The amount of regumate didn’t stop my girls cycles in spring or fall or an occasional strong summer cycle.
I managed strong cycles with robaxin and she was on large amounts of magnesium… sort of did and didn’t help.
Update- I had the IUPOD placed in my mare today. Very easy and cost effective to have done. The vet said to give it a couple months before making a determination if it is effective or not.
Hoping this will eliminate my need for the Regumate and Alternogest shots together. I will happily give Regumate for the rest of her life if it works with the IUPOD. Alternogest is draining my bank account rapidly!
If the IUPOD doesn’t work, I’ll look into spaying her, but I’m worried that might not be effective either.
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Hi, how is the iUPOD going? Considering using it for my mare!
Perfect timing for an update. It’s a long one!
Long story short, the IUPOD did not work for us, but I don’t think my situation is a good one to base any decisions off of. I am still considering spaying her if her heat cycles are violent and I can’t have her on progesterone.
Full update:
My IUPOD experience wasn’t great, but it was likely due to my mare’s anatomy. She had a foal at 3 years old (with pervious owner) and had a fairly severe rectal tear that necessitated emergency surgery hours after foaling. Her anatomy “back there” is abnormal now.
After her poor behavior under saddle began to escalate this winter I started to look at all possible explanations, not just hormone related ones. It was to the point where I couldn’t even get on and ask my poor horse to walk forward from the mounting block without her rearing. All though this she was amazing on the longe line. Moving better than ever, seemly happy, but put weight on her back and she became miserable. She always warmed me before she did anything scary, but still, it wasn’t fun and I knew something was very wrong with my horse.
Radiographed her back and neck, injected one spot on her cervical spine and two spots on her thoracic spine. This was a reach… radiologist read the films out as possibly showing a little narrowing, but not a slam dunk. After this she moved better on the longe, but her behavior under saddle continued to worsen.
Scoped for ulcers, found nothing but still treated for hind gut with sucralfate and misoprostal. Again, she seemed happier in general, but continued to worsen under saddle.
I finally realized her worsening behavior seemed to coincided with the IUPOD placement. I brought her to a university for a full work up with sports medicine, internal medicine, neurology and therio. Turns out she had a bad uterine infection! They flushed liters and liters of puss out of her uterus and removed the IUPOD.
I had her flushed two more times several days apart, treated her with antibiotics and had to take her off all hormonal supplements to help drain the infection out of her uterus. She tends to get fecal water during her heat cycles and they suspect that because of her anatomy, it contaminated her uterus. Combine that with a foreign object (IUPOD) and Regumate tightening her cervix, the perfect environment for an infection was made.
After stopping the Regumate, she went into the most violent heat I’ve ever seen a mare go into. Angry, miserable, trying to kick other people and horses, spooking, screaming etc. After 10 days in heat, she finally came out of it last week. She was so exhausted following the heat my trainer and I decided to give her a little rest before attempting to see what she’s like under saddle now. So this week I will get on and see if she’s more comfortable. Her eye finally looks soft and relaxed, she’s no longer on high alert and has no reaction to palpating her flanks or back.
Long story short, the IUPOD did not work for us, but I don’t think my situation is a good one to base any decisions off of. I am still considering spaying her if her heat cycles are violent and I can’t have her on progesterone.
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Since this was updated again, I’ll add in an update for my girl. She is doing very well and training is improving and on a more normal path since her spay May of 2022. So so very happy and thankful for us both that I did spay her
Only “issue” is that everything I taught her in the past before the spay required reteaching her to do the exercise all over again without tension.
That was fairly surprising as I didn’t think horses lived in the past as much as she seems to. My experiences before with other painful health issues is that once they stop hurting they are fine to do everything with new found confidence.
This has not been the case, however once she relearns and tries we are back on track. I’m hoping to still stay at 3rd again this year and build her confidence.
Her hyper alertness in new environments is getting better and better as well, as she learns to trust she won’t hurt and trust me to not ask for anything that will make her hurt. It’s a process like anything else.
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I’ll add my own update. I reached out to the facility that my mare went to for an update, and this is what they said:
“She is doing great and settled in well. She had quite a personality in the beginning, but now is quite a sweet mare.”
While not the outcome I ever anticipated (or wanted) when I started this thread, I am a year into owning a wonderful young gelding who is everything I could have wanted and my mare is in a situation where she can be happy. It certainly could have ended worse.
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Thanks so much for the update!
As I bet you are already aware, the developer of the iUPOD doesn’t recommend concurrent use of the iUPOD and Regumate for exactly this reason (risk of uterine infection with anything inserted into the uterus in combination with the cervical-tightening effect of the progesterone).
Poor mare and poor you! I hope she continues to improve.
@lcbaker @Rel6 @Guyot - thank you so much for sharing your experiences.
I’m in the midst of trying to sort out what is going on with my mare. Currently awaiting a mix of progesterone & estradiole that is only made by Rood & Riddle - in consultation with New Bolton Center, we are trying this to help determine if my mare is a good candidate for an ovariectomy. I’ve been doing ultrasounds nearly weekly and think that I am finding that my mare is only comfortable when her follicles have regressed since her discomfort/“bad behavior” is not limited to only when she is in heat. The a-ha moment came when we ultrasounded her and she had no follicles: it was like a switch had flipped - she was just so lovely for 3 days. Then the very next day, the switch had flipped back to very touchy/grumpy/terrible to ride. Probably because follicles were growing! She is on Regumate and it is not effective in transition (spring and fall) for her. The idea is that if she seems more comfortable with the shrunken ovaries/follicles then we have a better idea that they are in fact the problem. Would love to hear if anyone else has tried this.
