Harribo Took a trip to the vets
Today I took Harribo to the vets for a scope to see if he had ulcers.
I’ve had this mental itch about ulcers and Harribo for a while, his way of “spooking” is very scooty where he puts his back end under tucks his belly up and shoots forwards.
This has developed into stopping with Olive riding, stretching to go to the toilet but not really going and most recently becoming girthy when he’s always been ok with his girth.
I had two main paths to look at
• saddle fit (he’s changed shape a lot and Olive has grown a lot)
• ulcers
Last week we managed to get his saddle looked at and as suspected it was now totally the wrong fit for him and Olive. I’ll write about the saddle fit soon.
But even with the new saddle there were still a couple of signs of discomfort sooo I booked him in to be scoped.
This is not an easy decision as I was worried about the trauma around scoping, and how he’d feel about it but I wanted to know decisively if he was struggling with tummy pain.
Ulcers are written about a lot, I first had a set of horses scoped 20 years ago when they were becoming talked about and found half our yard had them 🫣 we treated and managed and they all were cured. Since then I haven’t had a horse showing classic signs, but I felt his was all quite typical.
Ulcers occurred generally on the top half of the stomach where the lining doesn’t have a protective layer against the stomach acid, they can also occur in the entrance to the intestine and hind gut.
The horse experiences discomfort/pain when the stomach lining swishes up to the top and the acid touches the ulcers, so irregular symptoms are common.
Ulcers tend to be a symptom of stress in the horse or past stress where they are coping with current pain, have had pain, stressful environment etc
Because they’re written about a lot, people can treat ulcers without scoping but to be sure and to know what type of ulcers you have scoping is the best way.
The trauma I was concerned about wasn’t there, Harribo had light sedation (about the same amount to do teeth if you’ve ever sedated for teeth) and a camera on a tube is put up through the nostril and down the throat, the stomach is then filled with air so the vet can see everything clearly.
Probably the hardest thing is the horse has to be nil by mouth for 12-16 hours before the procedure which I felt awful doing.
We arrived at the vets early and Harribo was super chilled, slightly confused by the fact I’d not given him any food but taking it all in his stride.
The next thing they do is weigh the horse mad check vitals before taking them into the room they do the procedure
Sedation is given and that allowed to take effect
And then the tube is fed up through the nostril, you wait for the horse to swallow and then it feeds down into the stomach. Some horses struggle with this and a little bit of a nose bleed may happen, but Harribo was a super star and took it all in his stride.
Once we entered the stomach my vet was able to explain everything that we saw and thankfully Ulcers were not on the list. In fact Harribo has a very good looking stomach 😂
The vet checked all the key areas before pulling out. So other than my bank balance being hit and Harribo having to starv we are no worse off.
If ulcers were found treatment can be given and often this stops the behaviour as the horse becomes more comfortable.
For Harribo it’s a clean bill of health, yeay…currently.
So what’s next…Harribos been with us a year now and so I just want to make sure none of his behaviour is not pain related.
We shall monitor him as he gets used to the new saddle and see if this helps those scoots, if they are still present then we will do a Bute trial where we check if there’s any other pain, if the behaviour disappears on the bute trial we will know there may be some pain creating it and then it will be investigations to find out what.