Red Pony Farm: A journey in motion

SMZ Dose Administration

Sulfamethoxazole is a common antibiotic. As I was preparing Willies AM dose last night I thought I would post a couple of tips that perhaps newbies might find helpful.

1. Don't bother crushing them. They dissolve almost instantly in water. Use just enough water to cover them in a small container--like a 1/2 cup measure. Wait about 10 minutes to let them completely dissolve without having to add more water than necessary. While your waiting take an equal amount of Mayonnaise (you don't want to over-fill the oral dose syringe, so equal is relative. In Willies case he is taking 18 as one dose so the mayo is perhaps less volume than the SMZ paste I've just made. and yes Mayonnaise (or miracle whip). It makes the SMZ paste stay in your horses mouth and it greases the inside of the oral dose syringe making the plunger work smoothly) and mix in a teaspoon of Cinnamon or apple pie spice. Add the Mayo mixture to the SMZ paste once it is dissolved

2. Adding sugar turns the SMZ paste to the Constancy of water. If you are stuck on using sweeteners use molasses or syrup sparingly.

3. Most horses think Cinnamon or apple pie spice mix makes SMZs taste better than sugar or molasses does anyway.

4. When spooning the mixture into the syringe, run it down one side of the barrel to leave the tip clear for air to escape when you insert the plunger. If the tip is not clear, just barely insert the plunger, enough to close off the end and with the tip upwards tap the syringe lightly against the edge of the kitchen cabinet (or what-have-you) till the goo slides back into the barrel and the tip is cleared. Slide in the plunger slowly letting the air escape.

5. Make sure the horse's mouth is empty. Nothing wastes medicine faster than a half chewed wad of grass or hay that the med adheres to just before they spit it out in the dirt!

6.You can cut the nozzle of the (plasitc) oral dose syringe down to a bit wider opening to make the plunger run more smoothly still.

7. Do not stuff the syringe so far into the horses mouth that she has to open her mouth. You can position it just inside the lip at the corner of the mouth and point the tip over the tongue at about where a bit rests, hold under the jaw with one hand to elevate the mouth parallel to the ground then direct the flow of the paste over the tongue. Empty the syringe fairly quickly.

8. Rinse the syringe and other tools well and store them in the refrigerator (mayo residue). I only wash with soap and hot water after the treatments are done. It saves on the life of the rubber plunger gasket.

9. Oil the plunger gasket after every use with olive or veggie oil. It keeps it sliding smoothly.

Your own personal tips are welcome in the comments. Thanks

Lucy has a Heart Murmur

It sounds like a woosh of wind between the beats. It is hard to hear. I think I heard it. I will prctice being able to hear it and comparing it to the sound of the other "normal" equine hearts on the farm. I must be able to tell if it is getting worse, so I will be studying.

". . . It was defined as 1-2
resting, 2-3 after 4 minutes of trot / canter on the
lunge. I was told that is a good sign as it was
behaving as a physiological murmur rather than a
pathological one (?). She will go to Rochester Equine
Clinic in NH to see the cardiac specialist there in
the near future for testing to help define it more, so
I can know if she can continue training with CTR in
mind. I am anxious! . . ."

I hope some of you have stories of horses doing fine with heart murmurs.

I sent the above notice to ridecamp on Endurance.net. I got a lot of comments and helpful information. This sport has the most amazing group of folks! You can check out the responses by following the link I provided and clicking on "current Week" under ridecamp discussion formum. Or search the archives for heart murmur as this has come up before on the forum.

It seems there are a bunch of horses out there doing well with heart murmurs. I suddenly feel she is fragile physically as well as emotionally. I'm bummed. I need the rest of the picture that the eocariogram and EKG will provide. I would rather she lived 30 more years than to ever compete one day on her. I hope the test can tell me what to do. Sometimes they are just guidelines and theories.

Send stories please.

