Life With Archie: midlife with horse

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.

 

Winter Muck

 January

One thing I really hadn't given too much thought to when I became a horse owner was frozen poop. Who would? In the summer it's flies and smell and mush and stall deodorizer and cold post-stable showers. It's all shovel and muck and what is on the ground very readily shifts to the Big Pile Outside. It's actually kind of pleasant flinging poo into a wheelbarrow in the grass pasture as the sun sets after another hot day.

Now it's January and while that resolves the flies and smell issues, it does not address cold. Getting dressed for the barn requires an entire costume change. Long underwear, thermal socks, heavy cotton jodphurs, tee shirt, turtleneck, fleece jacket, down vest, down jacket, one set double mittens for stable work, one set thinsulate gloves for horse care, fleece hat,double-sided  full seat insulated  over- trousers zipped over thermal winter boots, it takes me 15 minutes just to waddle to the door. That's nothing compared to what Archie wears.

Once inserted in car, heat on high; arriving at the yard means automatic frozen fingers for the first half hour. Wave to Archie in paddock, secure wheelbarrow, pitchfork and broom, it's time- intensive work to discern what's wet, what's poop and what's just frozen in his stall. I use a flashlight propped on a feed bucket to see past the gloom but it's pretty dim in there and everything on the ground gets glued together after a below zero night.  Today I found the glove I lost last week frozen into the sawdust piled in the corner. 

Scoop, shake, rattle and toss. Empty wheelbarrow and dig energetically to refill it with frozen sawdust that clumps with cold. Smack clumps with shovel and stamp on the ones you missed that make it back to the stall.  I am now very, very warm. Winter is no longer the enemy. I take my wet mittens off, switch to the gloves and shove the hat into my jacket pocket. Sawdust spread in thick pee-happy piles over stall floor, warm water steaming in corner, four flakes hay to ward off cold-colic, it's time to retrieve Archie. 

Trudge up path, unchain all halters and ropes, secure Archie's and re-hook the rest. Slide under electric fence without getting zapped and convince Archie to do fun tricks in exchange for apple slices. Back up, put head to ground, turn on foreha

I check Archie's rugs (three deep and snug), his ears (lukewarm) and pick ice out of his borium- shod hooves. He hurries into his stall and plunges into fragrant second-cut summery hay which brings a pleasant whiff of  'remember when' while I haul out the wheelbarrow and head back to the paddock to de-poop.

Everything is ice. Some of it keels over when I kick it and some of it resists any dislodge. The pattern of poop indicates that Archie is loathe to wander anywhere his fetlocks might freeze. Rising like volcanic rock in the increasingly pee-pocked snow, small hillocks of dung show brown and permanent on the frozen tundra. The wheelbarrow is now loaded with poopsicles and needs to be trundled to the muck heap where its contents clatter when pitched.

Back inside, Archie has indulged in his favorite winter pastime: peeing on a deep bed of sawdust. He looks (and is) relieved. I skip out th e wet patch before it freezes and fill it in with the corner stash.  Archie plows into his hot mash dinner. I watch him eat and rub his ears until they are not lukewarm. I check all his blanket straps to make 

sure they are not strangling any major arteries, blow a "pwwwww" at Arch as he sticks his nose at me and call it a day.  

The weather report says more snow Wednesday which means the entire process takes  twice as long and my shoulders will ache at bedtime from carving wheelbarrow trails in new snow. The plus side to all this?   Ground hog day is coming. Soon. Fingers crossed.

Horse Makes Divots

  We had a nor-easter last night and it rained. A lot. Archie spends his days in Pasture Six, a lovely long field with good grazing--which gets muddy in rain. There are clear farm expectations that the field will remain grass and not succumb to mud. When it rains (a  lot) Arch has to stay inside to avoid churning up the turf with his Archie-sized hooves.

The rain stopped pretty much by mid morning, so Archie went out.  I wasn't sure, given the ground saturation, if it was okay for him to go out, but he insisted that out was where he wanted to be and that he planned only to hang out and sun bathe. Some days there are two horses in the field next to him, one wears a bell, and they parallel graze across electric fences. Some days Archie is all alone. He's good at alone, but  far prefers friends.

When I returned to the barn later in the day, and headed out back for a wheelbarrow, I gazed down for a glimpse of  grazing Archie.  The wind had risen and the sky darkened with threatening clouds. A gleam of red, raised tail fanning his muddy legs which propelled him circle after circle, Archie galloped fueled by some demonic force.  I looked and listened to try to see what he saw: barking dogs, cheers from the high school two fields over, passing geese, a leaf blowing across the field? I watched as he tore around twice more, waiting for him to calm--but he didn't. Calling ,"Yo Archie! Woah!"from my clever vantage point up the hill near the muck pile, he slowed, looked up as he always does, but not for long. Off again, he churned up grass divots the size of old fashioned LP record discs, alternated with long, grass shearing mud slides as he braked at the pasture boundaries.

