Long Term Hind Gut Success Stories?

[IPEsq]

@quietann

slightly OT, but can anyone tell me why Succeed is sooooo expensive?

I wish I knew! I almost hate that it works. Supposedly it has something to do with how they process the oats.

My horse was recently diagnosed (finally) with an SI injury. He’d been starting to display some of the weird hind gut things my other horse used to do (whom I wrote about on this thread already). I think low back pain and gut pain can each make the other worse. I’d already done a full treatment of omeprazole for other reasons, and one vet suggested Sucralfate 2x a day with the omeprazole dose in between them, trying to taper off omeprazole. Then keep on Sucralfate for at least a month, then try to go down to 1x day. He did great on the 2x a day dose. I should mention horse also gets Platinum GI. Sour smelling poops and the weird behaviors when I tried 1x a day. I use the pills, which dissolve super fast in water. I wasn’t sure he’d eat a flavored powder. But at 12 pills per dose and $150 a bottle of pills, that was adding up at 2x a day. So, I bought some Succeed and started the loading dose while he was still getting Sucralfate 1x a day. I’m still on the 2x a day Succeed but so far so good that I have been able to stop the Sucralfate.

I think I will use Sucralfate for this horse in lieu of omeprazole in the future for short term stressful events, but it’s not enough really once there’s already some kind of imbalance. We have also treated the SI with Pro Stride to hopefully reduce further discomfort and inflammation in that area of the body.

[Equkelly]

@reithme2

I’d also heard that for severe hind gut cases you pull hay and only feed grain?

I’ve heard that’s for very severe cases of right dorsal colitis and even then, you’re essentially just pulling them off it so that the hindgut can recover and then the idea is they go back on it when things are working right. My vet made it sound like those are for severe, hospitalization type situations though.

[reithme2]

Update -
Horse started eating even less frequently a few days ago and didnt want grain or even hay one morning - started him on ulcer guard. He is doing better. I pulled the sucraflate for now since its either not working, hes not eating enough to make a difference.

I finally talked to my vet who is a newer vet to me (since moving my horse to outdoor board in summer 2020). So this is her first winter with my problematic horse. She surprisingly thinks that hind gut ulcers are less common than people think - definitely an interesting opinion and I’m not sold on that yet. She agreed with putting him on omperazole and offered misoprostol prescription to try in addition to omeprazole.

I’m excited to be trying something different for sure.

She thought the next step would be to take him to a clinic/university with an internal specialist but thought even then we may not get answers so I’m not sure what to do. Hoping that the misoprostol with omeprazole for a month may be enough…

[skydy]

Good luck @reithme2. I hope you get an actual diagnosis for him so you and your vet can find the right treatment. It’s no fun taking shots in the dark with treatments when you don’t really know what is wrong.

I’m sorry, this must be exhausting for you, and of course for your horse as well. Hang in there.

[reithme2]

Thanks - I hope we find some answers too.
Horse is doing better on omeprazole and started the misoprostol this past weekend. We’ll see if his helps with weight - so far has just improved his desire to eat.

I have a new vet coming out this week to check lameness - maybe pain could be why I can’t improve wegiht/topline?

In the interim I did a ton of research on leaky gut this weekend and am now thinking we should look in that direction. It explains a lot including why the sucralfate didn’t have an impact but that he is doing better on omeprazole. He usually improves a bit on omeprazole but I’m never able to get his body condition/weight back but leaky gut could explain that.

I reached out to stride animal health to see if hes a candidate for their 21 day gut program.

[reithme2]

Update:

Had a lameness vet out to rule out back/SI/hock paint that may be keeping horse from gaining weight.
vet thought he was sound, flexed well and just recommended adequan due to age and history/arthritis.

Vet suggested pulling blood due to other concerns and testing for Lyme to rule things out.

Blood work came back with high creatinine levels and vet thinks this may mean chronic kidney issues that could be impacting weight, causing ulcers etc.

The saga continues…

scheduling an apt with the only internal specialist in our area for next week.
We’ll continue to update!

[Gardenhorse]

Good luck. Hope the internal medicine vet has some answers for you.

[stb]

I have a 21 y/o gelding with chronic diarrhea and free fecal water issues. He gets much worse in the winter when he is on hay and no grass, but he still is symptomatic to a lesser degree during the warmer months as well. I have tried different feeds, different hays, daily psyllium, sucralfate - you name it, I’ve probably tried it.

Two weeks ago I hired an equine nutritionist (PhD) to see if she could help. She suggested we take him off of hay entirely, and gave me a 7 day schedule for hay removal. Instead of hay he is to eat 2 lbs of Timothy pellets and 2 lbs of senior feed four times daily. On day 3 of the protocol his FFW resolved. By day 6 (still on 1/4 normal amount of hay along with new feed protocol) his poops looked excellent. With such a fast and good response it was decided that he did not need to come off of hay entirely, so we are holding with the 1/4 normal amount. He will be on this regimen for approximately 30 days, when we will try to increase hay and decrease some of the hay pellets.

To say I am thrilled would be an understatement. I only wish I had done this years ago. The consult was money very well spent.

[reithme2]

Internal specialist didnt have high hopes - after reviewing his history she is pretty sure he may have had kidney disease for years as his first real symptom was high water consumption and frequent urination.
We are going to bring him in and ultrasound his kidneys and possibly push fluids but she wasn’t optimistic he’d make a full recovery. I’m definitely willing to try the fluids once but if his levels are still high or he doesn’t bounce back weight/temperament wise I think we are out of options sadly…
Also calling the university that is within a days drive for a second recommendation.

Frustratingly its snowing where we are so no one wants to haul him in the snow so it will likely be a few days.

[Nova2000]

Just wondering if you have an update? Wondering how he is doing. Jingles for you guys.

[reithme2]

@Nova2000 - we actually put this horse down a few weeks ago.

Once we realized he had chronic kidney disease the outlook was maybe a year at best. on ultrasound his one kidney was very large and the other couldnt be found - a sign that he was in late stages of kidney disease and ultimately kidney failure. Vet didnt think that fluids or diet change would improve kidney function at all.

After letting it all sink in it became more and more clear how much this horse had been silently struggling and i just couldnt handle watching him decline further.

If we’d known earlier we could have tried pumping him with fluids (dialysis) and reducing the protein in his diet and it may have helped for a while but my understanding is that chronic kidney disease in horses will always lead to death eventually. I’d also read some pretty terrible stories on here and other forums of kidney disease horses taking a turn for the worse quickly.

I wish Id taken him to an internal specialist a lot sooner - id thought we’d ran his blood multiple times but after reviewing his records we didnt - i know it came up but it was never a ‘we should run blood because it seems like he could have kidney disease’ it was always a ‘well we could run blood just to see’. I was 100% convinced that his horse had hind gut/ulcer issues in conjunction with cushings (which hed been tested and treated for both).

The kidney disease was out of right field when we finally decided to test his blood ‘to rule things out’. but it explained everything. My understanding is that is pretty rare - both vets I’d been working with were really surprised and didnt seem to understand a lot about the disease (ex: difference between acute and chronic, one thought his test results could just mean he was dehydrated) - when I talked to two different internal specialists they implied that this happens a lot - that horses with chronic kidney disease are diagnosed late and almost never a good outcome. Acute on the other hand can be reversed with dialysis (fluids).

Needless to say I’ve learned a ton and would do things differently next time but I’m also just glad I got an answer - even if it wasnt treatable - I have felt more at peace.

[Nova2000]

@reithme2 I am so sorry for your loss. Hugs to you