Bad Reaction to Tick Bite

In Just 24 hours (between fly dope applications) Willie rubbed a slightly larger than palm sized raw spot on the side of his tail near it's base. I mean the hair was gone! The skin was raw. There were two little holes side by side. I've seen a bad reaction to a tick bite and it looked much the same, though this one was much bigger! I applied "Blue Coat" (gentian Violet) The itching stopped immediately. This was Friday morning.

Saturday morning I repeated the same treatment. It looked a little better, like the skin was healing. Monday I washed all the blue coat off to get a good look at it. I wasn't happy with the scab that was forming. It was not attached right, not forming right.

I soaked it and scrubbed it with betedine wash and started poking at it. Sure enough puss squished out from under it. I ripped it mostly off and scrubbed and scrubbed some more. I smeared a tube of triple antibiotic ointment onto it and and let it be till the Vet arrived this morning(spring shots day--I already gave Rhino flu early in April--today was the other stuff).

I washed the ointment off just before the vet arrived so she cold see it well. This is what she saw:

You can see the little holes where the puss came from just under the bottom edge of the scab that wouldn't come loose without a lot of force.

The vet didn't get squeamish about the amount of force, she ripped the rest of it off! It was nasty, and uncovered another larger hole. I didn't get another photo of that as I was holding Willie's lead rope.

Willie is old for a draft at 27 and has had cushings for 4 - 5 years. So, he is not as good at fighting off infection as a healthy horse. Therefore he gets to take 18 SMZ's twice a day for 5 days. I also have to slather on some pretty pale blue Novisan cream with DMSO. I'll keep you posted.

But isn't he a handsome old boy?

The fact that his eyesight is greatly deminished really shows in his expressions sometimes (like when he hears the camera whirl)

Very Detailed & Distrubing Case Study

EHV-1 Strikes again. This time in canada. This time without classic symptoms. This account is particularly touching, with the personal photos and time lines.

Bio Scan & Light Therapy for Horses

Dan Sumerel is coming to Treasure Equestrian Center in Manchester Maine for the Little expo they put on in April. He will be demonstrating the Bio scan and light therapy method of speeding healing of obvious injury and detecting the more subtle disturbances in soft tissue that can cause a horse to be slightly off, or to balk during certain movements etc. etc.

My dear friend Pam Yankowsky invited Dan to her farm during one of his Maine tours. He worked on her horse and she was very excited about the results. She subsequently purchased a unit herself and has very recently started a new business, "Back On Track"  to include Bio Scan and light therapy in Central Maine. She has set up a A Blog to document her journey as a small business owner. Her new in-process facility in Pittston Maine will include horse training following the principles of  Mark Rashid , horse boarding to include the experience of the Paddock Paradise design. Barefoot trimming, and trail riding on some of the most beautiful trail systems Maine has to offer.

Pending Diagnosis on Apparent Ataxia

I got a call from a good friend who is in need of a place to retire a horse that she just received from a friend of hers. She has no place to keep it at her barn and is paying too steep a price at a nearby place for a retired beast (I don't think there is anyone who has boarding for as little as RPF--but then woods living camping is not everyones idea of ideal horse keeping). I said I had room. She told me the horse has some sort of Ataxia. Its hind end gets all out of control when you lead it--like it moves too fast and out of step with the front and nearly runs you over (?) and when you pull it sideways by its tail it just stays leaned in and doesn't return to straight--as if the horse can't tell that you've moved part of its body and he might want to take it back where it was (?) It will be evaluated by the Vet. I will keep you posted on the findings. I love the old ones!

Yikes! Here we go again . . .

Herpes Virus in Delaware

At the bottom of the article there is a list of related articles.

I wrote about this last spring in Maine.

The theory that the mutation happens at random is rather disturbing. It means this will pop-up like wild fires any old place without warning.

This is a good opportunity to review the new Vaccination Guidelines and discuss them with your vet.