Trudging down to rescue both horse and pasture, Archie trotted up to me, head alert, sniffing wind; high on ionic change. Still  dancing at the end of his lead rope, he suggested a quick green grass fix on the nice lawns between pasture and barn. His barefoot hooves sank into the sodden turf, leaving  island-like dents which created a whole network of tributaries and ponds. 

Arch pawed in cross ties until he had his pre-ride Maalox -laced snack  and then settled
down while I sorted the good from the bad in his stall bedding. By the time he was girthed and bridled, he was more himself but his contribution to a lively ride was seriously compromised by the exhausting 20 furlongs he'd indulged in an hour previously. Yawning and claiming hunger, he called it quits early and walked himself back to the crossties to be dis-robed,brushed down and blanketed against the cold air blowing in with the back end of the gusty storm. Impatiently ushered into his stall, he fell into a face- full of  hay, followed by an agressively consumed chaser of  grain.

While Archie munched, I went down to survey the pasture damage. Not good, it looked like a herd of large pigs had partied heartily, inviting guests from the elephant and rhinoceros clans as well as a 14 year old with his first 4x4.   We were in Big Trouble. Nothing shows up brown mud as clearly green grass.  Humps and bumps of scored pasture looked like a battlefield of horse poop. Disaster. Solution? Iron out the divots.  Available tools? Feet.

An hour later, I had literally followed in Archie's thousand footsteps, pulling, coaxing, stamping turf back into holes created by  churning quarterhorse feet. The long slides were out of my control and remained mud, albeit flattened mud. My jodphur boots squelched  muddy water through my toes.  The wind raged as the nor-easter chased itself out of town; gray skies, a shudder or two of rain and wild trees shedding autumn leaves at rapid rates. The sun sank. By the time the pasture had stopped screaming train wreck, I was late for everthing else, and my feet were un-pleasantly un-warm.  The pasture looked a little more peaceful. Would we get away with it?

So I covered the evidence. Would I have done so for one for our boys when they were teenagers? Car dents remained to be ironed out by the perpetrators, and  racing around the house and punching holes in the wall,  no matter how elequently explained away ("I punched the wall instead of my brother--you mean you'd rather I punched my brother instead of the wall ?") resulted in Loss of Privileges.  Does this mean I have subjugated my moral standards for my horse which may eventually come to No Good? Quite, quite possibly.  So it goes.

Horse (Poop)

Archy poops--a lot. When he first came his excuse was: new to stalls, new to rings, victim of  that caged in, 'bread'n butter, bread 'n butter' feeling after a few months on the distant plains. Four months later it has become his signature mark.  Archie fails to look even mildly embarrassed when he leaves a pile (or piles) as we circumnavigate the ring in trot, or walk down a country lane. He has developed a favorite under -saddle  dumping spot on the lawn in front of the neighbor's swimming pool.  He has thoughtfully taken substantial amounts of high quality fertilizer directly to farmers' fields we ride through, and his stall requires constant attention. In the morning, it is a disgrace. 

Every day's ride means a retracing of our steps as I scoop and skip each of Archie's artful leavings from the ring, the lawn and the barn. Of late he has taken to raising his tail suggestively when he is being tacked up in the barn aisle. I run for the skip bucket and he lowers his tail. I go back to the business of attending to his visage, the tail goes back up and--splat.  What is the meaning of all this equine defecation? Apparently it means one of two things. 

1. This is just Archie's (annoying) way
2. He has issues

As I am completely responsible for his well being and desire nothing more than his being well, the matter needs looking into.  Archie has  been temporarily immunized against rain rot, flu, and a host of other expensive potential illnesses, including rabies, an equine encephalitis, and ingrown toenails. Here's how many immunizations I have had this year: none.

  Step number 1--Count the Worms.  We wormed him when he first arrived (five days of a really foul tasting paste--don't ask me how I know that-- that gets squirted on Archie's tongue) and wormed him again three weeks ago (he was a 2 out of 3 on the worm-to  horse infestation scale).  The nice people at the vet's office had a hearty guffaw when I brought an entire bag for examination, rather than a wee spoonful. Archie, I told them, is a very generous horse. He has not gained enough weight, the prevalence of  mushy green, smelly poop increases, and three dogs (including ours) allegedly get ill from eating it. I feel the pain of people who have to clean up after dogs with intestinal complaints, but really, I can hardly be held responsible for the strange (and rather revolting) diet of dogs.  

