Horse Has --- Ulcers?

Chemical Composition of Gastrogard (Meril Labs)

I had no idea that ordinary everyday horses get ulcers. Okay I understand why a hot-headed race horse being revved up to get home first might have tummy issues, but Archie? How could life be less stressful than three meals a day, a nice roomy paddock next to your mates and all the hay you can eat? Throw in a couple of hours a day of human demands: put on halter and walk to pasture, put on halter and walk back to barn. Get dressed. Obligingly carry your grateful and  fairly undemanding rider around for a  while until she gets off and feeds you a nice warm mash. When they talk about metaphor for Life of Reilly, they mean Life of Archie.

So what's wrong with this picture? Last week Archie looked dangerously like a Case of Colic coming on. Off his feed, a funny sort of dazed gaze, he looked  weak around the eyeballs in a wobbly way. Since Archie's poop is nearly as riveting a topic of observation as his feet, it was duly noted that his poop was  frequent, mushy, green and with an odd vinegary cow manure tang.

Vet advice by phone: cold weather colic. Remedy? Keep him warm, electrolytes, probiotics, lots of warm water and a quarter tube of the horse equivalent of human  heartburn med Prilosec only at a million times the cost. When the vet came by to float his teeth (and where does the float part come into that procedure?) she took one look at the result of his teeth grinding and said, "Ulcers, let's take a look".  

"Let's take a look" is not actually as simple as it sounds. It requires the services of the equine-gastro specialist, a videotape/tv attached to a camera at the Archie- end by a three foot lighted nasal hose fed into his sedated stomach, a bucket of hot water on a cold day and the very reluctant  cash input by Bob at the insurance agency. 

Archie had to stay inside all day with no food or water. I "stripped" his stall so there was not even a morsel of hay and we hung out together waiting for the vet. When I had to leave for a while I played the radio for Arch and he chewed on his stall door. By 3 pm he was sucking on bucket hooks and no longer interested in watching me dance to Bob Marley or looking at the pictures of T Touch massage while I practiced on his poll.

Once the vet arrived and hooked up his electronic stuff we all crowded around to see Inside Archie, oohing and awing over the creaminess of his healthy esophagus, the deep plum of the underside of his stomach and the hose's search for Margo, according to its conductor, the vet. Who's Margo? She's actually Margo Plicatus (I kind of think I remember someone sort of named like that in fourth grade) and she is a very remarkable "folded edge of the mucous membrane between the large non-glandular portion of the  horse's stomach and the dorsally located glandular portion" of the stomach. What we could see when we found her was the demarcation between the plum side and the creamy side of the stomach or the southern and northern hemispheres as the vet advised us, helping us to visualize Archie's stomach as planet earth.

Margo in a healthy horse shows a pie crust-shaped line as it circumnavigates the hemispheres. Archie's Margo was serated with jagged little edges where acid reflux from his gut has chewed away at the lining. Ouch. The camera hovered over several pink ulcer spots which dotted the creamy side and a whoosh of water and air sent down the hose brought a small crater ulcer into definition.  Double ouch. The vet pulled the long hose out from Archie's nose who made a suprised snort while still napping, and said, "Grade Two Ulcers." There are apparently four grades to these things and a low grade is better than  a high one. Treatment? The only one on the block that is FDA tested for horses, the Big G: Gastrogard.  Merial Drugs, who own the monopoly on this highly regarded paste of what humans take as Opremazole in its generic (and cheap) form, charge what they can get away with until the patent is open--another 4 years. 

Let's see....28 days of a full tube at $35 a tube, 32 days at half a tube ---that's ummmm.... $1540. Triple ouch. Bob back at the insurance company is not going to be pleased. But the stuff, apparently, works. What causes ulcers? According to the vet, it's stress--just like humans. It can be the mean horse across the aisle, fear of snowmobiles, diet, training, trailering, winter or  just plain air.
Horses left to be horses are generally ulcer-free. Archie has always had an off again/on again issue with his stomach as evidenced by his poop, his occasional nappiness and a recent tendency to see dead people, which gets better when he is out on the summer pasture currently buried under three feet of snow.

We walked back to  the feed room to look at What Archie Eats. Well, let's see, this week's menu is a quart of a nice grain called Stable Smart which is low carb/easy gut, and a whole menu of top dressings: a scoop of Equipride ( the  good-for-the -gut coffee-colored leavings from what some South Dakota cattle farmers get after home brewing their own Guinness),  a soupcon of Ex-Stress, two tablespoons of Lysine (shiny coat) and a cup of Digest-It.  Oh--and a bale of  second-cut grass hay. Archie went off his enthusiasm for hay cubes last week so we looked sadly at the 50 pound bag sitting pouchily awaiting consumption. Archie's winter  diet is a direct reflection of which salespeople catch me first when I walk through the stalls at the annual November Equine Affaire with that big label saying Sucker on my forehead.

The vet was very kind and refrained from making any wisecracks about what a  well-meaning middle-aged woman spoons down her horse's throat. He gently suggested that we put everything aside except the Stable Smart and the Bale of Grass Hay and add to that the tube-a-day of Gastrogard and a syringe of pink Horsie Maalox or a handful of TUMS 30 minutes pre-ride and 'wait and see.' Archie's going to miss that Guinness.

So--Day 1 of post-diagnosis and we're having another Snow Event. This will give Archie an opportunity to get wet and cold outside for a while and then come in and enjoy a nice tube of Gastrogard to chase down his 60 second guzzle of grain. This stuff works so fast, he should be feeling fab in three--count 'em--three days. Let the treatment begin.

 

Comments

[Stella C (Cavalière Attitude)]

Hi Meg, I just discovered your wonderful, witty blog after after seeing we'd both left messages on best.horse-blogs.ever.com. around the same time.
Your snow experiences made our ultra-white Christmas look pale by comparison! I found the post on Archie's ulcers fascinating - the technology and products available to you in the US must be ten years ahead of what's on offer where I am in "backwoods" France. With 2 oldies, one who specialises in dramatic colics, the other with arthritic hips and a new boy who came with sweet-itch and laminitis, we've had the vet out so many times he's become a great friend: he and his wife came for Christmas dinner!
Look forward to reading your future posts

[Meg Robbins]

Thanks Stella, and I very much enjoy Cavaliere Attitude as well--your Pom looks lovely. It is good fun sharing the nuttiness of life with horses after a "certain" age. Bon chance!

[Stella C]

Hope Archie's feeling better! Really enjoyed your travel blogs too, regards, Stella

[melbourne cup]

great blog. I didnt really know horses get ulcers...

[adequan for horses]

Great article. If your horse is thin and has high energy, then chances are that he loses weight through sheer nervous tension and continuous movement. To help this kind horse retain weight, the goal is to keep him calm and relaxed. This kind of horse gains weight more quickly with increased grass hay and some alfalfa.thanks for sharing.