O lost an eleven year old gelding this past week. I care a lot for my horses and really hated loosing my main ride. I’m trying to understand what happened and what I might have done different.
This gelding has been a real goer for all the years I’ve ridden him. Close to a 1000 trail miles each year. He liked to lead out and moved at a brisk pace with out needing a lot of encouragement.
This spring I two mare coming off maternity leave, that were overweight and I committed to spending more time riding them to work on getting them in shape. My gelding got some time off. Getting out for a trail ride once every two to three weeks. Instead of weekly. I noticed in March-April time frame that he was slowing down. Less willing to lead, and huffing-puffing a little more on climbs. I just kinda figured he was loosing his conditioning since I was working the fat mares.
July he was definitely not himself and more of bring up the rear and huff and puff.
So I decided I needed to more time into riding him and get him back in shape. I took him out for a solo ride, early morning, So temps were high 70’s Nothing terrible. He didn’t want to move out. So I just let him dog walk the trail. About 2 1/2 miles out, I decided he must not be feeling well it would take all day to the 13-14 mile loop I had planned on and I re-routed our course so we were headed back to the trailer. About 3 miles in he stopped and just really didn’t want to move forward, So I got off and was leading him. About every 100 yards he would stop and want a blow. This was a pretty level trail. Not that hard of work. Something he normally would have trotted and not broke a sweat. At the third time he stopped, the teetered a couple times, like he was having trouble controlling his back legs and crashed to the ground and was basically gone. Very shallow breathing, So I quickly undid the girth and pulled the bridle. He showed no awareness of his surroundings and stopped breathing a short time later.
I suspect he must of had a heart condition or aneurism. Something that caused the slow down in the months before and then the sudden death. I’ve done endurance and competitive trail and think I have a reasonable ability to look at a horse’s condition. And I would have never thrown a saddle on him, if I suspected he was that fragile. Standing in my back yard with my herd of horses, You would never have noticed he was slowing down. But apparently 3 miles of walking was enough to trigger the event.
I’m kinda looking back trying to understand what symptom I missed and what a vet might have been able to do to treat something like this. If there was a treatment. Any ideas?