Step number 2--look to holistic support. Horses are vegans and can't eat yogurt (we all know yogurt is good for everything) so I serve Archie an expensive daily portion of  keep- in -a -cool,-dark- place probiotics with his beetroot, which he slurps up. Archie is enormously in favor of big portions of everything, and manages a convincingly mournful look that has me and the army of little girls at Heather's bringing him armloads of hay which is almost immediately turned into--poop. The pasture he is in during the day, now requires daily cleaning.

Step number 3--back to the vets with a small baggyful (dumb the first time, fool the second) and it comes back 1 on the poop scale of 1-3 which apparently means we are aiming for 0.  Given Archie's suspected Failure to Thrive (a condition he seems hardly aware of as long as the meals are delivered on time),  the vet prescribes Daily Wormer called C2X (sounds like a skateboard) which is available at Farmers' Supply for $58. He will re-evaluate him in a month's time. I look at the Before and After ads for C2X--Archie looks like Before (the rain rot spots don't help). I look forward to After, which, in the pictures, shows super shiny ponies with plump quarters and sleek coats, blue rosettes on their bridles, and happy riders with nice hair. I pledge to send Archie's now and then pix in to our friends at Pfizer if their miracle cure comes through.  

 I have no idea what Step 4 is, should we still be looking green in a month's time, other than having his Tarot cards read. I cruised the shelves at Farmer's Supply, nearly bought an antidote for sandeaters (I saw Archie try to eat a toxic  MAPLE leaf ) and lugged home a  huge pasture block of super mineral salt block which might take care of any selenium, copper, magnesium, iodine, molasses,phosphrous, calcium. cobalt, zinc,manganese, potassium, magnesium, iron, flouine, sulphur, or sodium mineral deficiencies he might have. 

I had a lick, not bad.

      

Pony DeJa Vu

Life With Archie: Mid Life With Horse

 Welcome to my world--which seems to be shaken up a little. I  have acquired a horse. Again. There was the (great)big grey horse (Hobbs) who outstayed his welcome by walking through fences and eating the house-- and the home. In a stunningly deft bait and switch, grey Hobbs moved out and red Archie moved in. Archie clattered into the barn, selected the  biggest corner stall-with-a-view, decorated it with pictures of his favorite rock bands and hung out a shingle, "The Dude Is In." 

Despite our generational age difference, the therapeutic  benefit of having a ready made combo stairmaster, tread mill, free weights and Pilates all rolled into a furry creature who doesn't yak your ear off and works for hay, is hard to beat.

I don't need a horse, we don't need a horse, we really can't afford a horse, there's not enough time between work, life, kids, their kids, and all the stuff we do when we don't have a horse-- but I am on Cloud Nine. 

This is all about me--and recovering that delight and connivance that is horse and girl. We are going to ride bareback through the fields, I will whisper my deepest secrets in his soft, furry ear and I will cater to his every whim. We will be Velvet and Pie.  My grown  children are NOT going to understand--but their children will.

Now if I can just make sense of the directions in that owner's manual...   (Note-this story begins...HERE)

BlogCatalog

Rain Rot

Archie came with spots. The vet who checked him out looked at them closely, peering at their bright red concentric circles on  his darker red summer coat and pronounced it Rain Rot. Rain Rot? Healed fungal spots had come back a brighter shade, giving him a curious counter- appaloosa shading. Fortunately all this evened out by mid July. Unfortunately, it came back.  By August, Archie had a sore bum and a cure was hard to find.

Home remedies suggested were vinegar and mineral oil but what I read on the internet said "let it dry" and mineral oil seemed counter productive. Plus, it was clear from the way stalwart Archie wiggled when I curried his sore bum, it hurt. A visit to Tractor Supply offered a confusing selection of miracle cures; Cowboy Magic, Cowboy Magic Krud Buster (I did like the sound of that--magnificent branding),  Muck Itch Skin Saver and some serious looking bottles identifying themselves as medical treatment of almost anything that appears on your horse's skin, besides eyeballs.  Treatment on each was a five day daily application, which generally used nearly a bottle of the stuff which came no cheaper than thirty bucks.

I bought the serious medical shampoo and spent five days applying it and picking gross scabs, watching in horror as they revealed oozing sores on my poor pony's back and boiling brushes, tack and my hands. I would have boiled Archie if I could have managed it.  Still, little progress and it spread to his forelegs (where apparently Rain Rot, becomes Mud Fever or Greasy Heel) in small hard little imbedded pellets, impossible to pick. Yuck.

