What did you see behaviorally in your horse before and after ulcer diagnosis and treatment?
What grade ulcers were they and did said behavior go away entirely?
I am currently treating my guy for ulcers, and I am wanting to hear other experiences behaviorally.
Explosive spooking, over things the horse never even noticed before. Like, dangerous-to-ride spooking, even though I don’t come off easily.
It went away completely. Horse returned to normal after treatment.
The treatment was not easy – ranitidine & water, in large amounts – and was multiple times per day. Fortunately I lived on the farm at the time. And the horse cooperated – I think he realized he felt a great deal better afterward. He got all of his treatments as prescribed.
Sent you a PM
I just had a mare diagnosed with ulcers.
She was hard to catch and didn’t prefer grain, and if I brought her into the barn, she would start trembling whether it was hot or cold. She didn’t enjoy riding some days. Last month, she colicked and had a chill. When the vet came out, they did an exam and could not find anything abnormal, so the current options were ulcers or tumours. We decided to put her on the pharmacist version of Omeprazole, and she is already happier and easier to catch, and she doesn’t look as sucked up.
Before her treatment, she would run away from you when you went to catch her, whether it was to put a fly mask on, groom, or ride. We have had her for several years, and every time we went to catch her, we brought treats or grain, and now she has started to trot up to me like our young horses do.
Mine also gets spooky. He’s generally not a spooky horse and he doesn’t get explosive, but his tell is that he fixates on something to spook at. If we’re in an indoor arena, it’s the big door (garage door) at the end - he’s done this at more than one barn so now I know it’s his signal to me.
He also gets tight in the back, especially lumbar region (I can feel tightness behind the saddle) and his gaits get tight. My coach can also see him tucked up, like he’s sucking his stomach up to protect it.
He will get extremely picky about feed except for hay.
I haven’t found he gets upset about grooming, tacking up (including girthing), or most other things.
He was scoped once, after I’d had him on 2 or 3 rounds of compounded omeprazole or Nexium and the ulcers kept coming back. Vet found grade 1-2 non-squamous ulcers. Not sure if they were worse at one point but had improved somewhat with the generic treatment. We ended up doing a round of Gastrogard and then rescoping. Previously I would just treat with generic omeprazole and they would clear up.
How many months did it take for treatment? Generic and gastro
Did that clear them? Are you/did you still have to fight the ulcers following the GastroGard?
Just curious!
Originally with the generic I was doing about a month of daily treatment. Ulcers came back several months later. Did a second round for a month, took a couple months to return, then tried the Nexium for a month and they returned after just a few weeks. That’s when I decided to scope so I knew exactly what we were dealing with.
Gastrogard we did 28 days after scoping, then rescoped and he still had a tiny bit of discolouration from healing ulcers so we did one more week. We did get 28 days free GG under the guarantee program the company offers (vet needs to send their rep photos from the before and after scope).
My horse’s ulcer symptoms start as grumpiness being groomed and tacked, progresses to ear pinning and tail wringing undersaddle, and then spooking or freezing under tack.
He had Grade IV ulcers when first diagnosed/scoped. His previous owner did 3 full courses of the Gastroguard only to have ulcers return, and she realized she just wasn’t going to be able to manage the ulcers in her current barn.
When I got him, I kept him on the omeprazole, and with 24/7 turnout, a forage based diet, a small controlled herd, he did fine.
I attempted to wean him off the omeprazole a couple of times, and each time, symptoms returned as above, once after 3 weeks, once after 8. So now he’s on omeprazole for life. 
Mine stopped drinking normal amounts of water and was acting dull. But was fat and shiny. I can’t remember what grade they were, but the vet took pics and said they were the worst they had seen.
I did a month of GG then two months of ranitidine. He had one relapse when I gave him a nibble net because he was getting too fluffy.
Yes it cleared them, verified by rescoping (just a little bit of discolouration from healing ulcers at the second rescope, so we did one more week of GG).
