And I fed it (got a boatload free from my farrier) when my horse was younger and non- metabolic.
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Well…shoot! My IR horse turns out to have chronic Lyme. I tested him in 2020 (because of tripping and other things going on), and it was negative.
His IR got out of control to the point of doing a course of meds winter before last. Although he’d spent 18 months in there not getting turned out due to his scapula fracture and rehab. So who knows when he picked up ticks. Following several tick bites that I found this spring (including picking off 3 ticks myself), he had a few days where both hind legs started stocking up. So we did a few tests including Lyme test. Which showed no acute infection but a chronic infection (sort of on the lower end of the range but definitely not borderline). Because he was oozing from the bites and suspect other bites and/or summer sores, we put him on doxycycline. Which after a few days was sending him dangerously towards colitis land (diarrhea, going off all food)…just in time for the bloodwork to come back. Vet advised to take him off the meds, give him all the gut support (ulcer meds, extra probiotics, and Succeed), and said he was probably fine because he wasn’t really symptomatic of Lyme.
Stocking up did resolve without any cellulitis or anything. But dang, could Lyme have been the thing that tipped his EMS-prone self off into clinical insulin dysregulation? I had checked his (unmedicated) insulin levels the month prior to all this tick drama, and it was lower than it had been in December, as hoped.
Sorry to derail this thread….clearly I can’t treat the chronic Lyme, so this is just life now? So interesting.
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Not a derail at all!
I’m skimming through stuff now and it looks like in people, Lyme causes weight gain for many people who get diagnosed with it.
I haven’t vetted the sources yet, but ChattyG had this to say and a quick google seems like there’s something to it.
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Provided he can tolerate the antibiotics, I will absolutely have another panel run to see if it moves his leptin down.
That could explain why he can’t stop himself from eating if there’s food in front of him too. Or he could just be a fjord on that one 
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Have you seen this?
If you plug his insulin and glucose numbers in, he may actually be IR, or at least strongly borderline
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I have! He pings on all three of their assessments from his insulin and glucose numbers. #drylotforlife
They do have info on their site about NSC! https://www.succeed-equine.com/expertise/blog/management-tips/non-structural-carbohydrates-nsc-and-succeed-your-top-5-questions-answered/
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This is very interesting. This wasn’t on the website years ago. Maybe they’ve done more research since then. I may reconsider it. Thank you!!!
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You bet!!
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First dose of mino went down the hatch with no complaints this morning. I did spray with diluted molasses just to make it extra good, but I’m not planning to do that for more than a couple days.
Fingers crossed he tolerates them well!
Editing to add - picking up the meds at CVS was a hoot. I walked in and said I was there to pick up meds for my horse, and the tech was pretty flat but goes, “Oh, I remember that call coming in” Then she gets the bag which was big and said to someone looking at her funny, “Charlie is a horse”.
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Mino is generally more well-tolerated than doxy, so that’s one check in your favor 
My mare ate all her mino capsules without any hesitation. She gets minimal food, and is fed on a swept mat, so also cleans up whatever she drops, and this included any dropped mino capsules LOL! If I found any that she missed, I got a handful of alfalfa pellets and added them, and she ate them right up.
Her son, however, wanted nothing to do with them, so I was breaking open his whole dose and adding that to his soaked food which he was ok with. Thankfully that was NOT for Lyme, it was for another issue, and was a short-lived PITA
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I am happy to take any easy wins we can get!!
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I had that same experience, except mine was misoprostal. That was an actual serious conversation about why I needed so much of that.
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I definitely shocked the pharmacist for a minute picking up horse script for Robaxin at the human pharmacy once.
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I wish I could have ridden him and gone through the drive through to pick it up, but it’s too far away!
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So far we are off to a good start. He ate his breakfast just fine without the molasses spray yesterday. Bright eyed, bushy tailed, happy to eat. Temp is completely normal, poop is solid.
I’m planning to give him a couple more days off/super light groundwork days to not aggravate anything as the initial bacteria die off and then we will be back to our regularly scheduled programming.
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Reporting in after a month of mino treatment!
He has been about as good as I’ve known him to be. I still have him on a full Equioxx/day in addition to the mino. I’m thinking once we get into month 3 of treatment, Ill dial him back to a pill every other day and see how that holds. We haven’t had a full blown knee buckle since I’ve started the treatment.
One major note is that his FWS is non-existent. I’ve been hesitant to say it out loud, but we’ve gotten through enough miserable hot/humid days where he has been out during the day and not so much as a drop.
I have continued to do a lot with the balance mat and proprioceptive work with poles/hill/etc and that very much seems to help. I’m guessing that we may have some neuropathy in play between the Lyme and the EPM, but it seems manageable.
I shared in the animal communication thread that we talked to Nancy yesterday, and she definitely picked up on his issues. Before I told her anything about him/his diagnosis, she said that he is putting more weight on his back legs, that his front feet feel “heavy”. She told me nothing felt out, but his poll is “weird”. She also said that he was the first horse with a chronic Lyme diagnosis that was willing to talk to her and that he is a very happy horse (she reiterated this a couple times). So take that for what it’s worth!
A couple indicator things I have been watching are that leg fussiness when I pick up his front feet. That seems to be slightly better, but still sometimes he wants to pull the hooves if I just hold them like Im going to pick them, and he still shows intermittent discomfort walking on the gravel to his turnout. SO I’m going to try my hands with glue ons. I met up with my friend that taught me to trim, ordered a set of the N&U Performer shoes from a recommendation in a separate thread. They look a little less complicated with the adhesive tabs vs the big glue gun.
If they seem to work for him, I am going to have to get my nipper badge next because I don’t want to rasp 6 weeks of growth or however long the shoes stay on for 
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Those shoes sound pretty amazing. But are they single use only?
–signed, the owner of a chronic shoe puller
Yeah. Single use in terms of wear but they can be re-installed if they pull one off.
Friend has found that they don’t last longer than 5-6 weeks. Ours are out on dry lots 24/7 when they’re not being worked in the beautiful GGT footing. They get Scoot Boots for trail since we have to ride on slick pavement part of the way.
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Thanks for chiming in! Has your friend tried the grips/spikes? They are currently sold out on the website but if these work, I’d be looking at those for the winter for sure.
I need to do some cost/benefit analysis with all this at some point. I very well may end up getting him in some of the Easy Care poly nail ons and just have a farrier do it. If I have to full on replace the shoes every 6 weeks, something like those are about half the cost of the N&U ones so even paying the farrier to do it may be close to a wash.
No spines or grips. No snow or ice here, we avoid showing on the grass, and we had the Scoot Boots for the barefoot horses.
Everyone, even the few with metal shoes, now goes out on trail in Scoot Boots for traction. Good for pavement and the occasional rock. When my horse was shod in Eponas they had enough traction that he didn’t need Scoot Boots.
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