Heather suggested a Betadine scrub and I used that for five days-twice. It did seem to slow things down but Archie's skin started to look like the before picture in a bad dandruff ad. I went back to a moisture shampoo to counteract the anti-moisture shampoo. Then I went to the vets-who sent me home with $60 worth of Uniprim which Archie gobbled up but quickly acted to gobble up his sores. One by one they flaked off (with some powerful currying from powerful me) and quickly healed over.  Yesterday Heather gave me a lovely Oster round brush that returned his pebbly legs to sleek. 

The thing about Rain Rot is--it comes back. Next year I am going to be ready. I have read everything I can on it and have a favorite page full of remedies which I look forward to trying--in order of appearance. I am particularly intrigued by the one suggesting you gargle with Listerine and then apply to horse. My English friend swears by a product enticingly called, Ranvet White Healer Cream (and if only available in the UK or Australia, which if you add in the plane fare, makes it rather more expensive than Cowboy Krudbuster) and suggests I also pick up a pot of Pottie's Green Ointment as chaser. There is the possibility that Archie's bout with malnourishment back in Kansas might be a contributer to his Rain Rot plight and I am also extremely attracted to the addition of some marvelous sounding "ration balancer" called "Buckeye's Gro N Win" on the logic of feeding my all-American quarter horse an all-American product to do battle with his all-American Rain Rot.

I think I'll buy the poor horse a rain sheet, too. Some cow pony.

Horse Stuff

Okay. Grey horse (sadly) gone. Red horse here. Now what? Archie seems pretty amiable and easy to please, but history unknown (an orphan from Kansas)--who knows?

He seems happy to have humans around him (thumbs up) suffers his daily groom- and -tack -up cheerfully, and gratefully accepts peppermint healthy horse treats without cheekiness.

Heather advises a baby snaffle bit for him with lots of room for play. The  full horse-sized bridle I'd bought for Hobbs is a bit roomy on him but will do for the present. There are only so many bridles a person can buy in period of two weeks. Archie stands patiently while I put everything on the shortest hole. One rainy day I traveled  to Dover, New Hampshire to buy an all -weather very reasonably priced Thorogood saddle which is ever so adjustable for the horse owner who may discover her thin horse has become a wide horse, and amusingly played witness to a saddle -buying ten year old whose mother phone- snapped photos to the girl's absentee trainer. The salesperson started them out with a $300 sale Wintec. Seven phone snap nays later, they went home with a $3000 Pessoa.  

Archie seems amenable to all. I bought some must- haves: wound salve, velcro brushing boots, a  plaid (very Scottish) Baker fly sheet and  s set of Heather- recommended  super comfy pair of stirrups (thoughtfully peaceful with my creaky knees). I grabbed a bottle of Absorbine on the way out because I love the smell and although it's horse liniment,  Archie is the kind of guy who will share.

Tab thus far? Not bad. I'd had my vintage Stubben saddle (too small) restored and hope to sell it on for a bit of profit as it looks pretty good after all these years. Vet? $300 soundness trial and vaccinations. Heather and I reached an agreement above Archie's board as he eats a LOT and apparently needs it--so all the hay he can eat was factored in. Where it went, wasn't. Talk about horse poop. In the stall, in the field, in the ring and sometimes in the aisle. Gross.  How to balance what goes in with, what goes out?

Hobbs Meets Humans

June 3, 2009
 I discovered on our ride back, by reading his Canadian transport papers(which look a little sketchy--as in sketched in) that Hobbs is not five--he is three and a half (and that's a little bogus as well unless he really was born on January first 2006 with all the other thoroughbred three year olds) and he is not 15 hands--he is 15.2--and growing. He must already weigh 1200 heavy Percheron pounds. This is all fine except that my mantra said older, schooled--pony, and trust me, Hobbs ain't no pony.

All the horses in the barn snorted at his arrival. Hobbs spent lunchtime in his stall looking at them and then a couple of hours in the round pen with me where we scooped poop and chatted. He followed me from a distance, clearly unused to human overtures and still recalling the highs of hightailing it in the 90 acre field, occasionally trotting off to whinny or to slobber water from his bucket or to pee on his hay (weird). I kept up the conversation during the slow times, ate an apple and drank a coke. Hobbs had clearly never had a treat so the apple core had no draw for him until I tossed it in his hay and he said, " This is Apple? Bring 'em on."