Rehabbing horse after bacterial pneumonia

[AlexN]

On Oct. 7, 2014, a 17 year old TB horse I care for was fed dry pellets and choked. Vet was nearby, tubed the horse, cleared everything, sent us on our way. After discovering the horse had a high fever that night, vet Rx’d 5 days of uniprim. Horse seemed better. One week later, we noticed some nasal discharge and a FOUL smell coming from horse’s nostrils. Vet did an ultrasound of horse’s lungs and a trans-tracheal wash to get a culture of the bacteria. Results were scary.

After almost 3 months of multiple courses of penicillin, gentacin, doxycycline, and metronidazole, plus nebulizer treatments of ampicillin and gentacin, many ultrasounds, and very nearly having to put this poor guy down, we’ve had 3 great ultrasounds and he seems like his old self again. I’ve ridden him 5 times now, doing 5-7 trot sets of 30-45 seconds each. I ran this program by the vet to get his opinion, and he told me he’s only ever seen one other horse come out of a case of pneumonia this bad. He wasn’t able to give me a pre-planned “program” like he would for a leg injury or something. He told me things to watch for, and of course, to take it slow, but no structured agenda.

So, now that I’ve written a novel, my question is, have any of you brought a horse back from a severe case of pneumonia before? If so, do you have any suggestions, hints, guidelines, etc? Any input is much appreciated!

[Cherry]

The very first thing I would do is add a probiotic to repopulate the bacteria in this horse’s gut–something with lactobacillus and yeast… It might be easier to get your horse to eat it in a pelleted form. Sometimes it’s easier to start off with a small amount but if your horse is thin I would, after a few days, feed it at twice the recommended rate (preferably once AM and once PM) until you see it working, then you can cut back to once a day.

You might also add Tri-Amino (made by Uckele) to your horse’s diet, that will help to build back any muscle loss…

Glad your horse made it! :yes:

Best of luck!

[AlexN]

Probiotics were part of his treatment - I don’t think he could have tolerated the arsenal of antibiotics without them. On that note, I highly recommend Full Bucket probiotic paste!