I always begin electrolytes (my veterinarian mixes them for me) three days prior
to a ride. I then administer 1 once of electrolytes at each hold depending on
how well he is drinking. Please note that this was my first ride that I
actually
had a pit crew helping me and was not taking care of the horse myself at the
holds.
However, by my lack of communication, my horse did not receive electrolytes
at the second and third holds.
My horse trotted willingly out of the third hold. As mentioned earlier, he
did seem
tired, but I wasn't concerned as this was a difficult ride in the mountains
of West
Virginia and we were traveling faster than we did on the previous 50's, so I
assumed
he was just getting tired. I did not push him on this loop but I did push
him on
the third loop. At about 45 miles he did not want to trot anymore. We
walked, and
then another rider passed us and my horse began to trot again. We hung with
this
horse and rider team to about 49 miles when it happened. My horse could not go
any further. I first though he was beginning to tie up, but this was not
the case.
Instead of not proceeding any further, I opted to continue since we only had
about
a mile to go, and in this case a mile to the vets. I got off and literally
dragged
him by his reins up the final steep incline into the finish. It took almost the
entire 60 minutes for him to recover to 64 bpm and his pulse was irregular.
Resirations were okay. He completed the ridgeway at 16/16. Capillary
refill three
seconds, and skin pinch was , well terrible. About 30 minutes after the vet in
he started becoming blue in the gums and was given 3 liters of fluid by IV.
Diagnosis
Dehydration colic.
My question is is how can I avoid this in the future. What other signs are
there
for this besides the initial fatigue factor. In other words, how did I miss
this?
I have almost 700 miles competing and have never had a problem like this in the
past.