I had a lovely gray TB. At 14 he developed small external melanomas. At 15 he suddenly developed weird hind end lameness that progressed to hind end neuro symptoms. I put him down before he fell down and would not be able to get up. Necropsy revealed melanomas all over his spinal cord.
Never a gray again.
This is what the gray at our barn has. He’s older now and has had melanoma for some time. Poor thing though, they’re all inside his throat, under his tail and now in his rectum. That’s one of the reasons I’ve been so nervous about it. Luckily, I found my horse though and it’s not a grey, it’s a bay!
Oh my! Bless his heart, that’s so sad. I’m so sorry. Yeah, the one we were looking at we ended up passing on and we ended up with a bay, which I’m so excited about! Thank you for sharing your experience.
So sorry about this. Thank you for sharing. These stories are the experiences I was curious about. You’re so right, there’s so many other scary things that can easily happen to our horses. I didn’t want to add one more risk factor to the list.
I know tons of people with grays, and they wouldn’t have anything different. But I think a lot of people are unaware of the additional risk associated with owning a grey. I was clueless until I learned about my barn friend’s horse and I was informed of how common it is.
I have heard that about them being higher risk when they lighter younger.
I’ve had three grays in my horsey life: An AQHA all-around horse, a TB jr/ammy hunter and a large pony that I trained to lease out to kids. All three developed melanomas. The TB’s were rather minor and merely a maintenance nuisance. The other two (the AQHA and the large pony) were eventually euthanized due to the melanomas, which had invaded their digestive tracts. Both were otherwise sound and in their late teenaged years.
So while I know of several snowy white, senior grays that are currently showing and melanoma-free (at least from an exterior appearance), I did make it a point to exclude any grays when I was horse shopping last year. I truly love grays. They’re visually striking, whether on the trail or in the show arena. But the prospect of melanoma is, like so many things associated with owning a horse, a gamble. And it was a gamble I didn’t want to take again.
Not to hijack, but how did you know it invaded their digestive tract?
I have a 19 year old gray with only a couple minor melanomas under her tail. But we are dealing with perpetual NQR digestive/appetite issues that hasn’t responded to any treatment. Vet suspects a tumor or melanoma in her gut.
So I’m just curious to hear your experience with it.
My friend’s young horse was euthanized due to internal melanoma in his digestive tract, but it was acute with dramatic symptoms that led to his euthanasia shortly after his problems began. My horse is just kind of doing a little bit poorly and at first glance would seem “fine” and manageable to someone who didn’t know how long this has been going on.
That’s interesting, do you have a source for that? I’ve read that homozygous horses are at greater risk, but never anything about how quickly they go.
My very small sample of 1 (lol) was very dark for a long time, and heterozygous, but developed melanoma quite early and has an awful lot of it.
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