I would like to hear any constructive input on a situation that just occurred for me with a horse I own.
History:
I have owned Buddy since March 2005. He is a 9 y.o. Arab gelding, 15.2+H of a heavier build. He came to me from the NE region with lots of behavior and nutritional issues. Over the past year he has done well, other then some skin allergy problems in the summer months here in southwestern AZ. His diet consists of free forage bermuda grass hay, beet pulp mash with perhaps 1/4 lb alfalfa pellets for flavor, flax seed, BOSS, biotin and Platinum Performance, mineralized loose salt (BP and supplements given once daily). He gets alfalfa hay in the winter when it is cool but only in limited amounts - none recently. I did get some oat hay recently but he had only a small amount and none for the three days prior to the incident below. He is on approx 1 acre sand turn out 24/7.
The temps have been averaging 111-115 for the past two weeks. All the horses have plenty of shade and don't seem stressed, but we haven't been riding too much except for early morning and late evening. He has access to salt and I add a bit to his BP mash daily.
Since he is not working much, he is not getting any grain products.
This past weekend I rode my other horse and ponied Buddy for about 4 miles - mostly at a slow trot. It was still relatively cool - for us - and I decided to work Buddy in the round pen for a bit. He still has some issues with pulling on the snaffle so I decided to work him with a bungee type training martingale to see if the instant release would help him "get the idea" of being softer in the bit. We worked for about 15 minutes - walking and slow trotting only, nothing strenuous or fast - he was pulling a bit but the light seemed to be coming on about giving and getting the release. I was ready to quit for the day and called him in to end the lesson and noticed his flanks were quivering - uh oh. By the time I got him untacked and back to his paddock, he was cramping/typing up. I called my vet who was out of town (no real backup vetting here) and he told me to administer Ace promazine - which I did 4 cc IM. His rump muscles and up over the flank area were very hard. This was followed by 10 cc banamine IM.
Buddy was very uncomfortable and not moving for about 1-2 hours but he was eating and drinking, urinated clear two times, plenty of volume. He began to move stiffly after about 3-4 hours and contnued to improve. By the end of the day he was moving more freely - but I think still somewhat stiffly. The next day he was back to normal.
So, any ideas on what caused the problem. He has been worked at a much higher level in the past and even with the decreased work due to heat, I would not consider the exercise excessive. The horse that I was riding had sweat under the saddle and a little in the crease of his neck but was not unduly stressed by the heat. There was a good breeze blowing to help with evaporative cooling.
Any thoughts out there on what happened and how to avoid it ?
