EOTRH Owner Experiences … Asking For a Friend

(…really. It’s not my horse)

Thank you for all the information. I’ve passed along what I had, and have gotten a mixed response from the owner of this horse in regards to what she seems willing to do as far as feeding/maintenance care, etc. goes.

Walking away from it now, because I have an older mare of my own to care for.


Hi
Prior to surgery to remove all incisors, my horse was able to hold his weight primarily on fine stemmed hay. The 8 months prior to surgery, my horse did not want me touching his mouth. This had never been a problem before. He also became grumpy. I believe he was in pain. I purchased this horse as a coming 3 year old. He had the surgery at 22 years of age, so I have owned him most of his life. Surgery went well, horse will be 25 this month.
Obviously I am not there, but it sounds to me that your fellow boarders horse is in pain. I do not know what is available for alternative feeding or whether or not it will help the horse. Does the horse have any other issues?
For me, the decision was either do the surgery or PTS I was lucky to be able to afford the surgery for my already retired horse.

Not sure what the owner can or will afford for this horse or what is reasonably possibly for the barn to accommodate. If the horse isn’t already on a soaked senior feed, start with that and titrate up to however much the horse can reasonably eat per feeding. Ideally, he would also get a fine chopped hay product that he can chew. There are nice bagged forages like this available, but they are spendy. So is senior in the amounts that this horse will likely need to gain and maintain weight on if he can’t eat hay. Adding soaked alfalfa cubes or pellets is a nice way to add calories, too.

EORTH is painful, but keeping weight on with soaked complete feeds and forage options is likely possible if the disease isn’t too advanced. Bute can help, too, if the horse will tolerate it. The owner should be able to ask the vet who examined him for a prescription. These are reasonable things to try to see if the horse can be made comfortable and maintain a healthy weight if surgery isn’t an option. If surgery isn’t possible, which would be understandable, then euthanasia is really the only kind option for this horse if/when he cannot be made comfortable with special feed measures, bute, etc.

My horse was diagnosed with EOTRH when he was in his late 20s. I didn’t feel comfortable pulling all his teeth at once. He was already a little fragile and taking him to the clinic would have been hard on him. I had a great dentist vet (Dr. McAndrews at Garden State Equine) come out and do a thorough evaluation and pull all the cracked/rotten/problematic teeth. I think 6 in total. He was IMMEDIATELY back to his old self. Perky and eating right out of the extraction. Over the next few years we kept a very close eye and he had a couple more extracted when they went bad. He passed at age 32 for unrelated reasons.

Adding complication, since this horse was young he would.not.touch.wet food. Nope. Not under any circumstances. Not bran mash. Not dampened grain. If a drop of water touched it, he was out. Towards the end he really couldn’t eat much hay, even chaff. He thought he was eating it, but he’d quid it up and it would all fall out. He did manage to eat non-pelleted feed, even when his teeth were at their worst. He was a very slow eater but he successfully consumed non-pelleted feed. Pelleted was hard for him to chew. Once he got the teeth pulled he could eat any grain but still quidded most of the hay. Luckily we have nice pasture for a solid 8-9 months of the year, so he was generally getting as much grass as he could intake in addition to the grain. For a little guy, I fed him a LOT OF GRAIN. Life would have been easier if he’d have been willing to eat soaked alfalfa pellets or similar.

Had he been less fragile/younger I would have pulled all the teeth at once. Because he was a little frail and I wasn’t sure how long he had I didn’t want to put him through that. On a less fragile horse I think it’s absolutely the way to go.

Thanks for all the information, everyone.

Unfortunately, the owner appears unwilling to take my advice in regards to feeding and maintenance and is fixated on “pain relievers” that don’t exist and extracting teeth that budget doesn’t allow for, so I’m bowing out of this.

I’ve got my own senior mare to care for and don’t want to get involved in this drama further.

The “in the field” extraction of limited teeth wasn’t that expensive, FYI. If this horse has just a couple bad ones right now, your barnmate might be able to swing it with care credit or similar.

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Thanks for that.

Do not know how bad off he is. Haven’t seen his mouth myself, and there have been no x-rays because she has no money. I have no exact numbers on the state of her finances, and it’s not my business to know, but i doubt she can get care credit.

It’s a mess, but thank you for suggesting it. If she chooses to inquire further with a vet, I’m sure she can find out the costs for herself.