see if my horse is getting inflamed. The good news is, if I take her off the grass for a day, you can usually see the puffiness go away as she deflates.
It is worth researching more about the sugar in grass after a frost. Even in winter it seems that research indicates that it can take 2 𝙙𝙖𝙮𝙨 for the grass to return to normal 𝙖𝙛𝙩𝙚𝙧 the temperature has come above freezing. That could be a week! It is not just a case of put the horse out on the grass once the frost has melted. The Laminitis App on your phone can help to show what the current grass sugar level is but those of us with a metabolic horse in our care need all the help we can get to keep them safe.
EMS horses are more prone to high insulin levels and therefore have a high risk of laminitis, but I have known several non-EMS horses who have sadly suffered from laminitis and their owners have said with hindsight, that these signs in the body were all there. Ivana, our Founder of The Equine Touch, warned me about puffy eyes years ago but until you see it and know what to look for you can still get caught out, as I have been. Study your horse, take pictures in the winter of their body shape and a close up of the eye, and imprint it on your memory. Some horses never seem to get a puffy eye and are a useful comparison to the more susceptible ones.
I hope that the benefit of my experience can help you navigate this minefield of keeping your horse safe year round but especially in spring and early autumn which are the peak times for laminitis cases. Be mindful of what goes in his mouth and keep up regular exercise with sessions intense enough to increase pulse and respiration at the top of your list.