I’m lucky to have Dr. Gradil, the developer of the IUPOD, as my treating therio now. In hindsight, I wish I had consulted him before having the IUPOD inserted, but I was desperate. My local repro person was willing to insert it as long as I knew and accepted the risk. I tried to eliminate the Regumate after it’s insertion, but when in heat, she was still so difficult to handle and miserable, I put her back on it. I feel very guilty about my decisions. I’m terrified that she is going to associate riding with being miserable, but I’ll cross that bridge when/if we get there.
Thank you for sharing your experiences. I’d be very interested to hear how the progesterone/estradiole works. The therio at Tufts I’m working with has recommended drawing blood when she comes into heat the next time and doing daily samples to objectively evaluate her hormone levels. I may ask about serial ultrasounds as well. Sending good mare vibes your way!
Thank you & right back atcha.
I will definitely keep updating - I have learned so much from everyone else’s experiences and hope I can help someone else.
Interesting about the daily blood draw - that has not been recommended to me, maybe because we are going off of what we are seeing in ultrasound - but I am just learning as I go! I’m afraid that the trial is not at a great time for me to determine if it’s the hormone shots or the time of year, now that we should be out of the transition period and we are going into the time of year where Regumate keeps her fairly consistent til late August, when all h-e-l-l starts to break loose again.
So my mare was the most miserable when the follicles were enlarged. When we medically “popped” then she was so much more comfortable and slept for days. This was especially miserable in the fall for her although spring was not pleasant by any stretch…, fall was just intolerable.
I think because when they enlarged they pulled on the scar tissue on her right side… not to mention the cancer and the abnormalities of both ovaries… her cycle and time of year is what caused the pain not the actual increase of hormone levels. (And yes I do get they are related! Just not abnormal hormonally.)
I cannot stress enough that she was ultra-sounding absolutely normal… and clearly she was suffering.
Not saying everyone will have the same thing, my mare was clearly struggling and most won’t have all her many issues however, I think the fact that she was clinically cleared and until they went in and saw how bad she was is revealing on how little we know about mares and their bodies.
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@Guyot, every time you describe your mare, you could be describing mine. It gives me hope that she could have a successful result from surgery just as yours did.
I hope for both your sakes she does 
Not much I love about the internet, but knowledge shared like this is one thing I would never give up.
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I have the same fear that we may not get an accurate idea of the efficacy of anything we try this time of year.
I need to find out more about what exactly we’re testing for with these blood draws. All I know is it’s an objective way to asses where she is in her cycle. This may have been the recommendation for my horse because getting someone to come ultrasound her weekly would be challenging and I don’t have a trailer to bring her to the clinic.
While I don’t envy any of us, it’s nice to have a little “support group”.
I’ve had mares my whole life. Several chestnut mares! I’ve dealt with the typical sass that comes with a heat cycle, but it’s never effected my horse’s quality of life or ability to be ridden. The ones I had on Regumate responded well and it completely suppressed any noticeable heat cycles.
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I would be really interested to know what the blood draws test as well. I wasn’t aware of any blood tests that could assess where a mare was in her cycle - with mine, we were ultrasounding in order to do that. The only blood tests that ever came up specifically related to repro was to test for a GCT tumor (which we did, twice).
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It’s to track her progesterone levels. Today will be the first blood draw and then we will draw every 7 days for a total of 4 samples. I’m also sending out a second GCT panel as well. Last one was a year ago and totally normal, but what’s a few more hundred bucks at this point!
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We believe my mare went out of heat 10 days ago. She completely relaxed and was back to her old self. I was able to get on and walk her around without issue three times this week. I was overjoyed just to be able to walk away from the mounting block. Then today she started to act unsettle, by the time she came in from turnout she was screaming, high strung and cranky. She was wild on the lunge line. My trainer got on and was able to walk a little, but then she started to stop and pop up when asked to walk forward. We’re guessing she’s back in heat. Going to draw blood and ultrasound her tomorrow. I’ll reach out to the therio Monday and see where to go from here. I can’t have a horse that’s unmanageable and miserable 50% of the time.
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Four days into the progesterone/estradiole protocol and I have a completely different horse. She was very reactive and tense when I rode on Friday. We started the shots on Saturday and she’s been her usual “summer self” since. She is not perfect, but she feels rideable/trainable again. We are cantering small jumps without drama, just feels like a horse who’s out of her program a bit.
Also a noticeable difference in grooming her: on Saturday I could curry her in front of her shoulder and behind her hip, but got grouchy faces/biting the air in betwen the two. The past 2 days she seems to even enjoy being curried in the no-no area.
Now I am more convinced that the ovaries and follicles are problematic, but I am also wondering if the Regumate is the problem. I don’t personally know anyone else who has had negative experiences, but the product literature says irritability and aggression are potential side effects. I guess I’ll find out next week when we finish our 10 days of shots, but I’m going to enjoy the relative peace they have created in the meantime 
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Thanks for the update!
My vet has confirmed no residual fluid in my mares uterus. So hopefully the infection is gone. She took a culture from the uterus today just to be sure. I am going to inquire about trying the progesterone/estradiole once we get all our testing results back.
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