He has a bunch of issues in his hind end, stemming from an old SI ligament injury (arthritis from compensation) so I have to stay on top of everything. I think his ulcers come from low-level pain or discomfort when I don’t catch a problem in time. The ulcers we ended up scoping to treat led us to find another problem area which was new and we are now able to successfully manage.
Also cows. There are a couple cows on the barn property that we had to pass to hack in the fields and he was quite scared of them. I took him to a cow-sorting clinic on property because I was told many horses figure out they can push the cows, and they are no longer scared. He got ulcers 
Although he was actually better IN the pen with the cows than he was waiting outside the pen.
ETA: he also goes on generic omeprazole now during show season to prevent ulcers, since we’re trailering, schooling XC, and showing. Last year was the first year and he did really well on it. I took him off for the winter, and we’ll be doing that again this year.
Can you send me a PM? Want to explore a bit
Interesting! I have a horse that sounds similar. Thanks for the info!
In my most recent battle with ulcers, most of my mare’s symptoms were under saddle. She was scoped and found to have grade 2 ulcers in all three areas of the stomach. I treated with injectable omeprozole, sucralfate, and misoprostal. We have had a flare-up early this spring and I did a round of omeprozole paste and sucralfate (no misoprostal) and have had no issues since.
On the ground, she seemed perpetually back sore, very sensitive to grooming or being touched on the left side, and grumpy about the saddle pad and saddle being put on. No reaction to the girth or tightening the girth.
She does not get a lot of grain but was eating and drinking normally. Her summer coat was shiny and soft; her winter coat grew in kind of coarse but not dull. She is not any more or less spooky after treatment but she’s not a spooky horse at all.
Pony # 1 acted very dull and had loose stools. Scoped and had grade 3 ulcers. Resolved (scoped) with sucralfate, Ulcergard, Outlast supplement. He is still treated with Ulcergard during times of stress as that seems to be his big trigger and remains on Outlast.
Pony #2 acted both spooky and dull depending on the day, also very picky with feed. Not scoped but treated with Ulcergard with good results.
Mine was very anxious about things, which also showed as separation anxiety, anxiety about the saddle, tension during grooming/tacking, spookiness. He reacted to the ulcer touch points too.
The obvious ulcer flag was how he ate his hard feed. He was always one to bite his feed as he ate, and would lick his bowl clean. When he had ulcers he’d take a few bites, then a few nibbles, then start pushing the bowl around and just nosing the food.
I treated with generic omeprazole and it took almost 3 months to get them healed (no scope at this point). When he started showing his ulcer signs again I did 4 weeks of Gastroguard, scoped him and got another 4 weeks of Gastroguard (free), which I used to do 2 more weeks of full doses and tapered off over the next three weeks. Rescope looked good and the ulcers didn’t come back.
The caveat here is that I had owned him since he was a foal and he’d never had ulcer issues. My gut was that there was a reason he got them, and why it was so difficult to get rid of them. He was diagnosed as neurological at the same vet visit we got the Gastroguard the first time.
Mine was not just spooky but out-of-his-mind, inconsolably, irrationally BONKERS about things he previously didn’t care about. Tractors, trucks, golf carts, dogs…all things he had been around his entire life were suddenly enough to make him flip the f*** out like I’d never seen before. I seriously thought he might have a heart attack at one point.
Along with this he was back sore, super tight and having muscle spasms, touchy about being groomed near his flanks, at times ear-pinning at the saddle and/or the girth. NONE of these were in character for him. He actually got to the point he’d not kick at me exactly, but pick up his hind foot and swing his butt toward me and stomp down, either knocking me out of the way or (one time) stomping on my foot. This is a horse that loves being groomed normally and has never kicked or so much as threatened to lift a foot at anyone in his 16-year life. He’s a total sweetheart of a horse.
I never had him officially scoped, but I did an Ulcergard trial and the results were astonishing. In days he was improving and by the end of a month of treatment he was 100% his old self again. Thank goodness.
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