That’s awesome! Thank you. If you have a chance, could you share the manufacturer? I don’t need it right now, but the past two times we’ve had to use it, it blistered in about 3 days. Thank you!
Does anyone have any soft ride or cloud boots you could borrow to see if that might help? Might take a few days before it makes a difference, if it does at all.
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I don’t see why they would dismiss laminitis. Mild laminitis in all 4 feet can sometimes be hard to dx because they are all sore. So they don’t look lame per se, but might shift, be reluctant to do certain things (trot on hard ground, step up into a trailer), but it’s not super obvious. Each time they lift a foot they get some relief, so moving often feels better than standing still. Some horses will prefer not to lie down because getting up is more painful.
Seriously - I’d test for Cushings asap and might as well test for IR as well. And I’d probably take him off the grass.
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Thanks everyone for all the input. This has definitely given me some more ideas to discuss with the vet. Fingers crossed we get to the bottom of it!
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I’ll try to remember to look at one of the bottles when I go up to the barn. It is generic, so no special name brand.
My pony has never seemed to mind the ground up pills in his grain. The only reason I don’t give them all fifteen is that he just gets too small of an amount of grain to get the powder mixed in well. Sometimes I will dose him with more pills instead of mixing that many in his grain. He’s a medium size pony with a narrow muzzle and small mouth area, so I have found splitting up doses (of just about anything) works much better to keep him from spitting any liquid out. I did the same with the bute. He got one gram each in two separate syringes, so that I wasn’t giving him a whole lot of liquid in one dose.
He does occasionally get some of the liquid Metformin in the front of his mouth and on his lips, but so far I’ve not seen any blisters. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that things continue as they have been, and hopefully I haven’t jinxed myself by telling his story!
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My reply to this is pretty much a duplicate of S1969’s. Even to the point of not lying down when his pain was at its worst. And I’m pretty sure that was the reason - too painful to put weight on his feet to push himself up. I thought it was probably self preservation instinct. He just wouldn’t be able to get up quickly, if at all. By the time he was in his second week of Metformin, he started lying down again. Then he’d be down a lot! Making up for lost time…
As far as reluctant to move, he wasn’t initially, but he went downhill so fast that within a few days he stopped moving at all. After the Metformin got into his system and started working, he began moving around quite a bit more. It wasn’t long after that he became completely sound, and I was able to turn him back out with his group again.
He gets no grass. My property is up the side of a mountain, so his group’s turnout area is bare of it.
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I was wondering about losing top line and kissing spines. I also think metabolism problems and possible laminitis in all four is something to be checked out asap. My friend’s horse didn’t show classic laminitis symptoms but he was my buddy and she let me ride him when I was between horses. He was just different one day and the intensity of the stare he was giving me stopped me from going home. I ended up calling her and she called the vet and they found his metabolic laminitis right away. When I got home, my husband found me still in my truck crying because I almost walked by, the symptoms were so very vague and didn’t match anything I ever heard were symptoms of laminitis. I nearly missed it and my horse buddy would have been in even more trouble than he was.
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I use unsweetened apple sauce w some water. The applesauce binds to it and has helped w the sores in the mouth.
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That’s genius! Thank you.
I just read an article in The Horse online. It was about SI Joint pain. To me it describes your horse’s behaviors almost to the tee. It also mentions a very specific tell tail sign that happens at the canter. The article states that many horses with this pain “Bunny hop” with their hind legs at the canter. What they meant by that is that both hind legs go together looking like the horse is hopping. Maybe this is helpful. I hope so. The article mentioned shifting hind legs , not wanting to stand for the farrier and a grumpy attitude.
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The thing is that these symptoms could point to many problems. Eliminating those that can be eliminating is a good place to start. Pull blood to rule out things like Cushings, IR, Lyme, PSSM, etc. - if they come back negative, consider rads on feet, neck, spine…etc.
If a horse has SI joint pain it’s not going to be the cause - it’s going to be a symptom of something else…and then you have to figure out “why” does the horse have SI pain - is it a chiro issue, lack of topline issue, etc. etc.
It’s fun as an online experiment where we can all chime in options. As a horse owner it sounds frustrating. You’re hoping for something to pop up early, but you really don’t want to get a + test for anything.
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What does he do when you ask him to back up in hand? Potential beginning stages of “shivers”?
I agree with getting rads of the hind feet as next step differential.