AAEP WebSite

I signed up for e-mail updates from the American Association of Equine Practitioners Ask the Vet page. The link goes directly to the topic of Equine Nutrition. I am particularly interested in question #19. I have been reading information on horse feed and getting more confused by the minute! I want to feed Lucy more. She seems to carry less weight than I like and her coat/skin this winter is not up to her summer standards I think. She gets free choice good quality (I hope) hay and  1/2 scoop of This Stuff twice a day (I need to look and see what the recommended feeding is for ProMax pellets). I just started adding Vitamin E & Selenium. But I DO NOT want more energy. My Lord she is wound lately! (More on that next week when I write about training updates) Maybe more Protein? Anyone out there have a high strung hard keeper? What about alfalfa?

Wind Puffs

Lucy gave me a scare when she developed wind puffs. An endurance rider on the ridecamp forum at Endurance.net told me she had once neglected what she believed were just wind puffs resulting in delayed treatment for a more serious injury. I immediately called The Leg vet  who takes payment through Care Credit which is my only option this month. Dr. Sara Emanuel Came with her assistant and examined Lucy. she found that there was no swelling, heat or pain. What she called the effusions (see arrows in photos) did not involve the dorsal or palmar pouches of the fetlock but were restricted to the caudal aspect around distal flexor tendons. I am quoting off the very nifty (legible) report that she typed up & printed off for me on the laptop in her truck.

Dr Emanuel performed a flexsion test in both hind fetlocks and found no lameness. She then ultrasound-ed tendons and ligaments of both legs in and around the area of the effusions to rule out a traumatic cause. She found no fluid within the tendon sheath around the superficial digital flexor tendon. there was no evidence of tearing. The fluid of the effusions was very clear, no fibrin tags and no "floater". The sesmoid bones have nice smooth edges.  She told me that they were indeed just wind puffs. She said that I could try using standing wraps 12 hours on 12 hours off, cold hosing also after work, but that doing nothing was also fine. Apparently wind puffs are purely cosmetic. I was concerned that I should not have let her run around for so long the first few weeks of her arrival. Dr. Emanuel assured me that I could not have done anything differently. She also was quite confident that they cause a horse no discomfort. She said some horses get wind puffs and some do not, period. I was greatly relieved, nearly to the point of tears.  I'm a silly sensitive woman. I was told to continue with training as planned as she handed me my Care credit receipt for $345.00. And so we have. The cold hosing doesn't seem to make any change so I don't bother. I have not tried wrapping as the WPs are not getting any bigger and cosmetically they don't offend me. As long as Lucy feels no discomfort I am unconcerned. We are up to 4 miles in 1 hour 15 minutes--woohoo. I am taking it very slow with this horse. She does everything so well. I am sure that if I proceeded as "normal" for me I would ruin her in short order. I will train in lots of bad habits. So, I am doing things differently. Working on response to the aids; stop, go, supple, slow walk behind another horse at a respectful distance,  and teaching her to neck rein. I am grateful to AD for loving LSD (long slow distance) although there hasn't been any L in the LSD yet, she helps me to stay focused on the little things and letting Lucy get very comfortable with the trail life at mostly the walk. Lucy Lui has such a fantastic trail walk! My goodness she can cover some ground with it. Somehow I have managed to let mounting become worrisome. Lucy needs to be held for mounting while on trail, and we do a fair amount of that on the maze of x-country ski trails we frequent. One of the stipulations of riding there is that we must remove all horse poop from the trail as we go along. Small price to pay for the use of such nicely groomed and scenic trails. So anyway, I need to spend some time time studying how I mount and what I'm doing that Lucy reacts to. I let you know how I make out. If you have experience to share, either with wind puffs or mounting difficulties, please do.

This picture just happens to show the brindle marking on Lucy's legs. I think they are sort of unique and interesting.

I had to toss in a picture of some old Willie legs just for fun. I sometimes think these little things (that I need to ask him to stand still while I photograph his legs like I did Lucy--as if he'd leave his bowl with grain still in it) are what continue to make him realize that he is important. Did you know that Willie has out lived his Vet predicted end by 3 years now?

Yes, indeed. Sunsets at red Pony farm wouldn't be nearly so spectacular without Willie in them.

Update EHV1 in Maine

For updates go to this page at Maine.gov and check for links to reports the news box in the top right hand column.