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Shadow

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Julie recounts her experience when her horse, Shadow developed very serious edema.

Why he was affected and not the other 4 horses is down to physiological differences between individuals. Thanks to Julie for sharing, not many horses develop edema's as extreme as Shadow did!

Four weeks ago my horse Shadow became badly 'grass affected' with balance/co-ordination issues.

I was away for two days and my neighbour was looking after my 5 horses. She phoned to tell me that Shadow was behaving very strangely and had fallen and put himself through the fence.

 

She managed to get him out by cutting the wires and got him on his feet. Rang the vet. I drove straight home (3 hours away).

He then started to swell up with ventral edema, must have been some kind of extreme reaction to the grass after all the rain.

The vet gave him 15 litres of intravenous fluids and took bloods which showed his liver has been compromised . Antibiotics were given for an infection of unknown origin.

We took him off grass and put him in an area that is 90% grass free. He had been having salt & MVA with GrazeEzy & SOS but now he isn't eating or drinking. Am hand feeding him small amounts of very wet feed with these in it but his intake is very small. He has adlib hay but is not eating much of that. The edema seemed to have made it difficult for him to swallow.

 

By the end of the first week he was not really improving. He developed a nasty cough as well.

This is when I got in touch with Jenny and she quickly sourced some Alleviate Gold for me which I syringed in 4 x a day as he still wasn't eating much. Jenny thought it was the product best suited to arresting the fluid accumulation.

He was noticeably perkier after a couple of days and the edema showed improvement after about day 5. His appetite slowly came back and he began to drink more.

We are now at week 4 and he is really on the mend. His sheath is still swollen but the improvement is obvious. Going for walks. Rolling. He even did a couple of little bucks and rears this morning just for the sheer joy of it.

So, thank you Jenny and Val for all your support and thank you Alleviate Gold. They literally saved my boys life.

 

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Shadow back to his normal shape after the inclusion of large amounts of AlleviateGold in his diet....

You can see the extent of the edemas in the following photographs!

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