For those of you who know me, you also know that I have a beautiful black Morgan mare named Midnight Beauty. She was 12 years old on March 26th. When she was 10--almost to the day--in March of 2008, she suddenly couldn't walk. It was horrible. Imagine yourself trying to walk in shoes that are 2 sizes too small, and you'll get an idea of how hard it was for her. She was suffering from a chronic onset of laminitis, a condition that, if serious enough, can kill.
Fortunately, the x-rays showed no rotation of her coffin bone. OK. That was good news. Putting her on thyroid medication also helped.
Well, it's been 2 years since laminitis first reared its ugly head. In the meantime, she has had several bouts that would last for anywhere from 2 weeks to 3 months. In laminitis, you can't just treat the symptoms (hot, swollen feet with bounding pulses). You have to treat the cause, too. And for Beauty, it was food, or I should say, sugar.
Morgans are 'easy keepers.' They can live on air, for Pete's sake. So one of the first things we did was put her on a diet (in addition to thyroid medication). No more grazing on rich Spring grass. We tried using a muzzle on her, but she's been dubbed a 'Houdini' horse; she can finagle her way out of anything. We finally put her in a dry lot with several other mares. And we switched her to good ol' Teff hay... a low sugar grass hay from Ethiopia, no less! She lost around 100 pounds, which was good, since she was a little too fat anyway.
For her hot, swollen feet, I showered her legs and feet twice a day with 20 minutes of cold running water, for days at a time. Then, because her feet got 'soft' from so much water, I finally found some neat cold leg wraps (the kind with the 'ice' sewn in) that helped (from the Schneiders catalog) . We also gave her bute (phenylbutazone) and sometimes banamine for the inflammation, but cautiously. We didn't dose her more than 3 days in a row for fear of colic. She would get some comfort for a while, but then the on/off cycle was hard on her. Then came her 'slippers,' the Soft Ride boots. These were a God-send (thank you Lynn Seeley!). They came with heavy duty cushions inside balistic nylon 'shoes' and strapped on to her feet with Velcro (another gift from the gods!). With those, she could walk a lot easier. Barefoot, she could hardly walk at all without stumbling--her feet were that sore. Did I mention hand-walking her? Oh, geez, did we ever walk!
Well, eventually she got over those bouts--3 pairs of Soft Rides later at around $145 a whack! And Lynn, her farrier and an expert with the laminitic horse, took excellent care of her.
For a while she was pain free. But then she was stricken again in late January.
Why? Brenda Armitage and I kept asking ourselves (Brenda is the barn manager at Little Wing Stables where Beauty is boarded). Then we thought that maybe it might be her hormones. We were doing everything we possibly could, weren't we? We cut down her sugar intake, she lost weight, we put her on various supplements (B&L Solution and Probiotics to help her digestion).
OK. I was frustrated. There had to be more to these episodes. Despite all our efforts, though, she was still afflicted.
My beautiful horse couldn't be ridden any more. And my dreams of breeding her evaporated. Her feet just could not support the extra weight. I bought a cart and harness in hopes that it would give her the exercise she so badly needed. We took lessons with Roger Cleverly who was impressed with Beauty's instant take to pulling a cart. Things seemed hopeful last fall and I was looking forward to spring.
But in late January she came down with another case, this time, her whole body reacted. Her muscles tightened, and she walked haltingly, stiffly, almost as if she had arthritis, too.
What's a girl to do? I was determined to get to the bottom of Beauty's problems.
I called Dr. Wendy Weiberg, the vet. Again. We talked. Hormones? Maybe, but probably not. Cushings? We'll see, she said. Long story short: She ran several blood tests, including one to see if there were any tumors pressing on her glands. Every single one of them came back normal, except ONE. Her insulin/glucose levels were off the charts, the worst she'd ever seen.
Brenda and I looked at each other in amazement. What else could we do that we hadn't already done? One thing was clear, though, Beauty had an excess of sugar in her blood.
In the early days of her treatment, we switched Beauty to a feed that would replace some of the minerals and vitamins that she would otherwise get in regular grass or hay. We worried about her getting enough selenium, among other things. I looked at the bag again, it had grain and molasses in it (Stage 1 LMF feed) a no-no. OK. I took her off that immediately and then hit the Internet and did some research on the LMF website. LMF makes feeds for every type of horse, including horses like Beauty who have problems with sugar. The last resort, it seemed, was to put her on LMF Complete formula, designed to replace hay completely.
So, on their recommendation, I switched her to 5 pounds of LMF Complete Feed in the morning with NO hay, and 6 pounds of LMF Complete Feed in the evening with a half flake of hay SOAKED for a minimum of 30 minutes. The soaking reduces the sugar content by about 30-40 percent. Not bad. In addition to her thyroid medication, I also put Beauty on a minimum of 3000 units of Vitamin E, increased her Probiotics from 1 scoop to 2, and now give her half a Previcox pill in the morning to keep the inflammation down. (Previcox was originally meant for dogs, but works very well on horses ... some say better).
And guess what? She is now fit, fantastic, pain free, and flying around the round pen (she still has to be urged to exercise, but don't we all?). She also looks a little like a race horse now with that very trim belly all tucked nicely underneath. Of course, all this progress is not without cost. I've spent a boatload of money trying to get her where she is today. But she is worth it ... every penny!
So, if you have a horse with laminitis, you won't have to experiment like I did. Save yourself some time and money, and save your horse the pain. Print out this blog. Horses with certain genes seem to have these kinds of problems at around age 10 or so. If your horse is a Morgan, you can bet you'll probably need this later. Let's hope you don't!
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