Possible EPM, Mystery Lameness on 2000 lb Draft Horse

John Dowdy:     Hello everyone and welcome to another Equinety podcast. This is your host, John Dowdy, and I'm really excited to bring to you this months Equinety story out of Tennessee and we're going to go with a 18 hands, 2000 pound draft horse who's owned by Becki. Becki, thank you so much for sharing your Equinety story here on the Equinety podcast.

Becki:               Oh well you're welcome.

John Dowdy:     Great. So as I mentioned, you've got a 22 year old draft horse that you've owned for 20 years. Actually, I didn't tell anybody that. That's new information, so but 18 hands, a big draft horse. Tell us a little bit about your mare there.

Becki:               Yeah, well her name's Roxanne and I had bought her as a two year old coming out of Amish country and in her younger days, we did hunter jumpers for a long time and she was amazing. People couldn't believe a big horse could be that agile. She was always in good health and then we went, stopped all the showing, we did a little eventing and then we stopped that. Then we started trails.

John Dowdy:     Okay.

Becki:               And we did trails all over, everywhere in Tennessee, some in Kentucky, Tennessee, most of around Tennessee.

John Dowdy:     Sure.

Becki:               And she's an awesome trail horse. She can do any trail that she wants like any little horse. She was great. And Then out of the blue, she came down with this problem. She could not control her backend.

John Dowdy:     Yeah. And this was about three years ago you said?

Becki:               Yes.

John Dowdy:     Yep. Go ahead.

Becki:               And it was heartbreaking to me to watch her because she's always been such a healthy Mare and I take good care of her. First vet diagnosed it as EPM. And I just wasn't sure of that because it just, I don't know, all the studying I did only EPM and everything, it just didn't sound like it to me.

Becki:               So I did a course of medicine for that, which costs me $3,000. Yes. And didn't really even seem to help her. She stayed that way I'd say for almost a year. And then as the year progressed, she did better. About last summer, she came up with this again with the backend where she couldn't control it. She would swing her left hip out and could not balance and had to stand up against her gate in the barn just to stand there.... couldn't even hardly eat her hay or bend down to do anything. It was heartbreaking.

I thought I was going to have to put her down because I couldn't stand to see her like that. And then on Facebook I saw the ad for Equinety and read all the stories on there and I thought, well, it's worth a try. She had also been diagnosed with severe arthritis and I had to limit her, so I always have limited her grass intake, but I don't had to limit it more because they thought she was in a possibility of founder at that point.

John Dowdy:     Sure.

Becki:               She's a big girl, so I knew I had to do something, so I decided, well, I'm going to try this because I have nothing to lose.

John Dowdy:     Right. Now as we were chatting earlier and of course up to this point, you had mentioned to me you are at your wit's end. The veterinarian's had been scratching their head, you've already dumped a bunch of money and nothing seemed to be working. And then that's where you saw the ad on Facebook with Equinety and you thought, well what could it hurt?

Becki:               Right. That's exactly how I felt. What could it hurt. You know, so I ordered some and started her on it and within three weeks, she was walking straight. She wasn't swinging her hip. Her arthritis is better,