January 21st, 2014

Pursuit is a 3yo TB filly who has been admitted as an out of hours emergency on Friday 10th January for colic. The horse was diagnosed with a large and extensive impaction of the large colon.

The horse has recently come out of racing and has been re- homed to be retrained and used as an all purpose low level competition horse. She was bought from a racing yard three weeks ago by her new owner and since arriving on the new yard has displayed signs of inappetance and having a generally stressed demeanor (pawing a lot, unsettled in box). When turned out the horse is very placid and grazes well.

On Friday night we discussed various options, the horse was mildly colicky with an elevated heart rate but its hydration status overall was good and otherwise the filly was clinically stable. We started her on a continuous rate infusion of oral fluids (tap water) for 48 hours and gave the horse pain relief in the interim period whilst the impaction was softening. The horse started to pass faeces on Sunday morning and has since cleared the impaction successfully. We started to feed the filly again (grazing and fibre soups) which initially she had a great appetite for but on Monday was less comfortable again. This horse's signalment and history of clinical signs prior to referral are highly suggestive of gastric ulceration which would explain the low grade colic signs and inappetance seen on re-feeding.

On gastroscopy we detected a gastric impaction of feed from yesterday which we assume is due to delayed gastric emptying likely secondary to severe gastric ulceration. There was some evidence of gastric ulceration but a full examination could not be carried out because of the presence of food in the stomach. We are in the process of flushing the stomach with a view to repeat the gastroscopy tomorrow.

On the second gastroscopy, gastric ulcers were diagnosed.  And so SAIN has contributed to provide the filly with a month course of Gastroguard. Pursuit went home with owners over the moon- extremely grateful for all the effort and financial support from SAIN.  Thank you for helping everyone!